Replies

Red Bull explains what went wrong with RB20 F1 car

After Red Bull failed to win the constructors’ championship for the first time since 2021, Pierre Wache explains what went wrong in Milton Keynes

Pierre Wache:
“The season was basically as challenging as we expected. I would say we were more surprised at the beginning of the season because of the gap we had. We expected the whole season to be like the end of the season, a big fight with the others.

“We didn’t expect such a big hole in the middle of the season ourselves, but we did expect a big fight with others.”

Wache explains that simulator & CFD data didn't match what was happening in the real world:

“There are multiple aspects to that story. The first one is the correlation, that the car had some different characteristics than what we expected in terms of aero.

“Another aspect is that we didn’t expect some elements would affect the car performance as much as they did. They were not there by desire, but maybe we didn’t focus enough on them. Those elements were still there at the end of the season and we have to fix them for 2025.

“We had a loss of downforce in some areas of the [downforce] map and therefore we didn’t perform on track as we thought we could based on the wind tunnel, so there were some holes. That is a correlation issue and in terms of delivery on track it was mainly a balance issue.”

The balance problems were particularly tricky to handle on kerbs and weren’t acted on straight away due to how dominant the RB20 initially was – no car got within two tenths of the polesitting Red Bull over the first five qualifying sessions in 2024.

Wache:
“I think we spotted it, but after that the car was quick and we didn’t want to modify it massively. When we came back to Europe and were challenged more by McLaren, then it started to become more and more evident that it was one of the biggest issues for us to go quicker.”

As a consequence, the RB20’s potential wasn’t fully unlocked, though Wache insisted that going back to older specifications would have been detrimental.

“In Qatar the car had the same characteristics and we were able to win fairly and make the quickest car for this track, so performance is always relative to the others."

But he left out, "...and Newey was no longer there to waive his magic wand and fix it for us."