Red Bull’s former chief technical officer Adrian Newey says he was already concerned about the development path of their car before he left them last year.
The team won seven of the first 10 rounds last year but took just two wins over the rest of the season and lost the constructors’ championship to McLaren. Max Verstappen scored all the team’s wins and clinched the drivers’ title while Sergio Perez fell to eighth.The team announced in May that Newey would leave them at the end of the year. He stopped appearing at races with them soon afterwards.
That coincided with the team’s dip in form, but Newey said he had become concerned about their competitiveness long before then. “Obviously part of it was McLaren in particular and Ferrari as well developing their cars and doing a very good job of their cars,” he told Auto Motor und Sport.
“But I think Red Bull, from what I could see, the ’24 car and through the very last stages of ’23 as well was, I would say, starting to become more difficult to drive.
“Of course Max could handle that. It didn’t suit him, but he could handle it, Checo couldn’t. So we also started, through ’23, to see more of a difference in performance between the team mates, Max and Checo.
“That carried into the first part of ’24, but the car was still quick enough to be able to cope with it. It’s something I was starting to become concerned about, but not many other people in the organisation seemed to be very concerned about it.”
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Newey believes his former colleagues failed to realise they needed to change the development direction of the RB20.
As Verstappen became more vociferous about the handling problems he was experiencing, Red Bull resorted to set-up tweaks in an attempt to cure it.
“Set-up can mask problems to an extent, but the problem is still there,” said Newey. “To me set-up is more simply optimising the characteristics of the car and of course, to an extent, driver, but I think that’s over-egged.
“It’s mainly to complement the characteristics of the car and then of course circuit-to-circuit variation, depending on the nature of the circuit.”
Most F1 teams suffered setbacks when developing their cars last year. Newey said this is a consequence of the current ‘ground effect’ regulations which allow teams to generate significant downforce by sculpting their cars’ floors but do not allow ‘skirts’ along the edge of the chassis as seen in the late seventies and early eighties.
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“A ground effect car which doesn’t have sealed skirts like the old sliding skirt cars is always going to be very susceptible to aerodynamic instabilities,” he said. “Because you start to generate these very low pressures under the floor but you have all this leakage coming in from the side, and that creates potentially some quite strong losses and problems as you get closer and closer to the ground.
“But equally they are a good way of creating downforce. You’re always trying to trade downforce versus consistency. It’s a difficult problem.”
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Derek Edwards
30th January 2025, 10:39
All interesting enough about Newey, but I just went down a rabbit hole when I realised that the image shows Geoff Lees driving what should have been Nigel Mansell’s Lotus.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
30th January 2025, 11:02
Excellent eye!
BenjaminS (@benihana)
30th January 2025, 12:24
Interesting read to try and understand an engineer giving feedback to his team, but I find this backhanded attack by Newey to the engineering team similar to Hamilton telling the media that his Mercedes team did not listen to him when they designed the next car for 2023. It also brings up a question as to when he left the team since he see this issue in 2023 when presumably he was still working for Red Bulls and somehow this article and his comments make it seem like he either could not or would not inform the team of these issues, or that the team failed to listen to the advice. Similar to their failure to listen to Checo when started to struggle.
Riccard
30th January 2025, 13:13
I agree. Throughout the second half of 2024, media analysts have noted the Red Bull became more difficult to drive, and that Max could mask that for a while until it passed a certain point, and said all the things Newey is now saying.
After half a year of Newey hearing these ideas from analysts, he is now repeating them himself and suggesting he saw this all along. But it was his job to see these things and address them, and that didn’t happen. He was so highly-respected in Red Bull that if he had said these things, they would have been acted on. The conclusion is that he didn’t say them, and he’s now putting that on the people who worked for him.
I suspect that now with hindsight he can see the signs were there in 2023, and perhaps he even remembers himself seeing those signs (as memory is a tricky thing), but at the time he didn’t.
David BR (@david-br)
30th January 2025, 13:46
The key phrase in the quotes above may be this:
That sounds to me like Newey voiced some concerns out loud among the team but didn’t really insist on them – otherwise, like you suggest, they’d had have become concerned to. But there’s also the inner turmoil/power struggle at Red Bull at the start of 2024, one of the reasons Newey left presumably, which may have meant that some people’s attention was elsewhere.
AJ
30th January 2025, 16:06
I believe there was also Verstappen saying the same things last year, that the car development has been going wrong and some people in the team needed a wake up call to see what was going on. I think Verstappen has been aligned on this with Newey but the design and development teams or the exec function thereof had been too self assured to listen to the critical feedback.
SteveP
30th January 2025, 20:03
I’m sure I saw reports where Newey was saying he disagreed with the development direction they were taking, but the others in the team were adamant they were right.
Can anyone here tell me, honestly, that they have never stood back to watch as people learn that they still have much to learn?
If, even at retirement age or beyond, you don’t realise you can still learn from others, then you do yourself a disservice.
anon
30th January 2025, 22:07
SteveP, the thing is, Newey has cited a lack of experience as a reason for continuing with a particular development direction on the RB20, but there are a number of individuals in their senior management team with quite a bit of experience in the sport.
To pick a few, Pierre Wache, serving as technical director now, has been in Formula 1 since 2006 and been part of Red Bull’s senior management since 2013, their head of performance engineering, Ben Waterhouse, has been in Formula 1 since 2003 and Enrico Balbo, their head of aerodynamics, has been in the sport since 2006.
El Pollo Loco
30th January 2025, 22:32
Newey was very clear he felt they were going in the wrong direction and I’m surprised it took RF this long to discover this story, which was pretty critical to both the break up and the problems.
The team goes in the opposite development direction Newey recommends. Then begins saying he hasn’t been the key to their recent success, probably feeling confident early in the season when the car hadn’t yet moved far away from the Newey DNA and he was still setting up the suspension, in response the rumors he might leave. So, the car started becoming less competitive the more updates that went on and then he stopped helping them set up the suspension he designed and things really fell apart.
As for the Hamilton feedback parallel. It is irrelevant to the conversation and Hamilton isn’t an engineer. None of the other teams have fully understood the ground effects concept besides Newey. Hamilton’s preferences for having the seat further back in the chassis wasn’t going to fix that. He was neither to blame for their development issues nor was he or any driver the solution. No driver is.
BenjaminS (@benihana)
31st January 2025, 14:15
@El Pollo Loco The parallel to the Hamilton feedback was not a comment on how Mercedes was working or not working. It is what jumped in my head as I read the article about an employee rubishing his team and their decisions much like Hamilton did. I just found it similar in tone when Newey spoke in this article
Pedro
30th January 2025, 15:38
When you are winning is very hard to change directions.
BenjaminS (@benihana)
31st January 2025, 14:16
It is hard but not impossible if a very experienced engineer tells you to.
Patrick (@paeschli)
31st January 2025, 12:16
It’s interesting that Newey supposedly saw all these issues coming (attributing them to lack of experience among the technical leadership) yet decided to not make a fuss about it and let the team go down this bad path without really trying to stop it.
You gotta wonder for how many months prior to the announcement he was already planning his exit. The further RB falls down the order, the easier it will be for him to catch up to RB with his new team.
Not really surprised RB were unhappy with the way Newey executed his exit.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
31st January 2025, 19:55
Funny how their car was all conquering until the MIAMI GP. Newey is full of it. It’s clear that there was a coup against horner, and it’s clear he’s covering up for ditching horner, despite him horner and Geri holding hands in front of the cameras during the end of one of their final races. newey is losing his luster.
El Pollo Loco
1st February 2025, 2:20
Oh god, here pcxmacxium conspiracy.
floodo1 (@floodo1)
30th January 2025, 14:24
He has alluded to this before when he talked about going more hands off so the younger designers could do their thing and that they were effectively responsible for the slower car last season
Man was on his (slow) way out before Aston came in
Patrick (@paeschli)
31st January 2025, 12:18
I’m thinking RB is not that sad to see him go with how little he seemed to care about RBs car towards the end. Paying this man a huge salary while he does nothing meaningful to stop the team from going down a bad path does not make sense.
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
30th January 2025, 15:01
Thats an eye opener and with Neweys insight does correleate with what happened. I just couldnt believe him leaving straight away had an impact on performance, by the sound of it, it was coming a long time before and the tipping point was coincidental. Also, makes Max’s WDC even more impressive.
Wer
30th January 2025, 18:59
No, it doesn’t.
You have to understand everything in relative terms. A “hard to drive” Red-Bull is millions of miles easier to drive than a Sauber on its best day. And obviously much quicker.
Mercedes have finished the last 3 Constructors Championships: 3rd, 2nd, 4th with 17, 8, 9 podiums respectively and 5 wins total, but if you only listened to their drivers’ complaints you’d think they had to drive the 1997 Lola or even the 1990 Life which failed to qualify to a single race that season.
RedBull had problems at staying dominant, not at staying bloody fast, which their cars were from the first to last round.
El Pollo Loco
30th January 2025, 22:38
I guess that’s him told.
Yeah, the fact that the car was getting worse by Newey’s own admission and winning the title in a car his teammate couldn’t even get out of Q1 in and who scored less points than a Haas driver over half a season isn’t impressive. But thanks for sharing your understanding.
And Tony is exactly right as in why it appeared the problems began right after he left even though that would obviously be too quick. I posted the fact in season that RBR had broken with the development path Newey had wanted and the further they got away from R1, the worse the problems would get. This was known in the paddock. It’s just amazing how few media outlets seem to do actually do any really homework.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
30th January 2025, 23:40
You can’t be serious about using perez as a comparison to indicate red bull was a bad car, can you?
Why not have one of us drive the 2nd car as we’re at it?
El Pollo Loco
31st January 2025, 11:01
He’s of zero use at all you imply, which is odd since he seemed to be doing just fine early in the season. I remember what 5 straight podiums?
So, yes, we can use him as a very general benchmark. We know the car’s increasing lack of driveability and pace was a major part of his collapse. You can use anyone as a generalized benchmark. In 2023, Lance Stroll was in Q3 and competing for points when the AMR was strong. When it nosedived, he wasn’t coming close to Q3 or good points. Zhou was nowhere making Q3 for the majority of the season. When the upgrades began to make the Sauber able to at least have a sniff at the points, he was suddenly making it into Q2 or at least on the edge of it.
So, the idea you cannot use weak drivers as a benchmark for a car’s performance is objectively wrong. Perez didn’t go from P2 in the 2023 WDC to P8 in the 2024 WDC because he went from being one of the best drivers in F1 in 2023 to the worst in 2024. A generally odd argument from two of the most knowledgeable people on the site.
El Pollo Loco
31st January 2025, 12:03
was referring to both you and anon to be clear
El Pollo Loco
1st February 2025, 2:37
It’s also a case of trying to make a black and white argument*
PS – Wer and I did not agree on anything. He said the car remained “bloody fast.” Words which imply he continued to have a car roughly equal to Norris in pace.
anon
31st January 2025, 9:57
El Pollo Loco, Perez was, by a long distance, the worst driver in qualifying relative to his team mate in 2024. In every other situation where a driver was slow relative to their team mate in qualifying, you blamed the driver for being too slow, rather than criticising the car – and yet figures like Ricciardo or Sargeant weren’t as bad as Perez was.
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
31st January 2025, 15:54
EL Pollo is a classic example of a good vocabulary put to bad use. A sort of f1 Boris Johnson. That he and Wer are in accordance is instructive, as Pollo might put it.
El Pollo Loco
1st February 2025, 2:31
Yes! I must be evil if if I’ve disagreed with you on a topic.
This is also patently false. It’s also a case of trying to make an argument of a black and white argument. A driver being slower than their teammate does need to be a case of either it’s 100% the driver’s fault or 100% the car’s fault. An argument anon would never make himself and probably why he and esploratore have not yet responded.
El Pollo Loco
1st February 2025, 2:39
It’s also a case of trying to make a black and white argument*
PS – Wer and I did not agree on anything. He said the car remained “bloody fast.” Words which imply he continued to have a car roughly equal to Norris in pace.
[apologies, for the duplicate post, hit the wrong reply button]
Chris Horton
30th January 2025, 23:33
Excellent, correct response.
An Sionnach
30th January 2025, 18:01
You could see some wobbles in 2023, but there was more margin as the other teams were still catching up. There was also that smokescreen of invincibility.
Very interesting from Newey. Thank you, sir. Lauda did not like the earlier ground effect cars due to how uncomfortable they were to drive. Without skirts, there was surely added danger and this whole formula was dead on arrival as designers were severely limited in what they could do, resulting in an embarrassing banger series. I expect Lewis to perform a lot better once this is over. Good riddance.
Kribana (@krichelle)
30th January 2025, 18:24
Blame the tyres too. Pirelli’s tyres have been at their worst for the first time since 2011-2013. Wider operating window will allow more driveability in the current cars.
Johns
31st January 2025, 4:37
Attended both the Pheonix gp in 1980 and Vegas last year. The tire difference was striking. At Pheonix, the tires shed rubber and this built up as clack around the track. This was how the tires worked. And the warm tires would pick up debris during cool down, because they were really sticky. In vegas, there was little clack after a session, te tires did not pick up debris like the tires of old. It seems the tires have changed from proper racing tires in the 1980s that got warm and sticky, to more like modern car tires that just wear as rubber dust. Against the asphalt that aren’t very sticky.
El Pollo Loco
30th January 2025, 22:44
Indeed. Ground effects is not a friendly type of design for allowing individual driver styles to shine through. I mean, that’s F1 in general as aerodynamics are a self-reinforcing cycle, but the combination of the Pirelli operating windows and ground fx have made it even worse. While the cars being able to follow much more closely has been great, in other ways the formula has resulted in very unspectacular car/driver dynamics.
Rhys Lloyd (@justrhysism)
31st January 2025, 2:32
Indeed Ricciardo couldn’t work out these cars. Far too technical.
DB-C90 (@dbradock)
31st January 2025, 0:24
I read Neweys book a few years ago and it seemed pretty obvious that not only was he an absolutely genius designer, but he also had incredible skill in fine tuning set ups on his cars.
It came as no surprise then that RBR encountered struggles after he was placed on gardening leave.
Greatly interested in seeing how RBR’s 2025 offering competes but I suspect it won’t be good news. Whether it’s good enough for Max will certainly be a question, and I can imagine some other teams licking their lips at the prospect of luring him away from Red Bull if the car is as bad as I suspect it will be.
Kavya
31st January 2025, 6:52
This is a fascinating post! I really appreciate the insight into Adrian Newey’s perspective on Red Bull’s car development issues. It’s clear that Newey had foresight about the direction the team was taking, even before the struggles became more apparent in 2024. The technique of using set-up tweaks to mask underlying issues was particularly eye-opening. It’s a great reminder that while a car may perform well initially, its long-term consistency is crucial. Thank you for breaking down the technical details and giving us a deeper understanding of what happened!
Stan
1st February 2025, 0:37
It’s easy to be an expert in hindsight as he’s doing here. Newey has said that with the new upcoming regs that he suspects an engine maker will get lucky find something that the others will not, much like Mercedes did in 2014. Isn’t that hypocritical of him? During the previous generation of regulations where Mercedes dominated they were the only top team with a low-rake chassis while Newey and others like RB and Ferrari were chasing an inferior high-rake design