Adrian Newey's Red Bull successor responds to 'lack of experience' remark from the aero wizard about the technical team
Adrian Newey's Red Bull successor, Pierre Wache, has responded to the designer's "lack of experience" remark about the technical team and feels that maybe it is true. The 2024 F1 season was a strange one for the Austrian team, where the squad started the season with a bang. At the start of the season, the car quite clearly had an advantage over the chasing pack.
As the season continued to evolve, Red Bull was caught up by the rival teams. McLaren's Miami upgrade proved to be the trigger where things started to change. From that point onwards, while the RB20 continued to get worse, the other teams continued to get better.
During this time, the car became increasingly difficult to drive, and complaints from Max Verstappen also increased. It wasn't until the race in Austin in the second half of the season that one started to see a level of resurgence. It was only during that time that Red Bull understood where it went wrong and started rectifying things.
When questioned about what had seemingly gone wrong with the car, the former technical head at the team who left early in 2024, Adrian Newey, felt that the struggle was a result of the team being inexperienced. The critique was put forward to Pierre Wache, the man that leads the technical side now that Newey has left, and the Red Bull man felt that compared to the aero wizard, he obviously lacks experience. He told PlanetF1.com:
"It’s true that I have a lot less experience than him. He’s 66 years old, and I’m 50 – 16 years less experience than him. I cannot comment on that. I don’t take it personally, and maybe it’s true. It doesn’t change anything, I think what you have to learn… this type of comment, for me, doesn’t matter.
What is important is what is true. We didn’t do a good enough job last year, and we lost ground in terms of performance – maybe by experience, maybe by misunderstanding some stuff, and we tried to correct it."
Wache felt that the most important thing was building a car that was good enough to fight at the front.
Adrian Newey's personal comment doesn't affect the Red Bull technical director
Talking about how he felt that the 2024 F1 season was a positive, Pierre Wache said (via Racing News 365):
"What is correct is that it looks, for me, that we understand. I think this is how you learn the most. When we were in 2023, we learned less than last year, and every problem you have gives you a little bit more to understand what you need to do. In this sense, I think it was very beneficial, and it’s what I enjoy the most.
Fixing a problem is our job. Personally, it doesn’t affect me. From my point of view, my job is not personal. My job is to make sure, in an engineering competition, I’m more affected by the fact that we are not good enough and losing, than a personal comment about myself."
Red Bull has its back against the wall heading into the 2025 F1 season. The team lost the constructors championship last year and would be hoping to bring it back home this time around.