Adrian Newey reveals: “I was worried about Red Bull’s issues, but others in the team weren’t”. Adrian Newey explained the issues he had noticed and that were concerning him.

The beginning of the crisis
Williams, McLaren, Red Bull, and now Aston Martin—four teams and four different chapters in the career of aerodynamic genius Adrian Newey. Last May, he announced the end of his tenure with the Milton Keynes-based outfit, which rose to the top of the world first with Sebastian Vettel and later with Max Verstappen, thanks in part to his contributions. With Max Verstappen, the team won seven of the first ten races of the 2024 Formula 1 season, only to suffer a downturn in performance that led to losing the Constructors’ Championship, which was ultimately claimed by McLaren.

First signs in 2023
In an interview with *Auto, Motor und Sport*, the now former Red Bull Technical Director revealed that his concerns about the team’s competitiveness arose even before his decision to move to Aston Martin: “Obviously, part of it was due to McLaren and Ferrari doing a great job developing their cars,” he explained. “But from what I could see, I think the 2024 car, as well as the later parts of the 2023 car, was starting to become more difficult to drive. Max could handle it. It wasn’t ideal for him, but he managed, whereas Perez couldn’t. We also began to see a growing performance gap between teammates in 2023. That continued into early 2024, but the car was still fast enough to be managed. It was something I was starting to worry about, but not many others in the team seemed to be concerned.”

Only setup adjustments
According to Adrian Newey, this general lack of concern meant there was no change in the development direction of the RB20, last season’s car: “From what I saw from the outside—but I don’t know for sure—I think the Red Bull guys just kept going in the same direction, maybe due to a lack of experience. It’s not a criticism, but the problem became increasingly acute to the point where even Max struggled to drive it.” Indeed, Verstappen repeatedly complained about the car’s issues, which Red Bull attempted to address by tweaking the setup: “You can mask the problems to some extent, but the issue remains,” Newey said regarding the setup changes. “For me, setup is simply optimizing the characteristics of the car and, of course, to some extent, adapting to the driver. But I think that’s overstated. It’s mainly about integrating the car’s characteristics and then adjusting based on the circuit’s nature.”