Pierre Waché has insisted that he will not sacrifice performance to achieve a wider working window with the new Red Bull RB21 car for the F1 2025 season.

It comes after team principal Christian Horner and advisor Helmut Marko both called for a bigger operating window following the team’s F1 2024 struggles.

Pierre Waché firm on Red Bull RB21 despite Horner, Marko requests

Max Verstappen claimed a fourth consecutive World Championship last year, seeing off the threat of McLaren driver Lando Norris to secure the title by a final margin of 63 points.

Verstappen’s latest title was arguably his most hard earned to date having gone 10 races without a win – his longest barren run since 2020 – between June and November as Red Bull lost their way with the RB20 car.

The Dutchman told media including PlanetF1.com after the Italian Grand Prix that Red Bull had turned the dominant car of 2023 into “a monster.”

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Marko recently declared that a “wide working window” is key to Red Bull’s F1 2025 title hopes to prevent the car from reacting “so erratically to the smallest changes.”

His comments were echoed by Horner, who admitted the RB20 developed “a very narrow operating window” following an upgrade introduced at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at Imola.

Horner went on to reveal that the team has been aiming to reverse the “problematic” effect with the RB21, adding: “The engineers have been very focused on how you broaden that window.

“Not necessarily adding ultimate performance, but just broadening the window so we’re across the different challenges and have a much wider operating window.”

Waché is leading the development of the RB21 in his role as Red Bull technical director, with the French engineer now fully responsible for the team’s technical operations following the departure of chief technical officer Adrian Newey.

And the former Sauber man is adamant that he will not compromise the peak performance of the RB21 by widening the optimal working window.

He told the Dutch edition of Motorsport.com: “As a dream, of course, you want that, but you [also] know that the overall potential decreases if you increase the window.

“If you look at other teams’ cars and how they lie, they are all insanely stiff. What you want is to produce the fastest car, but it’s not that a car is slow because the window in which it operates is small.

“What you want is to be in the right window for each circuit, so that you can anticipate that.

“If you can achieve that, why would you want to increase the window and flatten the overall potential of a car?

“You want the fastest car compared to the others. I won’t lower the overall potential to make it easier operationally.

“You can lower the potential to help drivers so they can use the car, but not to help engineers use the car.”

After producing the most dominant season in history in 2023, winning 21 out of a possible 23 races with the RB19 car, Red Bull raised eyebrows by introducing a host of new design concepts on last year’s RB20.

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Waché conceded that Red Bull’s development direction for F1 2024 was “not correct”, claiming the real key to the team’s F1 2025 hopes is finding a trade off between the car’s balance and its ultimate performance.

He added: ‘The most important thing is that you are always looking for ways to make the car faster while ensuring that drivers can get the most out of it.

“In 2023, we proved that our direction was correct as we were faster than the others.

“Last year taught us that we were not correct then.

“It is always about finding a balance between the balance of a car and its overall potential. We have to solve that issue for next season.”

PlanetF1.com revealed last month that the RB21 will make its on-track debut in a shakedown test in Bahrain on February 25, 24 hours before the start of F1’s official pre-season test at the Sakhir circuit.

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