Newey had concerns about Red Bull car well before exit

Former Red Bull CTO Adrian Newey has revealed that he was already worried about the development direction of the team’s 2024 car well before his departure, suggesting that the Milton Keynes-based outfit’s engineers underestimated the RB20’s underlying issues.

While Red Bull enjoyed early success in the 2024 season, winning seven of the first ten races, their performance waned significantly thereafter, and ultimately led to the team losing the constructors’ championship to McLaren.

The beginning of the bulls’ slump coincided with Newey's announcement in May that he would leave the team at the end of the year, although he stopped attending races shortly after.

In the wake of the British engineer's absence, Sergio Perez failed to finish in the top five after Miami, while Verstappen managed just five wins in the remaining 19 races.

But Newey admitted to harboring concerns about the RB20’s trajectory well before his official exit.

Early Warning Signs

"Already through the very last stages of '23, the car was starting to become more difficult to drive," Newey explained in an interview with Auto Motor und Sport.

"Of course that suited Max – he could handle that, if you like. It didn't suit him, but he could handle it. Checo couldn't.

"So we also started through '23 to see more of a difference in performance between team-mates Max and Checo.

"That carried into the first part of '24, but the car was still quick enough to be able to cope with it.

"It's something I was starting to become concerned about, but not many other people in the organisation seemed to be very concerned about it.

And Ignoring the Writing on the Wall

Newey believes Red Bull’s engineers did not recognize the need to adjust their development trajectory.

“From what I can see from the outside, but I don't know… The guys at Red Bull, this is no criticism, but I think they just – perhaps through lack of experience – kept going in that same direction,” added Aston Martin’s future managing technical partner.

“And the problem became more and more acute, to the point that even Max found it difficult to drive.”

Indeed, as the team struggled to reconcile discrepancies between CFD and simulator data versus on-track performance, subsequent upgrade packages failed to deliver the expected improvements.

Set-Up Adjustments Couldn’t Solve Core Issues

As Verstappen became more vocal about handling difficulties, Red Bull tried to alleviate the problem through set-up adjustments.

However, Newey argues that such changes only masked the deeper issues rather than resolving them.

“Set-up can mask problems to an extent, but the problem is still there,” said Newey.

“To me set-up is more simply optimising the characteristics of the car and of course, to an extent, driver, but I think that’s over-egged.

“It’s mainly to complement the characteristics of the car and then of course circuit-to-circuit variation, depending on the nature of the circuit.”

Newey’s departure marked the end of an era for Red Bull, and his insights suggest that the team’s struggles in 2024 were avoidable had they identified their issues sooner.

With McLaren’s resurgence and other teams closing the gap, Red Bull’s challenge moving forward will be to learn from their mistakes and refine their development approach in 2025.

Read also: Red Bull not immune to more development issues in 2025 - Wache

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