Teams have long been working on their 2025 F1 cars, and now, as we approach the darkest and most somber time of the year (the motorsport winter blues), it’s time to ramp up efforts to fine-tune the tools drivers will have at their disposal next season.
Even though engineers try to resolve every possible doubt in the final races to ensure they can develop the right ideas during the three-month break, one team, surprisingly, seems to have a number of doubts about the strength of its future Formula 1 project.
Changes, but no major upheaval in the 2025 design
Red Bull’s chief engineer, in an interview with ‘GPBlog.com,’ didn’t hide his concerns, hinting that the 2025 car could even be quite different from this year’s: “Right now, everything is going according to plan, but I guarantee everyone will be nervous on the eve of the first test day. We know what we want to do, but we also have to start thinking about what will happen when our focus inevitably shifts to the 2026 car,” stated Paul Monaghan.
This being the first winter without Adrian Newey at the helm, it’s only natural to feel an extra level of concern: “It’s always about outperforming our rivals. We know the work we need to do and the project we aim to achieve to remain competitive in both championships next year. It will be a great challenge, but we’ll give it our best,” Paul Monaghan concluded.
Doubts are entirely normal. Part of an engineer’s job is to never feel 100% sure of having made the right decisions or, more accurately, to wonder if they could have done even more to achieve perfection. However, there’s a sense of greater-than-usual concern coming from Milton Keynes. Completely overhauling the 2024 design for just one season, given that the 2026 regulations will bring sweeping changes, seems unlikely. It’s always a possibility, but a highly improbable one, and this applies not only to Red Bull but to all teams.
Perhaps this concern stems from a plan to modify critical areas of the car that, if adjusted incorrectly, could cause significant headaches for the Milton Keynes factory, especially at the start of a new season. And this time, Newey won’t be around to step in and fix things.
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