Red Bull send strong message over unhappy Max Verstappen concerns

Red Bull technical director Pierre Wache insists it is not his "goal" to make Max Verstappen "happy" after the Dutchman's fierce criticism of the new F1 regulations.

The Dutchman has been particularly outspoken on the changes to the power unit side of the rulebook, blasting the new era as "anti-racing" and branding it "Formula E on steroids" due to the extreme levels of energy management required.

With the power units now split 50/50 between traditional combustion power and electric energy, getting the most efficiency from the car is now a significantly more involved and complex process.

It also means drivers are having to drive unorthodoxly and counter-intuitively to find lap time.

Crucially, they are not able to drive as flat-out as in the original turbo-hybrid era, and even qualifying laps will not be completed at the limit of what the car is capable of, due to the need to recharge the battery and deploy energy effectively across a single lap.

When Wache was questioned on what short-term solutions Red Bull might have to make Verstappen happier with the situation, the Frenchman offered media, including RacingNews365, a blunt response.

"It's not my goal to make him happy," he said at the Bahrain International Circuit during the first official F1 pre-season test. "We can make him happy by winning the race.

"My job and the job of the team, at my level, is to make sure that we give him the tools so that he's able to compete at the front."

Despite his criticisms, Verstappen is already leading the charge when it comes to energy management, having employed a clever strategy to harvest more energy by going through corners — which would usually be as high as third gear — in first gear and keeping the engines revs high.

Rival drivers and teams are now copying that tactic, but there are concerns that the approach will not be sustainable across an entire F1 season, as it will burn through gearboxes and power units more quickly.

Wache was keen to highlight that the wording of the regulations is outside of his purview and that he is more keenly focused on what is his remit: making the RB22 quicker.

"The regulation itself and how the car design is, in terms of how we feel with the car, due to this regulation, is an outside area," he explained.

"It's an FIA discussion outside of us — and we can participate in that, but the main purpose and the main focus is to make the car better."