Ordinarily, Red Bull’s mid-season development is a tremendous strength. Their 2022 Championship triumph over Ferrari, in large part, was thanks to the updates they introduced as the campaign progressed.
However, the team’s fortunes in 2025 could be negatively impacted by last season’s uncharacteristically poor trajectory – and a failure to overcome fundamental limitations.
Red Bull have doubts about their 2025 car
All teams are being faced with the difficult task or balancing their resources into 2025.
The significance of the 2026 regulations will force many teams to stop development on this year’s cars relatively early.
Unfortunately for Red Bull, they are in a compromises position compared to their immediate rivals. Ferrari and McLaren, for example, switched their focus to 2025 development earlier than the Austrian team.
Unlike Christian Horner’s personnel, Ferrari and McLaren were not wrestling any fundamental issues with their development.
Ferrari’s Monza update package, and McLaren’s upgrades from Miami, established a strong baseline. Heading into this season, both teams can be relatively confident about their changes.
Moreover, having committed earlier to their 2025 projects, last year’s title protagonists are expected to make large-scale changes.
The same cannot be said of Red Bull, who continued working on their 2024 package well into the final rounds.
To some degree this was an understandable choice, given Max Verstappen’s Championship aspirations.
Perhaps more concerningly, though, Red Bull went several months without unlocking any performance with the RB20.
After introducing a set of upgrades at the Japanese GP in Suzuka, which worked as intended, it would take almost 6 months for the next upgrades (in Singapore) to actually generate improvement.
For the first time since 2022, the Austrian team’s wind tunnel data was not reflected on track.
This created significant uncertainty in Red Bull’s development plan, forcing them to introspect and re-evaluate their medium-term plans.
After all, how could the team begin work on their 2025 car without understanding their existing problems?
READ MORE: Why McLaren enter 2025 with crucial advantages
Red Bull’s correlation woes
Pierre Wache, Red Bull’s technical director, admitted that there are still concerns heading into 2025:
“When you have a correlation issue, then for sure you are a little bit lost,” he told motorsport.com.
“You cannot trust your tools any more. And when you cannot trust your tools any more, then you have to find a way to modify your tools to find that correlation again.”
Fine margins separated the top four teams in 2024, especially in the second half of the campaign.
Because of this, Ferrari and McLaren have committed to making bold changes to evolve last year’s concept and create a gap to their rivals.
A problem Red Bull face, which will be difficult to overcome, is a lack of confidence their 2025 car will perform as anticipated.
“Then you are lost in terms of having doubts about everything you are doing…
“You have doubts about the results that your tools give you,” Wache concluded.
Although Max Verstappen managed to secure last year’s drivers title, he certainly wasn’t the beneficiary of the fastest car in Formula 1.
If anything, the Dutchman spent the majority of 2024 fighting against a superior McLaren and rejuvenated Ferrari.
Unless Red Bull can recover from last year’s inherent drivability issues (which Adrian Newey flagged before his departure), their chances for success this year will be limited.
To some extent, Christian Horner’s team deserve credit for being so dominant whilst ushing such an old wind tunnel – which is set to be replaced later this year.
Still, until their new infrastructure comes into play, Red Bull could find themselves on the defensive.
