Marko confident RBR's 'good basic package' can prevail again in 2023

Helmut Marko isn't expecting 2023 to be another walk in the park for Red Bull Racing, but the Austrian believes that the team's "good basic package" and F1's unchanged technical regulations leave it well positioned to prevail again this season.

RBR's dominant 2022 campaign delivered the Constructors' championship to the Milton Keynes-based outfit and a second consecutive title to Max Verstappen.

But the team's breach of F1's 2021 cost cap has led to an aerodynamic testing penalty that could impact Red Bull's performance.

As well as a significant fine, Red Bull had its permitted allocation of wind tunnel and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) time cut by ten per cent over the next 12 months.

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The net result is that Red Bull will only have 63 per cent of the baseline testing allocation which allows 400 hours of wind tunnel time over 320 runs, with no more than two runs per day, compared to 75 per cent for Ferrari.

Marko says RBR will contend with the reduction by working more efficiently.

"We are of course sitting with this reduction of hours in the wind tunnel," the Red Bull motorsport boss told Servus TV. "That means we have to work very efficiently as a team.

"All the things we try out have to hit the mark immediately.

"But fortunately, the technical changes for next year are not that big. It means we have a good basic package."

And Marko says RBR will rely once on its trump card – one Max Verstappen – to keep its momentum going in 202.

"The team also stays together and Max is still getting slightly better," he said. "As a result, we can go into the new season cautiously optimistic.

"We have a tradition at Red Bull that we don’t really finish the car until the very last moment. But the concept of the car is already there. We can indeed build on a very successful 2022 car."

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