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Is Red Bull poor performance due to wind tunnel? 'Hard to understand'
In 2023, Red Bull Racing achieved an absolutely dominant F1 season, winning 21 out of the total 22 races. At the beginning of 2024 season, viewers widely expected a repeat of this dominant performance, but this has suprisingly not been the case. Max Verstappen explains where the problems are coming from and whether they are linked to the team's ageing wind tunnel.
Since around the halfway point of this season, Red Bull has been struggling with the performance of their car. The updates brought by the team have not been improving their performance and the team's drivers have been complaining about multiple problems with the car.
Speaking to Autosport, Max Verstappen speculated that the RB20 is suffering as it is difficult to get the car's floor upgrades right under the new regluations. "It seems trickier than that everyone thinks... It's a lot more sensitive with upgrades than under previous regulations."
Is there a problem with the Red Bull wind tunnel?
The Austrian team are known to have a relatively outdated wind tunnel when compared with the rest of the grid as the team are working on a new facility. Verstappen discusses whether the wind tunnel's age is affecting the car's performance, "It's true that we have a fairly old wind tunnel, but until this year it did everything right. Some things are just hard to understand."
Regardless of the age of each team's wind tunnel, the Dutch driver explained that all teams, except McLaren, have been struggling with a mismatch in data between their wind tunnels and the track. "I think it is just extremely difficult to fine-tune things perfectly or to get exactly the right data out of it," Verstappen said.
This article has been created in collaboration with Sandy van Wijngaarden.
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