Why is Red Bull sceptical about its F1 development tools?
Red Bull's technical director, Pierre Wache, is rather skeptical as his team seeks to avoid a repeat of the development problems encountered in 2024.
Between the increasingly narrow margins separating the teams on the Formula 1 grid and the use of an old wind tunnel, Red Bull knows it is not out of the woods yet as it tackles its development issues.
Balance issues for Red Bull
To some extent, Red Bull’s balance issues contributed to the failure of its attempt to win the Constructors’ Championship in 2024.
These balance issues particularly began to penalize Red Bull starting from the Miami Grand Prix, when its biggest rival, McLaren, introduced a major update that started to exploit the relative weaknesses of the Milton Keynes team. It was only with Red Bull’s setup experiments during the Italian Grand Prix that the team began to find more definitive clues about what was happening and how to fix it, introducing necessary updates in Austin, which allowed the RB20 to perform better.
This drop in performance showed Red Bull that it could not entirely rely on its development tools, including its old wind tunnel which needs to be replaced with a brand new one currently under construction.
« When you have a correlation problem, you are inevitably a bit lost, said Pierre Wache. « You can no longer trust your tools. And when you can no longer trust them, you have to find a way to modify your tools to regain that correlation. At that point, you are lost, you doubt everything you do. It’s not being lost, but you have doubts about the results your tools give you. »
According to him, these correlation issues will never be completely resolved because it is impossible to achieve a perfect match between the real world and the virtual world. But what has made things more complicated for the teams over the past 12 months is that the current cycle of regulations is reaching its final season, and the margins for improvement are becoming increasingly smaller, requiring greater precision at the factory.
« When you have the same type of regulations for a certain period, the gains you make become very minimal and the precision requirements are even higher, added Pierre Wache. « You’re looking for small things. On the aerodynamic side, and it is the same on the suspension side, you’re looking for two or three support points in the floor, the bodywork, etc. This will affect the rest of the car and also some areas you haven’t tested in the wind tunnel, simply because you can’t test them in CFD. At this point, it becomes dangerous. »
« The delta [performance gains] you are trying to find is small, and moreover, you have a correlation problem because you cannot reproduce certain physical laws. »
A lackluster 2024 season
Some of its new features should have provided more downforce, but in reality, they also resulted in undesirable side effects that affected the car’s balance.
« By definition, you work with a smaller model [in the wind tunnel] and not with reality, but all the other teams have the same problem, to be honest with you», he added.
Red Bull was not the only team affected by development difficulties or even regressions, with Ferrari, Aston Martin, and Racing Bulls being a few examples of teams that encountered problems at various points of the 2024 season, with updates that did not bring them the benefits the virtual world had promised them.
A team that has escaped these pitfalls is McLaren, which has always found the right development with each update of its cars driven by Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. At the beginning of the year, they were nowhere. The year before, they were nowhere. In 2022, they were completely nowhere. McLaren has produced a car that has been good since Miami. During the previous 2.5 years, they were not impressive, acknowledged Pierre Wache.
« I don’t know where they stand, but more importantly, I don’t know why they haven’t found performance earlier, whether it was because of correlation or something else, I’m not part of their team. But for us, the result is that it’s more difficult to find extra performance now, especially with the tools we have. »
Red Bull skeptical for 2025
So, with Red Bull’s new wind tunnel not ready until 2026, to what extent has the team been able to improve its correlation while combining the development of 2025 with the work on the entirely new 2026 car?
She has improved in the areas we understand, is Wache’s cautious response. But in Formula 1, you are always at the mercy of new problems. That’s the reality and that’s why we are here, to try to anticipate the problems we will have. It is dangerous to blindly trust the system. I’m not saying not to do it, but you have to make sure to put everything in perspective and not reproduce on the track exactly what you test.
« A team can only be good if you have doubts and if you are never sure of yourself. If you are sure of yourself, you know you are a failure. To be very honest with you: what we faced this year, as an engineer, I find it very positive. »
« When you win, you don’t look at problems or details at the same level as when you have problems on the track. When you’re no longer the fastest, you search and you learn. And the more you learn, the more it becomes an investment for the future », he concludes.
Read also: Max Verstappen demands progress at Red Bull for 2025
