Michael Schumacher’s brother at odds with Lewis Hamilton’s claim about Red Bull

Michael Schumacher’s brother Ralf has disagreed with Lewis Hamilton over Red Bull’s decision to press ahead with 2024 developments. Red Bull boss Horner revealed some resources were now being pushed into the 2024 RB20 due to their advantage at the front of the field.

Hamilton hit back at Horner’s remarks, suggesting Mercedes never started work on their next model this early in the campaign at the height of their dominance. However, Schumacher appears to disagree, claiming Red Bull is only doing what Mercedes had done in recent seasons.

Writing in his Sky Sports column: “Red Bull, on the other hand, has the advantage that they know where to go. They can already concentrate on the coming season. Mercedes did the same thing for years. That was never a revolution, but always just an evolution.”

At the Austrian Grand Prix, Hamilton suggested Silver Arrows engineers had never started development on a Mercedes machine this early into a season. He made the admission as he pushed FIA chiefs to consider changing the rules to stop constructors from working on 2024 machines until later in the year.

Hamilton made the suggestion to stop periods where one team is on top for years at a time. He said: “We never started as early as them. That’s why I’m saying it needs to change – because that’s why you have dominance for so long, and they keep allowing it to happen.

“Ferrari was ahead and the same thing happened there, when Red Bull were ahead with Seb [Vettel] back in the day, they start earlier so they’re always ahead.” Red Bull has suggested the team’s budget cap penalty could hinder them after the summer break.

The squad have 10 per cent less wind tunnel time after breaking F1’s cost cap rules back in 2021. 

However, Schumacher feels the squad will have enough in the tank to warn off any advances and could wrap up four more titles before the pack closes in.

He added: “The budget cap issue will weaken Red Bull’s dominance somewhat, because people will have to leave the racing team and the new teams will benefit from this.

“Experience is more spread out in F1 and everything will be closer together, but I think there will be some Red Bull dominance up to and including 2026.”