Red Bull has admitted that replicating the strides McLaren made last season in Formula 1 will prove to be “difficult” in 2025 with the current tools at the team’s disposal.
The Austrian squad retained the Drivers’ title last season as Max Verstappen sealed the deal with two rounds to go in Las Vegas to be heralded a four-time World Champion.
However, the Dutchman’s triumph owed much to the advantage built in the opening rounds and Red Bull’s rivals being unable to sustain the momentum required to catch up.
Red Bull endured an extreme downturn in competitiveness when balance issues with the RB20 worsened, culminating in a slump to third in the Constructors’ Championship.
The then-reigning champion’s deteriorating problems were attributed to updates not delivering the on-track performance that the squad’s virtual hardware had indicated.
But while it rebounded with a revised floor in Austin that inspired an upturn, Red Bull Technical Director Pierre Wache asserted that the team has “lost trust” in those tools.
That includes the wind tunnel that is the oldest used in F1, which Red Bull is “ahead of schedule” on replacing with one that is poised to be online in time for its 2027 car.
“When you have a correlation issue, then for sure you are a little bit lost,” Wache told Autosport. “You cannot trust your tools any more.
“And when you cannot trust your tools any more, then you have to find a way to modify your tools to find that correlation again.
“Then you are lost in terms of having doubts about everything you are doing. It is not being lost, but you have doubts about the results that your tools give you.”
The battle to discover marginal gains
Wache has highlighted that the current ground effect cars having matured has meant the performance steps attainable to the teams have become even more marginal.
And with there being less margin for error when pursuing those incremental gains, he has explained how Red Bull’s wind tunnel disadvantage has become more punishing.
“When you have the same type of regulations for a certain period of time, then the gains you have start to be very minor and the accuracy requirements are even higher,” he explained.
“You are looking for small things. On the aero side, and it’s the same on the suspension side, you are looking for two or three downforce points inside the floor, the bodywork, etc.
“That will affect the rest of the car and also some areas that you didn’t test in the wind tunnel, purely because you cannot test them in CFD.
“It is at this stage that it starts becoming dangerous.
“The delta [performance gain] you try to find is small, and secondly you have a correlation issue because you can’t reproduce some physics.”
McLaren ‘nowhere’ prior to 2024 upgrades
Red Bull wasn’t alone in encountering complications with developments, as Ferrari and Aston Martin were among the teams that endured setbacks in the past season.
Ferrari and Red Bull’s respective slip-ups aided McLaren’s eventual title success as the Woking-based squad avoided the problems that the rest stumbled across.
When that was put to him, Wache responded: “Last year, yes. But I don’t know.
“At the beginning of the year they were completely nowhere. The year before they were completely nowhere. In 2022, they were completely nowhere.
“McLaren produced a car that is good since Miami.During the 2.5 years before they were not impressive.
“I don’t know where they are, but above all I don’t know why they didn’t find performance before, if that was due to the correlation or due to something else, I am not in their team.”
Nevertheless, Wache has conceded that, with the limitations that it still retains, Red Bull will have a tough time to rival McLaren’s benchmark with the team’s RB21 challenger.
“But the result for us is that it is more difficult to find extra performance now, even more with the tools that we have available to us,” the Frenchman concluded.
READ MORE – How Red Bull rescued 2024 F1 season despite lowering the RB20’s ‘overall potential’
