Red Bull explains what went wrong with RB20 F1 car

Red Bull technical director Pierre Wache has delved into the reasons that led the squad to lose the Formula 1 constructors’ title in 2024, although Max Verstappen retained his crown to become a four-time world champion.

Red Bull’s season got off to a flying start with Verstappen winning four of the first five grands prix and leading three 1-2s thanks to Sergio Perez’s contribution.

However, the RB20 slipped down the pecking order as McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes took turns at the front of the field in a topsy-turvy campaign. While Verstappen remained a regular podium contender, which was key to his championship success, his Mexican team-mate failed to finish any of the last 18 grands prix in the top five – which cost him his seat, taken by Liam Lawson for 2025.

But Red Bull did not even expect to be dominant at the start of the season.

“The season was basically as challenging as we expected,” Wache told Autosport. “I would say we were more surprised at the beginning of the season because of the gap we had. We expected the whole season to be like the end of the season, a big fight with the others.

“We didn’t expect such a big hole in the middle of the season ourselves, but we did expect a big fight with others.”

So what went wrong with the RB20? While Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko previously mentioned the team’s 2025 challenger needing a wider operating window, Wache explained the predominant issue was correlation: the CFD and simulator data did not match what happened on the track.

“There are multiple aspects to that story,” the Frenchman elaborated. “The first one is the correlation, that the car had some different characteristics than what we expected in terms of aero.

“Another aspect is that we didn’t expect some elements would affect the car performance as much as they did. They were not there by desire, but maybe we didn’t focus enough on them. Those elements were still there at the end of the season and we have to fix them for 2025.

“We had a loss of downforce in some areas of the [downforce] map and therefore we didn’t perform on track as we thought we could based on the wind tunnel, so there were some holes. That is a correlation issue and in terms of delivery on track it was mainly a balance issue.”

The balance problems were particularly tricky to handle on kerbs and weren’t acted on straight away due to how dominant the RB20 initially was – no car got within two tenths of the polesitting Red Bull over the first five qualifying sessions in 2024.

“I think we spotted it, but after that the car was quick and we didn’t want to modify it massively,” Wache admitted. “When we came back to Europe and were challenged more by McLaren, then it started to become more and more evident that it was one of the biggest issues for us to go quicker.”

As a consequence, the RB20’s potential wasn’t fully unlocked, Wache said – though he insisted that going back to older specifications would have been detrimental.

“In Qatar the car had the same characteristics and we were able to win fairly and make the quickest car for this track,” he pointed out. “So performance is always relative to the others.”