It has not been the easiest year for Red Bull to defend their championships, as evidenced by losing out in the Constructors’ Championship to McLaren.
Red Bull started off the year by winning consecutive races with Max Verstappen, but the radical design direction of the RB20 soon threw up some problems for the team.
Verstappen’s advantage came under threat from McLaren and Ferrari, as Red Bull struggled to optimise a key component on their floor after bringing six configurations that did not produce the numbers expected.
Technical director Pierre Wache identified three reasons why Red Bull’s upgrades were not working, tracing it back to a combination of factors that can affect the correlation between wind tunnel and on-track performance.
Despite their troubles, former F1 driver Jolyon Palmer has explained why he thinks people have ‘overplayed’ Red Bull’s struggles this season when discussing their form on the Chequered Flag podcast.
Jolyon Palmer explains why Red Bull’s problems are ‘overplayed’ in 2024
Verstappen only finished outside of the top six on one occasion in 2024: the Qatar Grand Prix Sprint race. Sergio Perez’s story has been a different one, with the Mexican failing to finish inside the top five for 18 races and now facing questions over his future at the team.
Christian Horner admitted that Red Bull had the fourth-quickest car at Monza, however, looking back on their season Palmer thinks it has not been too bad for the team.
“Do you think we are overplaying how much Red Bull fell off the cliff? Because when you actually look at the season, they started off so dominantly, then in the middle part until the end Max was still winning. Then at Imola and Austria, we look at as McLaren having the fastest car, but Max was ditching Lando for two-thirds of those races as well and it was only the last part of it that brought them together,” said Palmer.
“In Austria, it was a slow pit stop as well for Max that really brought them together. Then you had races like Spa where if Max was on pole he would’ve won it easily, then you had Baku where Max really struggled but Sergio Perez was in contention.
“So we’re probably overplaying that they were suddenly miles adrift and in Qatar we saw Max was really struggling one day, and the next he’s on the pace again. The way the field is so close, it’s tiny setup changes that make the difference.”
How did Red Bull lose its massive 2023 advantage?
Given Red Bull was winning races by margins of over 20 seconds last year, it is easy to think they have made a mistake that has caused them to slip back dramatically.
In reality, the team has fallen victim to the complex ruleset which often rewards a stable aerodynamic platform over generating a lot of downforce.
Losing Adrian Newey has been a massive blow to the team, as his experience and insight into ground effect cars is what enabled them to avoid some of the early problems nearly every team faced at the beginning of 2022.
Red Bull staff noted that Newey’s impact went beyond just designing the car, with him also influencing the car setup and race strategy on weekends.
As other teams have caught up and Red Bull has sought to optimise an alternative aero package, it has generated balance problems that have often seen them needing to turn things around overnight. The RB19 was not immune to those problems, but with the fine margins in qualifying coupled with the RB20’s difficult setup window, it created the perfect opportunity for rival teams to pounce.
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