Red Bull chief reveals insight into F1 success

In Australia, Pierre Wache arrives at the circuit early on Friday morning for the Grand Prix weekend.

Just as we don't see a shimmer of decreasing hunger for success in Max Verstappen, the same can be said for the rest of Red Bull Racing's personnel.

Wache is currently regarded as one of the most important pillars within the Milton Keynes-based team. Indeed, along with Adrian Newey, the Frenchman is seen as the figure who played the biggest role in building the most successful F1 car of all time, the RB19.

But Wache doesn't want to take the compliments too much at face value when RacingNews365 speaks to him exclusively at the Albert Park Circuit in Melbourne.

“Clearly we have a different background. Adrian will be more concentrated on the aerodynamic side and I'm more on the mechanical side.

“The main people working on the car are some people inside the team, they are working hard on that. Just to make it clear, it’s not the purpose of the technical leader that you are the man doing the concept.

“The technical leader makes some decisions. But plenty of work is done by the team, we don't have to dismiss the work of the full team and the design. The main performance is coming from them to be honest, not coming from two people.

“The team, we changed a lot through the years. But how it moves between us, we have the same type of mentality of people that, I think it’s maybe stupid what I will say, but we don't enjoy winning - we hate losing.”

Tough mentality

“It’s the mentality of the people,” Wache continued. “The main aspect after a win, we are discussing what didn’t work, how we can improve.

“When you see after the debrief it’s like if we lost! It’s the mentality of F1, it’s difficult to cope with because sometimes you need to release but it's how we are.”

By this, Wache means not only the personnel present on the track, but also those who remain 'behind' in the factory.

Indeed, from the factory, people work extremely hard during a Grand Prix weekend to ensure success on the track.

"When I look at the technical team, we are talking about about 300 people. Those are all smart and very good people,” Wache added. “So again coming back to that big group of people, you can't attribute the successes just to two people.”

Change from 2018/2019

"Adrian and I are both part of the team, so we have the same mentality as the rest of the team.

“This is also necessary because if you look around the team, you can see that a colleague wants to pull as hard as you want to do yourself and that makes a strong team."

In addition to teamwork, Red Bull has also worked hard in recent years to create ideal conditions at the factory. They have been vital changes, as Red Bull gears up to be a fully independent team from 2026 with the construction of its own power units.

The investments made in recent years are therefore a basis for Red Bull's current dominance.

“I think you have to make the reward to the full team, with the team we have and how we work together, how we trust each other, how we push some area of the business to make it better.

“It's not coming in one day as you say. Since 2018/19 when we were not as good, we developed more and more this area of correlation.”

The successful collaborations between the various departments within the team ensure, according to Wache, that 99 to 100 per cent of the data Red Bull collects in the factory matches the data it gets on the track. It's a truly astonishing number.

“We still need to track test because we have to verify,” asserted Wache.

“Clearly, the work we are doing in the factory has to be on target from the first release to be able to be the most efficient as possible,” concluded Red Bull's technical director, who, with the above numbers, will undoubtedly be looked upon with jealously by his peers from other F1 teams.