Newey: We have to be absolute pragmatists

After five rounds of the season, Red Bull Racing has more than double the points of its nearest rival, Aston Martin, and almost three times more than Ferrari, which is fourth in the Constructors’ Championship.

Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez seem to be taking turns winning every race in a row, and it’s clear that a car built under the guidance of Adrian Newey allows them to achieve such impressive results.

He took part in the latest edition of Talking Bulls (which can be interpreted as “talking bulls” and “talk about bulls”), the Milton Keynes team’s official podcast, and was asked if it was possible to say that RB19 even exceeded its expectations?

“Yes and no,” said the head of the Red Bull Racing technical department with a smile. – At the beginning of the season, in the first three races, I definitely performed better. But we definitely have to be pragmatic, because there are still more than twenty races ahead (along with sprints), and the rivals will give their best, so we have to keep pushing and we’ll see what we can achieve at the end of the race. year.

As soon as you allow yourself to become proud of what you have achieved, you will immediately be outdone and you should not be. If you’re in the lead and everyone thinks you’re the favourite, that situation in itself creates extra pressure. If you suddenly have problems, everyone immediately starts criticizing you, but if everything goes well, everyone says, “We knew that.”

From the outside it may seem that everything is going smoothly, but in fact it is not quite so. We were concerned about reliability after pre-season testing, so there are always reasons to be concerned. They are connected not only with reliability, but also with the efficiency of the car. In Melbourne, for example, we couldn’t find the optimal approach to rubber, which was especially noticeable during Friday practice. We were only able to handle all this in the qualifying phase, but it is clear that not everything is so easy for us.

In 2022, a new technical regulation came into force in Formula 1, and this was the most ambitious reform in the last 40 years, when there was a transition to flat-bottomed cars. So the chassis has changed considerably and I have to admit I was a bit nervous when I first saw the new regulations.

But the teams put some pressure on the FIA, and eventually I calmed down, because the regulations were changed and the engineers were given more freedom than we initially thought.

At the beginning of last year, the cars of different teams were quite different in appearance, and it’s always good if they can be recognized not only by the colors. We chose a certain concept, Ferrari acted in its own way, yet their car as a whole resembled ours, and Mercedes chose a completely different path.

Over the course of the first season, you define a strategy for further modernization of the car, but you can never say for sure which of the concepts will potentially prove to be the most effective. During aerodynamic research and while improving the chassis, you have to imagine what you want to achieve in the future, what kind of car you should end up with.

So far it seems that our car is based on a good concept. Our RB19 is an evolution of last year’s RB18, where during the creation process we took into account a number of points that did not suit us and tried to eliminate them.

Last year’s car was a bit heavier than it should have been, but we weren’t completely happy with certain aspects of the handling either. In general, the usual process of fine-tuning the aerodynamics was underway, along with regulations being changed and we had to make changes to the underbody design. All these things have to be taken into account and this year we are working with a car that looks like last year, but when we talk about all kinds of nuances, it has been modernized a lot.”