Verstappen and Red Bull start 2025 F1 season with significant advantage
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F1 News
- Nicole Mulder
Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing will start the 2025 Formula 1 season off with a big win. The Austrian racing team may have missed out on the constructors' title, but the team has gained significant time in the wind tunnel.
Verstappen and Red Bull start the 2025 F1 season with a big advantage
Every six months, F1 teams are measured on how they stand in the championship. Based on the rankings, how much time the teams get in the wind tunnel is then determined. During the 2024 season, as the reigning world champion, Red Bull had the least wind tunnel time of all the teams. Only in the second half of the year did McLaren take over the lead in the constructors' championship, and then in the closing stages, Red Bull was also overtaken by Ferrari.
Third place in the final standings means Red Bull misses out on a hefty sum of prize money but enjoys an added advantage. From 1 January, the Milton Keynes-based team will get more time in the wind tunnel as well as more CFD simulations. After the problems Red Bull faced in 2024, the team could make good use of the extra time to develop the RB21.
McLaren loses time in wind tunnel
McLaren is actually losing out. The Woking-based F1 team was only third in the championship on 1 July 2024, behind Red Bull and Ferrari. The current constructors' champions were thus able to benefit from extra wind tunnel time over the past year compared to the competition but will actually get the least time of all the teams from 1 January.
The team of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri will have to make do with 70 per cent of wind tunnel time, losing 10 per cent. Ferrari is allocated 75 per cent of the time and sees no change from the second half of 2024. On the other hand, Red Bull gains 10 per cent and is now allowed to spend 80 per cent of the norm in the wind tunnel (960 hours). In practice, that amounts to an extra 120 hours compared to McLaren (840 hours) and 60 extra hours compared to Ferrari (900 hours).
Verstappen is happy with extra wind tunnel time
Max Verstappen welcomes the extra time in the wind tunnel, he told GPblog and others. "We have, I guess, a positive. We won the drivers’, didn't win the constructors’, so we gained a bit of wind tunnel time, in a way, maybe that's positive," the Dutchman concluded in Abu Dhabi.
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