Although Pierre Waché says the “dream” is to design an RB21 with a wider operating window as his bosses and Max Verstappen want, the bigger the window, the smaller the car’s “overall potential”.

Despite winning seven Grands Prix in the first half of the F1 2024 championship, Red Bull faced significant balance issues with the RB20 that made the car sensitive to set-up changes.

Window v potential – the Red Bull conundrum

That created a notable drop-off in performance with Verstappen winning just two races in the back half of the campaign.

But while the RB20’s advantage over the chasing pack in the early races was enough to given Verstappen the impetus to win a fourth successive Drivers’ Championship title, overall Red Bull fell to third in the Constructors’ Championship.

Team principal Christian Horner conceded the 2025 car, the RB21, needed a bigger operating window to give Verstappen any chance of fighting for a fifth World title.

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“The engineers have been very focused on how you broaden that window,” said Horner, “not necessarily adding ultimate performance, but just broadening the window so we’re across the different challenges and have a much wider operating window.”

Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko reiterated that as he said: “We know what to do. This car needs a wider working window, so that it doesn’t immediately become unbalanced when there are slight temperature fluctuations or minor technical changes.

“That’s exactly what our engineers are working on. Forty points of downforce is good, but four tenths on the stopwatch is what interests me and the drivers. The handling must be predictable for the driver so that he can build up the necessary confidence.”

That may sound good but according to Red Bull technical director Waché, it’s not that simple.

“As a dream you want that, of course, but you know that the overall potential decreases if you increase the window,” he said to Motorsport.com.

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

“What you want is to be in the right window for every 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 will not let the overall potential diminish to make it operationally easier. You can lower the potential to help drivers so that they can use the car, but not to help engineers use the car.”

Waché admits that in 2023 Red Bull believed their development path was heading in the right direction, the team winning 21 of 22 races, only to falter last year.

He concedes Red Bull “have to” resolve the issue with the RB21 for Verstappen to continue his championship run.

“The most important thing is that you are always looking for ways to make the car faster and at the same time make sure that drivers can get the most out of it,” he said.

“In 2023, we proved that our direction was correct, as we were faster than the others. The past year has 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 before next season.”

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