Red Bull reveal surprising cause behind dramatic loss in F1 form

Red Bull technical director Pierre Wache has explained how the team's push for performance with its 2024 car caused an inadvertent snowball of a loss of form.

The RB20 was quick out of the blocks last season, banking seven wins from the first 10 races to open up considerable leads in both championships, but as the European season continued, Red Bull's form nosedived.

The nadir came at the Italian GP where Max Verstappen branded his machine as "undrivable" as he took sixth place as Red Bull scrambled to find solutions for the final races, where Verstappen ultimately recovered to take a fourth straight drivers' title. 

However, in the relentless push to find performance from the ground-effects machine, Wache has detailed how this push helped caused the downward spiral, further highlighted by rivals McLaren not bringing any significant upgrades after the Miami GP. 

"We tried to develop the car, and tried to put performance on," Wache exclusively tells RacingNews365.

"By doing that, we accentuated the issues we had in terms of the characteristics that were highlighted in Monza - and at Monza, we realised that this was a real issue which had to fix.

"The team did a very good job to understand the issue, respond to the issue, limit it and be able to put [fixes] on the car for Austin.

"We created some instability in the car, and the drivers mentioned in the press that it was undrivable and had a disconnected balance. 

"That clearly was an aero issue that we introduced in mid-2023 to a small extent, and we increased this extent the more we developed the car, not because you don't see it, but because we were going quicker and quicker and this was the direction to go. 

"I think it is difficult to say, because this car is still closer to one, 1.5s quicker than 2023, and I am not sure, based on what we found, we could [make the changes] with the previous car. 

"The main thing is that we were not focused enough on the characteristics of the car to have a bigger [operating] window."

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Exclusive Red Bull interview

Reflecting on the drastic change in performance during the season, Wache believes it is more to do with Red Bull's rivals gaining time as opposed to Red Bull losing it. 

"I'm not sure we lost something on our side, it is more that the others gained, to be fair," he added.

"McLaren did a very good job with the Miami performance update, and without massive development during the season, when you see what they put on the car, it is not crazy. 

"They were able to optimise their concept in terms of the operation [of the car] in a nice way. 

"They did a good job on this aspect, but we were on a different path."