Newey reveals insight into Red Bull F1 success

Red Bull Chief Technical Officer Adrian Newey has revealed an insight into Red Bull's success this year, admitting it came as a surprise to the team.

The Milton Keynes-based squad has won 20 out of the 21 races staged so far, winning its sixth Constructors' Championship since joining the grid in 2005.

Max Verstappen has also enjoyed a dominant campaign en route to his third title and will end the season with the highest season win percentage record in F1 history.

Its highly unchallenged year followed another win-filled campaign in 2022 - however Newey asserted that he expected the field to close up over the winter.

Speaking to BBC Sport, the Briton stated its form this year was “totally unexpected”.

He added that Red Bull "fully expected this year that everything would close up” but admitted, “we managed to get the fundamentals of the car right”.

"The good thing about that was it allowed us to take an evolutionary approach, to understand the strengths and weaknesses of last year's car and try to address that appropriately," he continued.

“We have managed to read regulations changes well and come back with a car we can then evolve.”

Weight key to improvement

Last year F1 introduced new technical regulations which resulted in many of the cars running overweight.

Newey has revealed that getting the weight down as the car has developed has been a key part of the team's success.

"Weight loss was part of it," Newey said. "We never managed to get down to the weight limit last year.

“By the end of the season, we were still significantly over, so much more detail through the winter to get the weight off, and then the rest was primarily aerodynamic refinement."