There's one question that dominates Formula 1 heading into 2013: just who can dethrone Red Bull?

Last season, the team cemented their place among the very greatest the sport has seen by winning their third consecutive Constructors' Championship, a feat only previously achieved by Ferrari, McLaren and Williams.

With a third drivers' title on the spin for Sebastian Vettel as well, Formula 1 is certainly currently in the midst of a 'Red Bull era', and with no changes to front-line personnel over the winter, the team again start 2013 as the combination to beat.

Such sustained success over recent seasons makes it easy to forget that when energy drinks magnate Dietrich Mateschitz launched his F1 squad in 2005, after taking over the failed Jaguar project, Red Bull were accused of being more interested in throwing lavish paddock parties than achieving on-track success.

What is true is that Red Bull's rise to the upper echelons was more steady than spectacular at first, with their first podium arriving courtesy of David Coulthard at Monaco in 2006. However, since Vettel delivered their breakthrough maiden pole and win, all on the same, sodden Chinese GP weekend in 2009, the scale of improvement has been immense.

Much of their success has been attributed to the design genius of Adrian Newey, who in February 2006 made what at the time appeared the very bold move of leaving proven winners McLaren for the challenge of turning midfielders into F1 winners.

It's fair to say that he succeeded: since the last major rules technical rules overhaul in 2009, Newey's designs have consistently proved the fastest on the grid.

After the most dominant of seasons in 2011, in which the team won 12 of 19 grands prix and set a new record for the most poles in a single campaign, the ban on off-throttle diffusers for 2012 wiped out a lot of their advantage. The RB8 was initially inconsistent, particularly in the team's traditional stronghold of qualifying.

Indeed, it wasn't definitively until the start of the final flyaway races in late September that the team really returned to a 2011-style level of dominance as a big upgrade push from Newey and his team gave Vettel the basis from which to reel off four straight wins. They never looked back after that.

With Newey, Vettel, Team Principal Christian Horner and the ever-competitive Mark Webber all still on board for 2013, and with no wholesale rule changes to speak of, there's certainly no obvious reasons why the Red Bull title-winning bandwagon won't continue rolling on for quite some time yet.