Adrian Newey has admitted Red Bull were at fault for the majority of the problems experienced in Jerez, confirming he and his design team underestimated the new V6 cooling requirements.
The championship winning team could only complete 21 laps, two of which were interrupted by stoppages as smoke poured from the rear of the car, pointing towards a cooling problem.
That theory was later supported when the team added additional cooling ducts to the car, but it wasn’t enough and the team were forced to pull out of the test early.
Newey now admits they were at fault, though Renault too has experienced its own problems.
“Hands up on our side, that [cooling] was a Red Bull problem,” he told Autosport.
“It was, you could argue, a result of aggressive packaging but we felt that we needed to take a few risks to try to get a good package that would minimise the aerodynamic damage of this very large cooling requirement.
“The Renault seems to have a particularly large cooling requirement,” he explained.
He’s hopeful they will have resolved the problem for the next test in Bahrain, which begins on Wednesday.
“What stopped us at Jerez, on our side as opposed to Renault’s side, was a problem where the bodywork local to the exhaust was catching fire.
“It’s a problem which hopefully we can get on top of ready for Bahrain.”
