Why Red Bull remains sceptical about its F1 development tools

Between the ever finer margins separating the Formula 1 grid and relying on an older windtunnel, Red Bull knows it is not out of the woods yet as it tackles its development issues.

To some degree Red Bull’s car balance problems that helped derail its 2024 constructors’ title bid coincided with correlation issues, with the team struggling to get the real world results to match up with the data it was receiving from its wind tunnel, simulator and computer models.

Those balance issues particularly started to hurt Red Bull from May’s Miami round onwards, when its biggest rival McLaren introduced a huge upgrade to start punishing the Milton Keynes team’s relative weaknesses. It wasn’t until Red Bull’s set-up experiments at the Italian Grand Prix in September that the team finally started finding some more definitive clues about what was happening and how to fix it, introducing some much needed upgrades in Austin which helped the RB20 feel more connected for both Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez.

Its downturn showed Red Bull that it couldn’t fully rely on its development tools, which includes an old wind tunnel that is due to be replaced by a brand-new one currently being built.

“When you have a correlation issue, then for sure you are a little bit lost,” Wache told Autosport. “You cannot trust your tools any more. And when you cannot trust your tools any more, then you have to find a way to modify your tools to find that correlation again. Then you are lost in terms of having doubts about everything you are doing. It is not being lost, but you have doubts about the results that your tools give you.”

According to Wache those correlation issues will ‘never be fully fixed’ as it’s impossible to get a 100 percent match between the real and the virtual world. But what is making things more complicated for teams over the past 12 months is that the current regulations cycle is heading into its final season and the margins for improvement are getting ever smaller, requiring a higher degree of precision in the factory. Substantial correlation issues can therefore have a bigger impact as teams chase those final tenths.

“When you have the same type of regulations for a certain period of time, then the gains you have start to be very minor and the accuracy requirements are even higher,” Wache said. “You are looking for small things. On the aero side, and it’s the same on the suspension side, you are looking for two or three downforce points inside the floor, the bodywork, etc. That will affect the rest of the car and also some areas that you didn’t test in the wind tunnel, purely because you cannot test them in CFD. It is at this stage that it starts becoming dangerous.

“The delta [performance gain] you try to find is small, and secondly you have a correlation issue because you can’t reproduce some physics.”

That can partly explain where things went wrong for Red Bull in 2024. Some of its novelties should have yielded more downforce, but in reality they also came with undesirable side-effects which affected the car’s balance.

“By definition you work with a smaller model [in the wind tunnel] and not reality, but all the other teams have the same issue, to be honest with you,” added Wache.

Red Bull indeed hasn’t been the only team affected by development difficulties, or even downgrades, with Ferrari, Aston Martin and Racing Bulls some examples of teams struggling at various points of the 2024 development race with upgrades that didn’t bring them the benefits the virtual world had promised.

One team that has escaped those pitfalls is McLaren, having hit the mark every time it brought upgrades to the cars driven by Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.

“Last year, yes,” Wache acknowledged. “But I don’t know. At the beginning of the year they were completely nowhere. The year before they were completely nowhere. In 2022, they were completely nowhere. McLaren produced a car that is good since Miami. During the 2.5 years before they were not impressive.

Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38, leads Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20

Photo by: Alexander Trienitz

“I don’t know where they are, but above all I don’t know why they didn’t find performance before, if that was due to the correlation or due to something else, I am not in their team. But the result for us is that it is more difficult to find extra performance now, even more with the tools that we have available to us.”

So, with Red Bull’s new wind tunnel not due before 2026, how much has the team been able to improve its correlation as it dovetails 2025 development with work on the all-new 2026 machinery?

“It has improved in the areas we understand,” is Wache’s cautious reply. “But in Formula 1, you are always at the mercy of having another problem. It is reality and it’s the reason why we are here, to try and anticipate the problems that we will have. It’s dangerous to trust the system blindly. I don’t say that we don’t have to, but you have to make sure that you put everything into perspective and that you don’t reproduce on track exactly what you test.”

On a more philosophical level, having a healthy dose of scepticism is crucial for development teams, and the type of correlation issues Red Bull faced over the past 12 months are a good reminder that having doubts and second guessing test results are all part of a constructive mindset.

“A team can only be good when you have doubts and when you are never sure of yourself. If you are sure of yourself, you know that you are a failure,” Wache mused. “To be very honest with you: what we faced during the past year, as an engineer I find that very positive.

“When you are winning, you never look into problems or details at the same level compared to when you are having problems on track. When you are not the quickest any more, then you look and you learn. And the more you learn, the more of an investment that is for the future.”