Red Bull's technical director has acknowledged that the "risks" taken with the design of the 2024 car might not achieve the desired outcomes.
Throughout the year, the once-dominant Formula 1 team has been embroiled in a leadership controversy, including a scandal involving team boss Christian Horner and a female employee, which has recently concluded.
"The internal process has concluded," confirmed Red Bull GmbH, the team's parent company, after the woman's appeal was not upheld.
During this tumultuous period, Adrian Newey felt uncomfortable and eventually decided to leave Red Bull. He is now reportedly set to join Aston Martin starting in early 2025.
Concurrently, Red Bull and Max Verstappen's prior dominance has waned. Pierre Wache, the team's continuing technical director, was questioned by Auto Motor und Sport about whether fundamentally altering the design of the highly successful 2023 car was a misstep.
"We assumed the competition would catch up quickly," Wache explained.
"So we took some risks. Now it looks like it didn't pay off as much as we had hoped."
"But this risk was necessary," Wache, aged 49, continued. "We have the oldest wind tunnel, so the detailed work suffers. We knew the others would optimise their concepts sooner or later. So we needed a radical step.
Taking risks is the mentality of this team, but I can't judge yet whether it was a good or bad move. Perhaps at the end of the year we will come to the conclusion that it would have been better to develop the concept we already had," he added.
Nevertheless, Wache revealed that Red Bull plans to introduce "a few more upgrades" during the second half of the season in an effort to maintain its lead in both championships.
Dr. Helmut Marko, Red Bull's F1 consultant, expressed frustration that the team cannot address its issues during the August break shutdown.
"That means the big solution cannot come in Zandvoort," he stated in his latest Speed Week column.
"We are brainstorming intensively and have various ideas. But I cannot say yet what we will implement and how," added Marko, 81.
"However, we were the fastest in Austria and also in Spa, so we are complaining at a high level," concluded the Austrian.
