After a record-breaking season of domination, it's hard to imagine that there's nothing for Red Bull to improve upon in 2024. But driver Max Verstappen and technical director Pierre Wache have already set their new objectives.
Red Bull won all but one race out of a total of 22 in 2023 with the RB19. The one fly in the ointment was Singapore, where mistakes adjusting their ride-height settings saw them out-performed by Ferrari's Carlos Sainz.
That race has helped the team identify its few remaining weaknesses, and they intend to do something about that before the start of the 2024 season in Bahrain in February: "It helps if we know what direction we are working in.
“Mainly I think just street circuits and low-speed, kerbing," Verstappen told Motorsport.com in an exclusive interview. “These kind of things I think we are not the best at, at the moment.”
Speaking at this year's season finale Abu Dhabi, Wache confirmed Verstappen’s assessment but said Red Bull had to be careful not to compromise the car's existing formidable strengths in other areas in the process.
“The team sees that same weakness, maybe in a different perspective than Max," he commented. "It’s more or less summarised quite well where we have to work for next year.
“Low-speed is clearly [one area for improvement]," he continued. "Ninety-degree corners we are not the best, as you could see in quali in Baku. Singapore also was not a fantastic one.
"Our capacity to ride the kerbs, and the bumpy tracks is also not perfect," he added. "We have to improve this area.
“But in our system and in this business, you never have nothing for free," he cautioned. “You can improve the overall potential of something, but most of the time it also affects some other aspect of the car.
"We have to be very careful not to destroy what we built in terms of strengths, so it’s what we are trying to do: improve our weaknesses without compromising too much the strengths we have.”
Red Bull suffered a reduction in development and wind tunnel time this season as a result of exceeding F1's new budget cap during the 2021 season.
No team committed the same offence in the most recently scrutinised season so the restrictions on Red Bull will not be as great in 2024, but the dominance of its victory will mean it rivals will again have more development time.
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
