What is at stake at under-pressure Red Bull?

ed Bull might have won the world drivers’ title for the fourth year in a row with Max Verstappen last year, but they head into the new season under conspicuous pressure.

They have lost their design guru, following Adrian Newey’s move to Aston Martin, rivals are circling around Verstappen, and over the second half of last year, Red Bull had only the third fastest car in Formula 1.

So what is at stake for Red Bull as they head into the final year of F1’s current regulations?

What happened to Red Bull last year?

Verstappen’s fourth title was founded on the points advantage he built in a brief period of dominance at the start of the year, and an outstanding performance from the Dutchman for the remainder of the season.

From the sixth race of the season in Miami, the car no longer retained the massive advantage over the rest of the field it had enjoyed in the first five races, or the two preceding years.

Yes, it ended the year as on average the fastest car in qualifying – by 0.052 seconds over the McLaren. But take the numbers from Miami onwards and the McLaren was faster by 0.053secs. Over the second half the season, the McLaren was faster by 0.142secs and Red Bull were also slower than Ferrari – by 0.008secs.

Had McLaren started the season in a stronger position, therefore, Verstappen’s championship would have been a lot harder to win.

Red Bull’s issue was that a fundamental balance disconnect became more apparent as they tried to add performance to their car. They struggled to solve their mid-corner, slow-speed understeer without creating oversteer in the fast corners.

Newey said: “Already through the very last stages of ’23, the car was starting to become more difficult to drive,” Newey said. “Max could handle it. Checo (Sergio Perez) couldn’t.

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

Red Bull believe they lost ground because they did not exploit aero-elasticity of front wings as much as McLaren, Mercedes and later Ferrari.

This method of construction enables teams to build the carbon-fibre in their front-wing in such a way as to have the elements flex downwards at high speed, reducing downforce and therefore oversteer, but have them move back into optimum downforce mode at slower speeds.

New rules for this season limit the flexibility of wings – at the rear from the first race, and at the front from the Spanish Grand Prix in June.

The question is whether this was the sole issue Red Bull faced, and whether they can catch up the ground McLaren and Ferrari made last year, and whatever development progress their rivals have made over the winter.

Newey’s departure came in the wake of allegations of sexual harassment and coercive, controlling behaviour made against team principal Christian Horner by a female employee.

Horner has always denied the allegations and was cleared by two separate Red Bull internal investigations. But they unsettled Newey, and added to the disquiet Red Bull’s design chief was already feeling about internal politics within the engineering team.

There was a disagreement as to who was primarily responsible for Red Bull’s recent success. Newey felt technical director Pierre Wache was unfairly pushing for credit – and Horner backed him publicly. Whereas Newey saw the 2022 car and fundamental concept Red Bull followed for F1’s current regulations as very much his.