Red Bull Chief Technical Officer Adrian Newey is anxious whether the team has been “conservative” by prioritising the process of evolution on its 2024 Formula 1 car.
Having won 10 of the last 11 races in 2022, Red Bull extended its advantage over the competition to triumph in 21 out of 22 races last term en route to retaining both titles.
As F1 enters its third season with the current ground effect cars, Red Bull boss Christian Horner has revealed the team will continue to optimise its current downwash concept.
Like Horner, Newey is anticipating that a multitude of teams will unveil cars over the coming weeks that will resemble the all-conquering Red Bull RB19 from last year.
“RB18, the first car to the new regulations, I think we managed to get the fundamentals right in terms of how we approached the research process, the architecture of the car in terms of its layout and so forth, and we managed to come out with a decent car that we then developed through 2022,” Newey told Red Bull’s ‘Talking Bull’ podcast recently.
“Obviously, we had a very strong second half of the season in ’22.
“2023, the second season of those new regulations, we completely expected the grid to close up so, last year, it took all of us – me most of all – by complete surprise, we didn’t expect the domination that we had this year.
“This year, from what I understand, a lot of people, our rivals, have kind of taken a good look this time and have probably come… I suspect there’ll be quite a few cars that look very similar to our car.”
Ferrari and Mercedes became unstuck at the beginning of last season with the choice to retain faith in their respective design schemes from the previous campaign.
Both teams have announced their intention to pursue revamped solutions in 2024, prompting Newey to be apprehensive that Red Bull could be caught out by its rivals.
“Our car will be very much a third evolution of the ’22 car,” he explained.
“So last year’s car was an evolution of the ’22 in the main points being the normal winter development in terms of aerodynamics, some understanding of what we need to do with the suspension to try to improve the car as well and getting weight out of it because we never got down to the weight limits in ’22.
“This year’s car is the third evolution of that original RB18. Now, what we don’t know, of course, is [whether] the third evolution is too conservative while others have done something different. You just don’t know.
“It’s a difficult one. This is that [question] of whether we should have a group that goes out and looks at completely left-field ideas. Or do we keep developing the route we’ve taken?
“We’re resource-limited. So we can’t do everything and can’t look at every avenue. So we’ve taken the approach of developing what we’ve got. Hopefully, that’ll be the prudent thing.”
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