Misleading simulations
At the end of the Japanese Grand Prix won by Max Verstappen, cameras showed the Red Bull pit wall, where technical director Pierre Waché received a pat on the back. Among those surely relieved by the Dutchman’s victory was the Frenchman who has succeeded Adrian Newey—someone Red Bull has locked in amid interest from rival teams—now facing a tough task: providing Max Verstappen with a car competitive enough to defend the world title.
Red Bull changed its car concept between 2024 and 2025 in hopes of widening the operating window, which had become extremely narrow, but so far that goal doesn’t seem to have been achieved: “The vehicle balance keeps changing. It takes too long to fix. Fortunately, we have Max in the car, who realizes this,” said Pierre Waché, as reported by Auto Motor und Sport. The RB21 only works in a very specific configuration, and the ‘impossible mission’ the Milton Keynes team faces each weekend is to hit that setup just in time for Qualifying.
At Suzuka, all parameters were changed from FP1 to Qualifying because the simulator keeps misleading the team: “At the factory, you work with data that is then consistently disproved once we’re at the track. It happened two years ago in Monaco, and it was the same story in Japan. I told Verstappen to trust his own feeling and not what the simulator says,” said Helmut Marko, who would have signed off on a third row in Qualifying and a podium in the race.
In the end, thanks to a perfect operational weekend and some added help (low temperatures and minimal tyre degradation), Max Verstappen’s class turned a tough Friday into pole position and a win in the Grand Prix. But these kinds of ‘recovery weekends’ cannot become the norm. “We know what our limits are—we have to work,” Verstappen repeated several times.
Given how unpredictable and hard to read the RB21 is—just like the RB20—it’s no surprise the second driver is having such a hard time staying close to Max Verstappen.
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