Max Verstappen’s 2025 F1 car could suffer because it’s too cold at the Red Bull factory

Red Bull are looking to make more history with Max Verstappen in 2025. A fifth consecutive title would match the record set by Michael Schumacher and Ferrari between 2000 and 2004.

It would also leave them just one short of Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes tally. Thus the Red Bull/Verstappen partnership could become the most successful in F1 history within the next few years.

Team principal Christian Horner will publicly set his sights on the constructors’ championship too. But that might not be a realistic goal.

The Milton Keynes outfit made a breakthrough with their car development at the end of 2024. Red Bull’s US Grand Prix upgrade allowed Verstappen to win the Sprint, and he collected victories in Brazil and Qatar after a 10-race drought.

But on balance, they remained F1’s third-fastest team. And they’ve also hired a driver with just 11 races of experience in Liam Lawson.

F1 fans think Ferrari have the best driver line-up on the grid, followed by McLaren. With the top teams likely to be so close in the final year of the ruleset, that could be a decisive factor.

Red Bull wind tunnel is vulnerable to ‘air temperature fluctuations’

Red Bull will be able to spend 960 hours in the windtunnel during the first half of the 2025 season. The allocation will then be reset for the second half of the year.

Theoretically, this puts them in a more advantageous position compared to 2024. The regulations penalise the most successful teams, and they entered the year as the reigning champions.

However, Red Bull are having difficulty extracting the most from their wind tunnel, according to The Race. Their current facility was built in 1947 by the Royal Aeronautical Establishment.

While the inside has of course been updated, its construction is such that Red Bull are ‘exposed to air temperature fluctuations’. That means they aren’t testing new parts in consistent conditions.

In the winter, the main challenge is of course that it’s too cold. Cold air is more dense, and the F1 calendar is designed to visit countries during warmer periods.

Red Bull’s engineers will do their best to put the data in context. But their struggles in last year’s development race – they started with comfortably the fastest car and ended up third – may demonstrate why they’re building a new wind tunnel in Milton Keynes.

Major development in Max Verstappen’s potential move to Aston Martin

Red Bull felt the 2024 championship was ‘unfair’ – the internal belief is that McLaren didn’t adhere to the spirit of the rules. They’ll hope to compete in a tighter regulatory landscape this time around.

Indeed, McLaren modified a controversial rear-wing design used by Oscar Piastri in his Azerbaijan Grand Prix victory after a dialogue with the FIA. Red Bull led the complaints at the following race in Singapore.

Horner knows that his team must be far more self-assured this season. Verstappen is in talks with Aston Martin ahead of the 2026 regulation changes, which may point to a lack of faith in Red Bull.