Newey considers if 'lack of experience' at Red Bull contributed to recent car struggles

Adrian Newey has questioned whether a “lack of experience” at Red Bull was a contributing factor to the team’s struggles with the RB20 as the 2024 season progressed, with the former Chief Technical Officer admitting that he was concerned about the driveability issues arising around the car.

After a record-breaking campaign for Max Verstappen and the team in 2023 – in which the squad won all but one race – that form initially looked to have continued into the start of 2024 as Verstappen took victory in seven of the 10 opening Grands Prix.

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But the picture began to change as the season developed, with rivals McLaren and Ferrari rapidly catching up with the reigning champions. While Verstappen was able to resist the challenge from Lando Norris and claim the Drivers’ Championship, McLaren took the Constructors’ crown with Ferrari also leapfrogging Red Bull for second place.

Following the news of his impending exit from the team last May, Newey officially departs his role in the first quarter of 2025 but stopped working on F1 projects shortly after his decision to leave was announced, having instead been focused on the RB17 hypercar.

Speaking to Auto Motor und Sport, Newey – who will begin his new position as Managing Technical Partner at Aston Martin on March 1 – was asked why Red Bull’s early season dominance may have slipped away in 2024, leading to other teams catching them up.

“Obviously part of that was McLaren in particular and Ferrari as well developing their cars and doing a very good job of developing their cars,” the Briton explained.

“I think Red Bull, from what I could see, the car was – already the ’24 car and through the very last stages of ’23 as well, I would say – starting to become more difficult to drive. And of course Max could handle that if you like, it didn’t suit him but he could handle it.

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“Checo [Sergio Perez] couldn’t, so you also started through [the] ’23 season to see more of a difference in performance between the team mates, Max and Checo. That carried into the first part of ’24 but the car was still quick enough to be able to cope with it.

“It’s something I was starting to become concerned about, but not many of the people in the organisation seemed to be very concerned about.

“From what I can see from the outside – but I don’t know – the guys at Red Bull, this is no criticism but I think they just perhaps through lack of experience kept going in that same direction, and the problem became more and more acute to the point that even Max found it difficult to drive.”

When it was put to Newey that the team may have tried to cure the problem via the set-up of the car, the 66-year-old was quizzed on how much this can be done to disguise any design issues.

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“Set-up can mask problems to an extent, but the problem is still there,” said Newey. “To me set-up is more simply optimising the characteristics of the car, and of course then to an extent driver but I think that’s overegged.

“I think it’s mainly to complement the characteristics of the car, and then of course some circuit to circuit variation depending on the nature of the circuit.”