Waché doesn't aquiesce to Marko's and Horner's request: 'Why would you?'
Red Bull Content Pool
F1 News
- Kimberley Hoefnagel
Pierre Wache understands that Christian Horner and Helmut Marko would like the RB21's set-up window to be larger, but has no intention of making these changes. Indeed, the technical director argues that this would cause the team to lose performance, which he refuses to do if it only benefits the engineers.
Marko and Horner would like to see the RB21 have a bigger set-up window than the RB20 did so that the team can perform more consistently. However, according to Waché, increasing the set-up window would pose problems. "As a dream, of course you want that, but you know that the overall potential decreases if you increase the window," he told the Dutch branch of Motorsport.com. The Red Bull Racing technical director stresses, "What you want is to produce the fastest car, but it's not that a car is slow because the window in which it operates is small."
Waché therefore argues that it is not a question of increasing the window in which the car performs ideally, but of finding the window. Indeed, then it would not matter how big or small it is. He argues that you want to be in the right window at every circuit so that you can anticipate it. "If you can achieve that, why would you want to increase the window and flatten the overall potential of a car?" he asks.
Plans for the RB21
The Frenchman stresses that his goal is to have the fastest car, and Marko and Horner's ideas don't seem to align with that. Waché therefore issues a stern statement that may dissapoint Red Bull Racing's chiefs. "I will not lower the overall potential to make it easier operationally. You can lower the potency to help drivers so they can drive the car, but not to help engineers use the car."
Despite being active in F1 since 2001, former Red Bull colleague, Adrian Newey, recently alluded to a potential inexperience on the Austrian team's side as the reason behind their 2024 woes. Waché started his Formula 1 career at the then tyre supplier Michelin, before moving to BMW Sauber as a performance engineer. Joining Red Bull in 2013, he's played an important role ever since, first as Chief Engineer of Performance Engineering before stepping up as technical director in 2018.
This article was written in collaboration with Norberto Mujica.
Want more Formula 1? Then follow GPblog on our various social media channels too!