Last Updated on April 2 2025, 11:31 am
For the first time since Adrian Newey joined Red Bull the year of its inception, the Milton Keynes based Formula One team have designed a car without input from the guru engineer. Having announced he was leaving Red Bull and taking a sabbatical, within weeks the call of team ownership and a huge dollop of cash and Newey was signed to Aston Martin.
Adrian had not been the technical director of Red Bull Racing since resigning the position back in 2018, when Frenchman Pierre Wache was placed in charge of the day to day technical operations of the team. Newey worked part time and gave input into design issues, as and when, which led to Christian Horner to emphasise on more than one occasion during their dominant 2023 campaign, that Newey was not purely responsible for creating and developing thre Red Bull F1 cars.
“Adrian is a big part of the team and our achieved performance. But of course his role has evolved over the years and the technical team under him, led by Pierre Wache, is doing a great job. They are not dependent on Adrian,” said Red Bull boss Christian Horner to AMuS in 2023. “Adrian has the ability to come in, go out and work on other projects. I think that’s part of the evolution of any team.”
Newey suggests Red Bull now ‘lack experience’
Months later Newey was indeed gone and his lack of input has strangely coincided with a drop in the Red Bull car’s performance. Red Bull were set for another uber dominant season after the first five rounds in 2024, then a design change and upgrades to the car make it incredibly difficult to drive. This was primarily evidenced by the fact Max Verstappen went on a ten race weekend drought of wins, while Sergio Perez struggled to make it out of Q1 on several occasions.
Having revealed Aston Martin to be his future, Newey was asked about the Red Bull lack of performance since the Spanish Grand Prix. He recently told Auto Motor und Sport, “It’s something I was starting to become concerned about, but not many of the people in the organisation seemed to be very concerned about it,” Newey said to Auto Motor und Sport.
“From what I can see from the outside – but I don’t know – the guys at Red Bull, this is no criticism but I think they just perhaps through lack of experience kept going in that same direction, and the problem became more and more acute to the point that even Max found it difficult to drive.”
It is claimed one of Newey’s primary focuses when designing an F1 car its drivability. Making the car as easy for the driver to setup and get the maximum from its potential is a Newey prime objective. Even so there have been dominant Newey cars in the hands of Sebastian Vettel, which Mark Webber said was “counter intuitive” to drive, but on there whole he believes the more confident the driver the better he can explore the limits of the car.
Red Bull ignore Newey advice
The RB21 has continued in the development path of its predecessor with even Max – who can do no wring – admitting its a difficult car to find the tiny operating window where it is at its best. Liam Lawson was all at sea with the car, qualifying plum last in China before Red Bull changed the setup in parc ferme for the Grand Prix where Lawson appeared to fair a little better.
Red Bull’s hope when promoting Yuki Tsunoda alongside Max is the four years experience of the Japanese driver will help them develop the RB21 in the right direction, something the team believed Lawson was not able to do.
According to BBC’s F1 journalist Andrew Benson, over the winter Red Bull “chased peak aerodynamic performance” for the RB21 but this has come at the cost of “drivability”, something Newey advises against and so the problems with the car’s handling experienced by Perez last season is now even worse.
Red Bull claim they were forced into raising the ceiling of the car’s performance due to the pace McLaren and Ferrari displayed in the closing rounds of the year and this is “the exact opposite” of Adrian Newey’s methodology.
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Doohan sorts out unstable Alpine rear end
Jack Doohan has given a fascinating interview where he explains how he too found the Alpine car to ‘peaky’ in its performance but has been working on a setup solution which saw his pace match experienced team mate Pierre Gasly in both Australia and China.
Doohan was significantly off the pace off his Alpine team mate in pre-season testing, and despite his first lap crash in Australia his pace had improved markedly throughout the weekend. In China Doohan was ahead of Gasly in Sprint qualifying and less than a tenth behind his ten mate come the shootout to set the grid for the Grand Prix.
Hi “sigh of relief” moment came when the team made changes to the rear suspension geometry and increased the “toe out” of the rear wheels by a “minimal” amount. This meant the Aussie could adapt his driving style into the corners, no longer needing extra lock when he reached the apex of the turn. This Doohan says improved rear end stability and an improved front end on turn in which then has positive effects on early throttle application and tyre management during a race.
Whether Red Bull’s problems will be this simple to resolve is anyone’s guess, yet Horner refutes the claims made by Newey claiming the issues harked back much further than just in the development of their 2024 car.
Horner refutes Newey’s accusation
“I think the issues are more deep-rooted than just last year,” Horner said at the F1 75 Live event. “When you really dig into the data and some of the characteristics, you start to see them much earlier than that, certainly during 2023.
“It was a matter of unravelling it to understand what were the contributing factors to having a very peaky performance. I think that’s where the team have worked very hard to understand that and address it,” concluded the Red Bull boss.
With Newey having formally joined Aston Martin in March this year following his garden leave, his input into their 2025 is minimal to date. Although Aston Martin completed a number of strange aero runs in pre-season testing, almost as though they were collecting data for Newey’s arrival. The team say he is focused on the big regulations for next year, but Adrian’s competitive juices won’t be satisfied if he can’t contribute to upgrades on the ARM25. And given the next breed of F1 cars are ground effect design too, there is a significant area of carry over from this year’s aerodynamic concepts to those that will be employed on the 2026 cars.
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Lawson sponsor makes shocking “suicidal” claim
Liam Lawson will return to the Racing Bull team this weekend after a shocker of a debut for Red Bull racing at the first two rounds of the 2025 season. A driver error in Melbourne saw him crash out into the barriers and the New Zealand border driver was plumb last in both qualifying sessions in Shanghai.
Yuki Tsunoda who three months ago was considered not mentally strong enough to race alongside Max Verstappen has had a sudden rehabilitation it seems and will now partner the world champion at the upcoming Japanese Grand Prix.
The response from the F1 world of Red Bull’s sudden cull of Lawson has been varied, with some veteran F1 writers describing the team’s actions as “cowardly,” “incompetent” and “deplorable”. Others believe Red Bull merely made the wrong decision and that Liam will benefit from an extended run in the Racing Bulls team… READ MORE
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