Gary Anderson, former race car designer and now pundit for The Race, believes Red Bull’s struggles are directly linked to Adrian Newey’s departure and the consequences of that decision.
After two years of championship dominance, when Red Bull Racing were doing well, their situation in 2024 is increasingly looking like something of a nightmare.
Of course, this is still a very strong team by any standards, but Mercedes and especially McLaren are showing impressive progress, with at least six cars already battling for podium places, and if Ferrari is included in that number, then eight in total.
Max Verstappen has not forgotten how to win races, but he does not succeed every weekend, even though he squeezes results out of his car that others can only dream of.
At Zandvoort, Red Bull Racing’s cars were in two different specifications, with Verstappen’s RB20 using the same floorpan as at the start of the season, while his teammate Sergio Perez used a later version.
No top team wants such obvious public experiments that show the level of confusion that comes with choosing the direction for further development. We have seen that recently at Mercedes and the Brackley team is still not very consistent – despite all the progress.
According to Red Bull’s calculations, the new underbody Perez was given allows him to lap around two tenths faster. It’s not entirely clear what these calculations are based on, but Sergio did his best lap of the race in 1’14.587 – this time he did it on lap 69. Verstappen did the best time on lap 30: 1’14.752.
As this was 39 laps earlier and the car loses approximately 1.3kg as fuel is consumed, the weight difference was approximately 52kg, which equates to approximately 1.5 seconds at Zandvoort.
The question arises: if Verstappen is fighting for the championship win, why did he want to install the old, seemingly less efficient version of the underbody on his car? From my point of view, this indicates that the state of affairs at Red Bull is truly alarming.
In the new version of the underbody, the upper surface is much more complex and full of all kinds of small details – and this is only what is visible from the outside. Even if you can go faster with such a floor pan according to Red Bull’s calculations, the question is whether it provides stable downforce…
But how did the team get to this point? As you know, the situation there is not the calmest. Just think of the numerous news regarding the “Horner affair” and the public comments of Jos Verstappen. Moreover, there have long been rumors that Adrian Newey is also unhappy about what is happening, and although rumors about his transfer to rivals have been repeatedly denied, it is clear that there is no smoke without fire.
As a result, it was announced in May that he would still be leaving the team, but it is logical to assume that his influence on the equipment modernization process has already been significantly reduced. Even if Red Bull tries to emphasize that this factor is not that important.
You can draw your own conclusions. Of course, success is always the merit of the team, and not of one specific person, just as in the case of failure the responsibility does not lie with one specialist. But the influence of Newey, with his experience, including his experience in correcting problematic situations, should never be underestimated.
One of his strengths is his ability to find ways to increase the efficiency of a machine within the framework of current technical regulations through an optimal compromise between different technical solutions. I know from personal experience how valuable this is.
Usually in such cases it helps if the designer has the opportunity to look at what is happening from the outside – this allows you to understand everything better than if you are in the situation and act like a firefighter at a fire, when there is no time to think, but urgent action is needed. That is exactly how Newey worked.
But now there is no one in the team who would take on this role, so it should come as no surprise that Red Bull has such problems in choosing the optimal development path. And if at the same time you keep installing new parts on the car that work worse than the old ones, and trying to quickly understand all the nuances, then this only complicates the matter.
Maybe it’s time Red Bull made a generous new offer to Adrian Newey and tried to convince him to come back?
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.