Quote:
Originally Posted by ///M Power-Belgium
And in 2024 ? 
In 2024 he was invisible , somewhere in a wall , crashed or knocked out in QF1 (!)
The KitKat man crashed a big $5Million hole in the 2024 Red Bull budget cap...
If that isn't enough, that's why the Red Bull Team lost the 2024 WCC .
And losing the 2024 WCC is a loss of $50 Million for the Red Bull Team.
"Unnecessarily" dragging someone through the mud ?
An "Unnecessary" thing is his 2025 KitKat seat  |
He had a bad latter 2/3 of the season. For sure. First 1/3 looked good, then they started going the wrong direction with the car, which the team has fully admitted. They really gave him a crap car that he couldn't drive. You can blame it on the driver, but it's really up to the constructor to give the best car to their drivers, and with Checo, they clearly didn't. Every race there were visible differences between the two cars because they just couldn't get it right. RB is partially responsible for Checo's poor performance.
Half of the car damage came from a full car replacement thanks to KMag. That really wasn't Checo's fault.
Last I saw, 1st place got $140M, 3rd place got $122M, so it's only an $18M differential (12% loss). For reference, the budget cap is $135M, so they need a mere 13M to make up the difference between the prize money and the budget for next season... Checo's sponsors more than make up that differential... so the team, and RB as a company, loses nothing.
The team gains a lot of aero testing time, which is a substantial benefit for the 2026 car, which is surely what most of the aero time in 2025 will be used for. I think there is zero frustration for the constructors drop. Playing chess vs checkers.
edit: Let's also not forget the car reliability issues he faced... failed clutch... then he wasn't doing terribly in Abu Dhabi, made it back to Q3, but the car had mechanical issues in the race.