The 2024 World Championship is still up for grabs, though the battle could end this weekend if Max Verstappen finishes ahead of Lando Norris. A contest that has excited 2024 and, unfortunately, is drawing to a close. Attention is already turning to the 2025 Formula 1 season, with Red Bull needing to respond clearly with the RB21, which Paul Monaghan claims has radically changed.
Red Bull already has plans in place for the RB21, as revealed by Chief Engineer Paul Monaghan to Motorsport Week. Despite the challenges faced with the RB20 throughout this season, the Milton Keynes team seems to have understood the origin of the problems and how to solve them.
The Anglo-Austrian team has defined the development path for the car that will tackle 2025. Additionally, they are willing to sacrifice some time in the wind tunnel, as long as they win the 2024 title, despite being third in the constructors’ standings and only a few points behind in the drivers’ championship.
“All the plans for the RB21 are ready,” Paul Monaghan told Motorsport Week. “However, everyone will be nervous ahead of the first tests in Bahrain. Of course, it also depends on how the competition behaves.” Throughout 2024, Red Bull has faced a long series of problems that “destroyed” the balance of the RB20, roughly from Imola onwards with the new floor. From there, the team began struggling, but Verstappen masked much of the issues with a superb drive.
Most of the problems have been attributed to a lack of correlation between the wind tunnel and the track. This issue forced the team to do double the work between data acquisition and processing. The situation was worsened by the reduced number of hours in the wind tunnel due to winning the 2023 title. Despite this “handicap,” Monaghan doesn’t want to use the reduced hours as an excuse. “It’s not just about the amount of time, but how you use it efficiently,” he said.
For next season, Paul Monaghan is resolute: he doesn’t want to compromise on winning the titles. “I would prefer to keep the constructors’ championship rather than gain more time for testing,” he concluded.
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