Pierre Waché: “We may have reached the limit of the car’s development”

After two seasons of supremacy, Red Bull now appears vulnerable. While the Milton Keynes team was racking up podiums and victories at the start of the season, led by an untouchable Max Verstappen, the recent Grand Prix races have revealed a change in the hierarchy.

McLaren and Mercedes ready to compete with Red Bull.

Since the Miami Grand Prix, McLaren has introduced significant improvements, with immediate results. Lando Norris claimed victory on American soil. On the other hand, the upgrades brought by Mercedes during the Monaco Grand Prix, including a new front wing, allowed the German team to return to success. George Russell won in Austria, while Lewis Hamilton triumphed at Silverstone and Spa. Adding Ferrari, which already has two wins this season, there are now three teams capable of challenging Red Bull.

A rigid regulation that hampers development.

For Pierre Waché, technical director of Red Bull, this trend is partly explained by the immutability of the technical regulations since last year, thus favoring a convergence of performance between teams. The constraints imposed by these regulations are high, and the margins for improvement naturally become more limited. As time goes by, it is almost certain that the competition will eventually return, he explains.

Red Bull also has to deal with reduced wind tunnel time this year, as a result of finishing first in the constructors’ standings last season. This limitation hampers their ability to effectively develop their car. « We are using a fairly old wind tunnel, and our limited capacity due to our position in the championship complicates our work. It is also the third year under these regulations, which doesn’t help.

These factors are causing concern at Red Bull, which is gradually falling in the hierarchy. Verstappen has failed to reach the podium in the last two races, in Hungary and in Spa. Pierre Waché admits that the Austrian team is now struggling to improve its car alone and may have to draw inspiration from other teams to regain its level.

“We have reached a ceiling with our concept, but that does not mean it is the overall ceiling. Now, we need to observe and draw inspiration from other teams. Over the past two years, others have incorporated our ideas, but everyone must now innovate to take it to the next level. That is what is starting to happen,” he stresses.

However, Waché is aware that these explanations are not sufficient to justify Red Bull’s decline. According to him, the car simply was not developed to the expected level this season. We have made progress compared to last year, but we did not achieve the expected results in some areas, particularly in high-speed corners. We were expecting more from our tools, he told Autosport.

After dominating the 2023 season with Verstappen winning 19 races (including ten consecutive ones) and Red Bull only missing out on one victory in Singapore, the Austrian team has already lost seven races this season, including the last four. Pierre Waché admits that he expected this increased competition from the beginning of the year, due to the continuity of the regulations.

« We also expected the competition to be more or less present from the beginning [this year]. We expected the others to be very close because the performances you can find with the car are of course limited under the same regulations. After the first four or five races, the others caught up, perhaps with a delay and a bit late, but we were expecting that from the start, to be honest.

Red Bull must react to preserve its title.

With ten races left to go, Red Bull must urgently find solutions to avoid losing too much ground against its rivals. McLaren, in particular, seems to be the team to beat right now, entering the second half of the season with only 42 points behind in the constructors’ championship. If Red Bull wants to keep its title, it may need to draw inspiration from the advances of the British team to stay at the top.