The key word of the last F1 season was finding the right “operating window” of the tires to extract the maximum potential from the available car. It is reasonable to think that the 2025 cars will be developed with the aim of meeting this expectation, hoping to find better performance throughout the entire championship, which this year will once again consist of 24 Grand Prix.
Max Verstappen won his fourth consecutive drivers’ title because he was able to accumulate many points in the first part of the season, but then had to rely on all his extraordinary abilities to avoid seeing a margin that gradually shrank in the middle of the season, until a recovery at the end thanks to updates brought to the RB20 in Austin.
The Dutchman managed to win the Sprint race at the Circuit of the Americas and then secured victories in Qatar and Brazil. The Brazilian triumph was more due to the driver’s dominance in wet conditions than to the actual car development, but it is undeniable that since the USA race, Red Bull seemed to have found the right development path, even though the Milton Keynes car continued to struggle with balance issues.
The most striking example was seen in Doha, where the RB20 seemed uncompetitive in the early stages, but was able to achieve an important victory on Sunday after drastic setup changes.
In an interesting exclusive interview with Motorsport.com, Pierre Waché, technical director of Milton Keynes, provides an intriguing perspective that can help understand Red Bull’s approach to the RB21 project.
The Qatar race showed how the RB20’s operating window was still relatively small by the end of the season. Red Bull became competitive again when it managed to find the car’s weak point, while the loss of pace emerged when the setup choices fell outside acceptable margins. Christian Horner and Helmut Marko have repeatedly stated that the RB21 will aim for a wider operating window compared to last year’s car, but Pierre Waché explained that the issue is more complex than it seems.
“It’s obvious that we are looking for the car’s best operating window,” explained Pierre Waché, “but you also have to know that if you open the window, the effect will be a loss of actual potential.”
“If we look at how other cars run, we see that they have very stiff setups, looking for the fastest car, without making too many compromises because their operating window is too narrow.”
The Frenchman believes that it is more appropriate to seek the best setup for each track rather than chasing an expanded operating window with the tires…
“In my opinion, it makes no sense to open the window by flattening the theoretically available potential. It’s acceptable to reduce competitiveness a bit to make the car more drivable for the drivers, but it’s unthinkable that this operation could be done to make engineers’ setup work easier.”
According to the technical director of Milton Keynes, the right balance between raw performance and drivability during a race stint needs to be found…
This is a path Red Bull had already begun with the Austin package, as the updates greatly improved the car’s balance and correlation at the cost of some overall potential.
“It’s not easy to find a balance between making a car faster than the others and making it enjoyable to drive for the drivers so they can get the best result. In 2023, we showed that our direction was correct because we were the fastest. Last season, however, we weren’t there. There’s something wrong when the balance is more advantageous than the overall potential of the car. This is what we need to fix this year.”
Leave a Reply