Red Bull is starting to turn attention towards 2025 before its RB20 Formula 1 car has even hit the track, according to Head of Performance Engineering Ben Waterhouse.
The Milton-Keynes-based squad have thoroughly dominated F1 since the sport returned to ground effect machinery in 2022, prevailing in 39 of the 44 races in that period.
The ingenuity of Adrian Newey and his team produced the most dominant F1 challenger ever in 2023, with the RB19 being driven to victory in all but one of the 22 races last year.
Red Bull and Max Verstappen broke several records throughout the campaign, including the respective streaks by a driver and team for the most consecutive wins in F1 history.
However, Red Bull was denied a historic clean sweep by a nightmare weekend in Singapore, which Newey believes “exposed some weaknesses” in its 2023 challenger.
Although the team admitted to getting its set-up wrong at the Marina Bay Circuit, the RB19 was at its most vulnerable in slow-speed corners – notorious on street tracks.
Waterhouse asserts that Red Bull is striving to address those rare weak points for 2024 while acknowledging that the side wants to enhance the strong areas of last year’s car, including its high aerodynamic efficiency.
“We were aware that the RB19 had considerable limitations,” Waterhouse told Racecar Engineering in a recent interview.
“If we look back at Singapore, there were definitely weaknesses. There are areas we want to improve, whether it’s high-speed or low-speed performance.
“At the same time, [the car] had clear strengths, which we want to build on while at the same time trying to address the weaknesses.
“Because of this, we set clear targets quite far back during the RB19 development process for the RB20,” he continued. “In general, we managed to hit most of them.
“I wouldn’t say everyone is satisfied though, as there is still work to be done to try and improve on the RB19.”
Red Bull’s crushing advantage over the chasing pack enabled the team to cease development on the RB19 back in August, Team Principal Christian Horner confirmed.
With the intervening period spent vying to ensure it has a package capable of retaining both titles this year, Waterhouse has divulged how the reigning champions have begun formulating plans for its 2025 charger.
“The RB20 is at least six months old and we are already starting to shift our attention to the RB21, even though the season hasn’t started yet,” the British engineer disclosed.
However, Red Bull will not be able to capitalise on its current supremacy to gain an edge over the rest when it comes to the overhauled technical regulations for 2026.
The FIA’s sporting regulations were updated last month to prohibit any teams from conducting wind tunnel or CFD work on the next generation of cars until January 2025.
Meanwhile, similar wording has also been applied to forbid work being undertaken on computational fluid dynamics simulations related to parts intended for the 2026 cars.
