Red Bull affected Czech Pérez and Verstappen, said Newey
The inexperience of the engineers and designers of Red Bull affected their pilots in 2024, Sergio ‘Checo’ Pérez and Max Verstappen, said Adrian Newey.
The inexperience of engineers and designers of Red Bull affected their pilots in 2024, Sergio ‘Checo’ Pérez and Max Verstappento the degree that the car became very difficult to drive, said the technical director of the team, Adrian Neweythis in an interview published by Auto Motor Und Sport.
In one talk one by one, with the journalist Michael Schmidt, Adrian Newey, who announced his departure from Red Bull in May before the Miami Grand Prix and months later he was signed by Aston Martin, he talked openly about the problems that, from afar he could see in the development of RB20 And that the people who remained in charge did not know how to solve and even worsened and that harmed, in principle, the Mexican pilot Czech Pérez and then, even made the carmed for the tetracampeon of the world Max Verstappen.
“Obviously part of that were McLaren and Ferrari also developing their cars and doing very good work in developing their cars.
“I think Red Bull, from what you can see, the 2024 car and the last stages of 2023 also, I would say that it also began to become more difficult to drive. And of course, that accommodated Max, could handle that, he adapted, or could not be comfortable, but he could handle him. Czech could not. So also in 2023 we began to see more difference in performance between Coequiperos, Max and Czech.
“This lasted until the first part of 2024, but the car was still quick enough to face it. It is something that I began to worry, but not many other people in the organization seemed to worry a lot. From what I could see from the outside, but I don’t know, Red Bull’s boys, this is not a criticism, but I think that perhaps due to lack of experience, they continued in the same direction and the problem was increasingly exacerbated to the point That even Max was difficult to drive. ”
In the interview, the journalist questioned Newey if Red Bull was wrong how to attack the instability of the car, focusing on setting up, instead of going to the problem in the design.
“I do not configure (tuning), I mean that the configuration can mask problems to some extent, but the problem is still there. For me, the configuration is more simply optimizing the characteristics and, of course, to some extent, the pilot, but I think that is too much, I think it is mainly to complement the characteristics of the car and then, of course, some variations of a circuit To another depending on the nature of the circuit, ”Newey described and then tried to explain the reason for the problems in these EU cars began to be at the limit of their development.
“Yes, a car with soil effect that has no sealed skirts such as the old cars with sliding skirt will always be very susceptible to aerodynamic instabilities. Because now you start generating very low pressures under the floor, but you have all these leaks that enter from the side. And that creates some potentially strong losses and problems as you approach more and more to the ground. But also, they are a good way to create aerodynamic load. So you are always trying to exchange aerodynamic load versus consistency. It is a difficult problem. ”
Checo Pérez was fired from the Red Bull team once the 2024 season was over and, although at some point Pierre Waché offered an apology to the Mexican because they ignored his feedback, where he told them that he felt a major problem in the car, beyond Of the tuning, and the engineer accepted that they dragged an error in the design since 2023, in the end, the low performance and third place in the Construction Championship, almost only, to the Mexican’s work.
Max Verstappen, who after winning seven of the first 10 races of 2024, had a drought of triumphs of 10 large awards where he only uploaded four times to the podium, commented during the season that the problem of Red Bull was not Pérez but the car but the car , which was literally unmanageable.
The words of Newey, who also pointed out that if 12 months ago someone had told him that he was going to leave Red Bull, he would have said “you are crazy”, confirm the internal crisis of the Milton Keynes team that led, even, to the fact that the Star designer would question if he should continue and his consciousness exam led him in April to decide to step aside.
It should be remembered that the main team of Red Bull, Christian Horner saw in a scandal of course inappropriate behavior with an employee of the team that was related to Max’s father, Jos Verstappen and that Helmut Marko was accused internally of having filtered the information of matter to the media.
Newey remained in his position until the Japan Grand Prix (fourth GP of the season), after that he did not participate again in the career work. Red Bull won, with Max Verstappen four of the first five GP’s of 2024, with Czech Pérez in 1-2 in three of them and one more than third place in China.
