After four straight seasons with the same driver lineup, Oracle Red Bull Racing shook up its title-winning team with the addition of young driver Liam Lawson.

Sergio Perez departed the organization after a down season.

Four consecutive championships and the odds-on favorite to snag a fifth, Max Verstappen enters this weekends Australian Grand Prix with confidence.

After all, he won nine of the 24 races and secured the title prior to the finale at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

It is great to be getting back to racing again and officially starting the season, Verstappen said. It is good to see the first race of the season starting up in Melbourne; I drove my Formula 1 debut race here, so there are a lot memories and we always see the passionate fans come out here to support.

While Verstappens team enjoyed plenty of success, they endured a rough patch during the summer months during which the competition closed the gap in the title race.

Through those 10 events, six races saw Verstappen finish fourth or worse. Nonetheless, the team found what it was lacking and finished on a high note.

Entering a new season, the team will have a gaping hole with the departure of longtime Chief Executive Officer Adrian Newey, who was instrumental in the teams car design and technical advantages over the years.

Newey joined Aston Martin this year.

As Verstappen and team adjust to life without Newey, he feels they checked a lot of boxes during a recent test in Bahrain.

In Bahrain, we learnt a lot from testing but there is still a lot more work to be done, Verstappen said. We have ideas about what we can do and how we can take on what we learnt at testing, so we will see how we go when we start driving on the track.

We have been analyzing the data and working on where we can make improvements and can work to optimize things further.

We are ready to get started up again and I am excited to get the season underway.