Red Bull Technical Director Pierre Wache has claimed that the team “didn’t do an amazing job” during the previous Formula 1 season despite shattering several records.
Having won 10 of the last 11 races in 2022, Red Bull extended its advantage over the competition to storm to victory in all but one of the 22 rounds across the recent term.
The Austrian outfit broke the benchmark for the most consecutive wins – raising the bar to 15 – while claiming an unprecedented total of 860 points in the championship.
Meanwhile, Max Verstappen was responsible for landing 19 of those successes, with the Dutchman also becoming the first-ever F1 driver to lead over 1000 laps in a season.
However, Wache has hinted that Red Bull’s sole defeat at the slow-speed Singapore circuit demonstrated that there were weaknesses in its package that got exposed.
“We did a good job – but we didn’t do an amazing job,” Wache told F1.com ahead of Red Bull launching its 2024 challenger.
“I think we identified multiple weaknesses in [RB]18 [Red Bull’s 2022 car] and we pushed for [the RB19] to solve them.
We didn’t solve all of them, but fortunately the team were able to reduce the weaknesses we had and be able to deliver on track.”
Wache also contends that Red Bull’s crushing dominance was aided by its main competitors failing to make the expected gains over the winter ahead of the campaign.
Both Ferrari and Mercedes were forced to abandon their launch-spec car concepts, enabling Aston Martin and McLaren to also emerge as close contenders to Red Bull.
“The strength of our car is also the weakness of the competitors, because I’m not sure we expected to be alone there,” he remarked.
“What I mean is, when you look at the lap time and the behaviour compared to [2022], some people went backwards more than forwards.
“I think it’s also – and you see clearly with McLaren with the step they did – I think some people lost their way between [2022 and 2023], more than us [doing an amazing job].
“We did a good job – I don’t dismiss what the team have done – but I think it’s very relative in comparison.
If some people were closer to us, you would say, ‘Ah, you didn’t have as good a car.’ And that’s what I mean.”
Although Red Bull boss Christian Horner warned that it was encountering “diminishing returns” with this generation of cars, Wache is adamant more gains are still possible.
When asked if he thought the team had taken another step with the RB20, Wache answered: “Ah yeah, for sure. For sure.
“Max mentioned multiple times that our capacity on ride and kerbing and low-speed performance is not the best compared to some others. It’s clearly the area where we are pushing to improve.”
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