Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff feels the only way Red Bull can avoid a perfect F1 season is if they “screw it up themselves”.
To date, Red Bull has won all 14 grands prix this year, with eight remaining over the course of the final 12 weeks of the campaign.
No team in F1 history has won every single race of a season. McLaren came close in 1988 when Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost won 15 of the 16 races, with the former denied victory in Italy after a collision with Jean-Louis Schlesser with two laps remaining.
Mercedes won 19 of 21 in 2016, although the infamous opening-lap collision between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg in the Spanish GP in race five of the year wrecked that season early before an engine failure for the Briton in Malaysia whilst leading was another thorn in the side.
Asked of Wolff whether there was a circuit remaining this year where Red Bull might be vulnerable, he replied: “No, I think they need to screw it up themselves in order not to win every race this season.”
After being dismissive of Max Verstappen setting a new record of 10 successive race wins, Wolff added: “That, by the way, is a record where I would think ‘That’s a good one’ because that is perfection.
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“We didn’t make it in 2016 because our two pushed each other out in Barcelona, and then we had an engine failure in Malaysia.
“But ask me again when it happens.”
Despite George Russell and Lewis Hamilton only finishing fifth and sixth respectively in Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix behind a sixth Red Bull one-two of the season, Wolff was at least captivated by the battling Ferraris.
After Carlos Sainz had failed to keep Verstappen and team-mate Sergio Perez at bay, despite a stout defensive effort, the Spaniard then went wheel-to-wheel with team-mate Charles Leclerc in the closing laps, reviving certain memories for Wolff of previous duels involving his drivers.
“It’s good that Ferrari was on the podium,” said Wolff. “Maybe they deserved it a little bit more, and it was quite entertaining at the end to watch that.
“I had some flash memories that came to mind of ‘Are we interfering or are we letting them push each other out?’
“Obviously, one hitting the other, braking into Turn 1, and you lose a podium…but a great spectacle for the Tifosi. It provided some good entertainment.”
For the next race in Singapore, trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin is fully expecting Hamilton and Russell to be the drivers challenging Red Bull due to the W14 working better around the Marina Bay Street Circuit.
“There is a reason to think that the car will work better, and that is because Singapore is a maximum downforce circuit,” said Shovlin.
“Our performance at the high downforce tracks, like at Barcelona, Budapest, and even Zandvoort, the car was working well, and we’ve had pretty strong performance. We’re hoping to be able to be a bit quicker there and get back to a position where we can challenge for podiums.
“The track, though, does throw up some pretty unique challenges and we’ve also got some layout changes for this year. There is a sequence of four corners near the end of the lap that have been removed where the track used to go underneath a grandstand through a tunnel.
“That’s now gone so we’ve got a longer straight which will change a little bit how the tyres are working. There is a bit less energy there but it’s also an abrasive Tarmac.
“We’ve got the softest three compounds so it’s a pretty tough race on the tyres and it’s also a bumpy street circuit.
“Added to that, the race is run at night. Plenty of challenges for us to try and tackle then but we are going there optimistic for a strong performance.”
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