Red Bull and Christian Horner arrive at F1 pre-season testing facing questions

21 February 2024 , 06:00

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Christian Horner has confirmed he will be in Bahrain for next month's opening GP (Image: Getty Images)

F1 pre-season testing gets underway in Bahrain on Wednesday morning and the first insights into how the 2024 season will pan out will emerge.

Red Bull arrive preparing to launch Max Verstappen's bid for a fourth consecutive World Championship and their attempt to land a third constructors championship in as many years. They will look to stamp their authority on proceedings once again after their rivals realised in testing 12 months ago the task that lay ahead.

Verstappen completed a dominant 2023 in which he stood atop of the podium 19 times in 22 races. The Dutchman finished 290 points ahead of teammate Sergio Perez as Red Bull dominated the season.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff admitted in November that it was clear that a difficult season was on the cards from the outset last season's testing, while Ferrari chief Frederic Vasseur noted the task was 'obvious' as soon as the first morning of 2023 testing had taken place . However, F1's frontrunners arrive in the Middle East a week before the first Grand Prix looking to prove themselves once again, but possibly overshadowed by what is going on behind the scenes.

Testing begins under the cloud of an ongoing investigation into team principal Christian Horner after a claim of inappropriate behaviour was made against him by a colleague. Horner denies the allegations.

Inside the driver call which upset Red Bull and changed the course of F1 history

Red Bull's rivals will hope to hit the ground running with Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren and Aston Martin all having a large gap to close if they have aspirations of any title. Verstappen believes the other constructors have learned a lot in their attempt to close the gap.

"If you look at most of the cars for sure they learned a lot of what direction that they want to develop in," he said.

Red Bull and Christian Horner arrive at F1 pre-season testing facing questions

Max Verstappen won 19 out of 22 races last year, prompting some claim F1 has become boring (Mark Thompson/Getty Images)

"That's also a bit normal - when you keep the regulations the same for a while at one point people understand maybe where there is a bit more potential to find lap time. More or less everyone has a similar sidepod design nowadays."

F1's 10 teams will put their new vehicles through their paces at the Bahrain International Circuit. Three days of testing will get underway from 7am on Wednesday.

Two years remain of the current iteration of F1 rules leading to some speculation that teams could turn attention towards the 2026 engine regulations given Red Bull's current dominance. McLaren team principal Andrea Stella believes that all of the grid will still look to challenge the Milton Keynes-based team.

"I fully believe that all teams, or at least all those that started from a position close to Red Bull, they still definitely want to catch Red Bull," Stella said.

"Our position is that they still may have a position of advantage because they haven't developed their car very much last year so we expect they will accumulate some of their knowledge into the design of the 2024 car."

Stella aded: "There are two more seasons with these regulations and I'm sure already within this season somebody may already think 'we are going to catch Red Bull' from a performance point of view."

Mercedes face a tough task replacing Ferrari-bound Lewis Hamilton (Getty Images)

Lewis Hamilton will enter his final testing with Mercedes having committed to Ferrari for next term. He will hope for a fairytale ending to the most successful team-driver partnership in F1 history. Should they appear too far off the pace, questions will arise on when Hamilton could be pushed to the sidelines.