Red Bull Technical Director Pierre Wache has admitted that the team’s 2025 Formula 1 car hasn’t delivered as positive a step “as we expected” following pre-season testing.
The initial impression surrounding the RB21 was a positive one as Max Verstappen expressed that the car was handling better than the team’s troubled 2024 predecessor.
Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko echoed those comments as he suggested that the squad’s subtle tweaks had dialled out the capriciousness embedded within the RB20.
But while more parts were added – including a revised front wing – Red Bull experienced a mixed end to proceedings as Verstappen experimented more with the RB21’s set-up.
That has resigned Wache to conceding that Red Bull has work to do in the gap prior to the opening race to unlock the untapped potential that he believes the car harbours.
“I am not as happy as I could be because the car did not respond how we wanted at times, but it is going in the right direction, just maybe the magnitude of the direction was not as big as we expected and it’s something we need to work on for the first race and future development,” Wache said.
Red Bull ran into several teething troubles, including on the last day as Verstappen was limited to 81 laps, ensuring Red Bull ended the test as the team with the least mileage.
Wache professed that Red Bull encountered more disruptions than desired, but he has insisted that it is better to encounter such setbacks at testing and not race weekends
“It was not as smooth a test as we expected and the team expected, but it is better to find some problems here than later down the line and it is why we are here, to understand the car,” he added.
Wache highlighted how the abnormally cool conditions present in Bahrain complicated matters as the team endeavoured to obtain an accurate gauge on the RB21’s behaviour.
“The weather was not with us and not very representative of this track,” he continued.
“But we tried to explore the potential of the car and tried to understand how it responds to different set-ups, and I think we more or less achieved that.”
Wache is convinced that Red Bull will be embroiled within a tight battle with McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes, though he is unsure about where it lies relative to the opposition.
“I think it’s very difficult to see a starting order for Melbourne across the grid right now, you see that four teams look quite quick, including us, but we didn’t look too much at other teams, we tried to focus on our programme,” the Frenchman concluded.
