Red Bull go ‘all-in’ with RB21 updates for Australian GP opener

Pierre Waché: Red Bull RB21 direction is to give more setup freedom

After a solid start to life during Bahrain’s pre-season test, the RB21 faces its first competitive outing this weekend as Max Verstappen and new teammate Liam Lawson make the trek Down Under to race in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

After a tough year of mixed fortunes with the RB20, the key question of Red Bull this weekend is just how competitive the new car is – while Verstappen has indicated enjoyment of driving the car, he’s also admitted that there’s work to do to extract performance and has expressed his opinion that victory might not be possible at this point of the season.

Red Bull’s technical director Pierre Waché, the architect of the new machine, said a consideration for the new car has been to actually move away from chasing outright potential, ie. the peak performance of the car, with a key focus being on making the potential of the car easier to use for the driver overall.

“It’s not as simple as that, because it’s a characteristic that the peak of downforce is not only on one dimension,” Waché exclusively told PlanetF1.com.

“It’s a multi-dimensional system that is not only downforce – it is also suspension-wise and what the kinematic is doing, but is an overall car characteristic of how the driver feels.

“But, fundamentally, it’s exactly that – reduce the overall potential in grip and capacity of the car to make it more flat.”

Elaborating on that during an exclusive interview with PlanetF1.com, the French engineer said the change has come about as a result of realising that, even with the team having Max Verstappen behind the wheel, the RB20 had tested him to the outer limits of his talents.

“The driver is part of the system. All the driver characteristics are similar. It’s just the bandwidth they have could be a little bit different, the way they use a car,” he explained, when asked how driver confidence and comfort factors into the equation when designing a car.

“But, if you have a more flatter potential, it doesn’t matter about how the driver is, he’ll be able to deal with it.

“We know, by definition, we have with Max that we have, if not the best driver on the grid, the control he has is very high. We know last year that we achieved his limits.”

Sergio Perez, who struggled massively to perform during F1 2024, lost his drive as Red Bull opted to promote Liam Lawson into his seat, and Waché believes the Kiwi driver will benefit from the changes made to the approach in designing the RB21.

“It will help the second driver – whether that be Liam or Checo [Perez] – if we make it flatter to drive and easier to drive,” he said.

“That’s the direction now. The main purpose now is to give more freedom on the setup, to adapt to the driver by having a flatter car, to make it more fitting for him than before.

“When we had a lot peakier car, your setup is more or less given by the car to be able to use this peak. I think the driver will feel it’s really easier for him to adapt the car to him by the setup than last year’s.”

More on Red Bull in Formula 1

???? Inside Red Bull: Christian Horner and the other major players in Red Bull’s hierarchy

???? F1 team principals’ rich list: Net worth figures revealed for Wolff, Horner and more

Pierre Waché: Red Bull ‘all in’ for the first race

Red Bull introduced some updates to the RB21 on the final day of pre-season testing, including a revised front wing and nose, with the update having been brought forward ahead of an initially planned introduction at the Australian Grand Prix – the aim being to allow Red Bull to see whether its design direction is the correct one to pursue.

A major consideration for this year’s championship will be on the development path for the existing cars, as a balancing act will be required throughout the season. With F1 teams bound by a strict spending cap under the Financial Regulations, this spending cap will cover the upgrades for the current cars, as well as the development of the brand-new and revolutionary cars en route for the F1 2026 regulations overhaul.

This would suggest that the early races of this season will define how early a team swaps over to concentrating on next season – a team knowing a championship is on the line is more likely to continue developing the 2025 car, even with diminishing returns.

Asked whether Red Bull’s season will be defined by how strong the start to the season will be, Waché laughed as he pointed out the otherwise difficult 2024 season had seen Red Bull dominate with 1-2 finishes at the start of the championship.

“I don’t think it’s in this way,” he replied.

“We try to make the strongest start to a season as possible every year.

“You can make some references after race three or four, and can have a big update based on capacity.

“This time, we try to make it all in for the first race, which is why some parts are arriving a little bit earlier for evaluation.

“The way the championship will go could affect, for sure, the results we put on 2026.

“If we have a chance to win the championship, and I hope we have, we will put everything we can to win it. However, 2026 car development has already started.

“It’s just a balance. You have a package of resource which is limited, for everybody, the same – in terms of money and resource you have based on the money you spend on parts.

“You can say, ‘I put some there, I put some there also’. It also depends on the lead time, some people are working more for medium to long-term, and some people are working on short term. These people cannot split.

“But you have a middle package that you can split from one side to the other.

“Everybody has started on the 2026 car. All the paddock started, because they have no choice. We were not allowed to look at the concept before the 1st of January, aero-wise.

“So then we started, and the resource we put is shifting more to 2026 during the year – how much we shift is on how strong we are.

“But I can tell you that, after [summer] shutdown this year, most of the development resource will go for 2026 because the time to bring parts to the track will take longer. Around September time, everything will shift to 2026.”

The last time such a balancing act was required was in 2021, when Red Bull’s RB16B was developed throughout the season as a first title in eight years beckoned during a tense championship fight with Mercedes. Verstappen went on to win the title, and Red Bull duly nailed the 2022 ground-effect regulations to immediately follow it up.

But is a similar scenario to 2021 – fighting over a close title battle while trying to create a brand-new car for different rules – a nightmare scenario?

“You still develop, but still a big part of the of the resource of development was on 2022,” Waché said.

“The nightmare is you use your capacity up, because you have a limited capacity on wind tunnel and CFD, in terms of what you can do – you still use some capacity there to develop the current car. So it’s a possibility!”