Red Bull Racing may have lost one of their crowns during the 2024 Formula 1 season but will be desperate to enter the next era of the sport as the reigning champions.
Max Verstappen once again showed his quality last season and secured a fourth consecutive drivers’ championship despite going on a run of 10 races with a Grand Prix victory.
Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc were his closest rivals but never got close enough to worry the 27-year-old.
However, Red Bull lost their constructors’ championship title dramatically after winning all but one of the races in 2023.
Sergio Perez continued to struggle with the RB20 and finished nearly 300 points behind Verstappen by the end of the year.
Team principal Christian Horner and chief advisor Helmut Marko decided to replace Perez with Liam Lawson and the New Zealander faces the inevitable task of trying to match Verstappen this year.
Nico Rosberg believes Lawson could be the surprise of the season in 2025 but whether this year’s car is easier to drive than last year’s is yet to be seen.
Perez received an apology from Red Bull engineers when they eventually realised that his complaints about the RB20 were well-founded when Verstappen also started to slip back.
With Adrian Newey now working for Aston Martin, Pierre Wache has been tasked with creating a more balanced Red Bull for 2025.
A report from Autosport (April 2025, P27) has shared the feelings of insiders within the team about this year’s competitor.
Red Bull insiders worried about ‘bigger issue’ with Max Verstappen’s car ahead of Australian Grand Prix
The report from Autosport reviewed how every team performed during pre-season testing before the Australian Grand Prix.
McLaren came out on top in testing but there was very little to choose between Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes.
Whether any of these teams were hiding any performance ahead of the season opener is yet to be seen, but Red Bull didn’t have a smooth three days in Bahrain, recording fewer laps than any other team.
The report went on to say that the ‘bigger issue’ for Red Bull was how the car handled and responded to set-up changes.
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Red Bull insiders reported that the car’s responses to any technical changes were ‘lacking’ which was an ‘alarming’ result given how close the start of the season is.
Wache’s team was tasked with building a car with a wider operating window and given the number of changes Red Bull were making that didn’t work, it’s unlikely that they achieved that goal.
Verstappen was suffering from understeer in the slow corners and oversteer in the faster turns, and while he set the fourth-fastest time of the test, it’s hard to know how representative those times are.
Red Bull hoping for changes of fortunes after the Spanish Grand Prix
Even though the 2025 season is the final year of the current set of regulations, there are still more changes coming.
After concerns over the flexibility of McLaren and Ferrari’s wings, new rules are being introduced to reduce how much they’re allowed to flex.
The regulations regarding the rear wing have been put into place from the season opener in Australia, but teams have until the Spanish Grand Prix to finalise the designs of their front wings.
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Red Bull wanted both wing changes introduced in Australia but have also some of their budget this year on a wing that will need to be either updated or scrapped after just eight races.
Whether this levels the playing field like Verstappen and Lawson will hope is yet to be seen.
The FIA have been investigating Ferrari and McLaren’s cars after testing at the behest of Red Bull but they may need divine intervention rather than the intervention of the sport’s governing body to win both championships this year.
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