Ultra-dominant this season in Formula 1, Red Bull could evolve next year in “a much tighter and much more complicated championship” for the Austrian team, its technical director Pierre Waché told AFP: “No more regulations remains stable, the more the advantage we have today will be reduced,” believes the Frenchman, who is banking on the strong comeback of Mercedes and Ferrari, but also McLaren and Aston Martin “who have done a very good job This year “.
Asked about the domination of Red Bull this season, where Max Verstappen has signed twelve victories, including ten in a row, the technical director does not really have an explanation: “The domination also depends on others (…) we made a very good car, but performance is never absolute, it is relative compared to others. In the team, we don’t yet really realize what’s happening. »
“They made some mistakes”
He believes that the competition is not at their level: “We thought that Mercedes and Ferrari would be much closer to us at the start of the season. They made some mistakes. It can happen to anyone, but they catch up pretty quickly. » But, these teams will be able to fall behind, in particular because of the 10% reduction in development time for the Red Bull single-seater in the wind tunnel for one year, due to exceeding budgetary limits.
“This penalty will have a much greater impact on the 2024 car. We have a lower development slope,” adds Pierre Waché. Afterwards, we have to see if this will slow down our overall performance or not. What we must understand is that this penalty is not there to take away our performance. It is there to reduce our performance gain”