Former Red Bull Chief Technical Officer Adrian Newey could see the team’s difficulties coming before his departure midway through the 2024 Formula 1 season.
Newey’s announcement he’d be leaving Red Bull last May saw him cease race team operations, instead concluding his time with the organisation putting the finishing touches to his RB17 supercar project.
Now, Newey awaits joining Aston Martin in March as Managing Technical Partner with his former employer seeking to recover from a challenging 2024 by Red Bull’s lofty standards.
2023 was a record-setting year for Red Bull, winning all but one race and 2024 started in a similar fashion with Max Verstappen winning seven of the first 10 races.
But Verstappen went winless in the next 10 as the Red Bull RB20 became an unbalanced machine, difficult to drive.
These were issues Newey saw coming ahead of time, with his concerns going unheard.
“Obviously part of [the winless streak] was McLaren in particular and Ferrari as well developing their cars and doing a very good job of their cars,” he told Auto Motor und Sport.
“But I think Red Bull, from what I could see, the ’24 car and through the very last stages of ’23 as well was, I would say, starting to become more difficult to drive.
“Of course Max could handle that. It didn’t suit him, but he could handle it, Checo [Perez] couldn’t.
“So we also started, through ’23, to see more of a difference in performance between the team-mates, Max and Checo.
“That carried into the first part of ’24, but the car was still quick enough to be able to cope with it.
“It’s something I was starting to become concerned about, but not many other people in the organisation seemed to be very concerned about it.
“From what I can see from the outside, but I don’t know, the guys at Red Bull – this is no criticism – I think they just, perhaps through lack of experience, kept going in that same direction. And the problem became more and more acute to the point that even Max found it difficult to drive.”
Set-up tweaks can only mark development issues – Newey
Verstappen finishing sixth in Monza was a turning point for Red Bull with the Dutchman calling his car a “monster” and the team’s upgrade plans drastically overhauled.
Late-season upgrades helped contribute to Verstappen retaining his Drivers’ title, as did an inspired wet-weather win in Sao Paulo.
A remarkable weekend turnaround in Qatar saw Verstappen recover from eighth in the Sprint to victory in the Grand Prix after Red Bull worked hard overnight to tweak the troublesome RB20.
Set-up tweaks amid Verstappen’s displeasure characterised the second half of Red Bull’s season as the team fought to mask the RB20’s difficulties.
However, Newey explains that set-up tweaks can only do so much.
“Set-up can mask problems to an extent, but the problem is still there,” said Newey.
“To me set-up is more simply optimising the characteristics of the car and of course, to an extent, driver, but I think that’s over-egged.
“It’s mainly to complement the characteristics of the car and then of course circuit-to-circuit variation, depending on the nature of the circuit.”
Partly proving Newey’s point was the persistent slide in Perez’s form towards the end of the 2024 season and Red Bull falling from first to third in the Constructors’ standings behind McLaren and Ferrari.
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