F1 News
Waché reveals that it is now Red Bull who is copying the competition
Red Bull Racing managed to interpret the new regulations best at the start of the 2022 season. But maintaining a lead until the end of '25 over the rest of the F1 field did not succeed for the team of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez. McLaren, in particular, but certainly Mercedes have been catching up with innovative concepts lately. Red Bull is keeping a close eye on what its competitors are coming up with, technical director Pierre Waché admitted to the Dutch branch of Motorsport.com.
It is quite normal in Formula 1 that the longer the regulations stay the same, the teams creep towards each other. The 2024 season is no exception. At a certain point, there is hardly any more to get out of a particular concept and the differences with the rest naturally get smaller. Red Bull too sees that the ceiling in terms of further development for the RB20 is approaching.
"But that doesn't mean that's the overall ceiling. In this business, you always get inspiration from other people's ideas. In the past two years, teams have mostly taken ideas from us, although you also need others to find things so you can take a new step. That is starting to take off now and maybe make the ceiling a bit higher again," Waché told the website.
Red Bull had expected more from the RB20
The Frenchman also admitted that the RB20 did not fully bring what was hoped from it. Especially in the fast corners, the Austrian team had expected to take a step up from last year. That this did not happen, according to Waché, is possibly due to correlation problems between, for example, the outdated wind tunnel and the reality on the track.
This article was written in collaboration with Sophia Crothall.