Red Bull RB21 fears raised by Guenther Steiner after ‘arrogance’ exposed by ‘bad F1 2024 decisions’

Red Bull RB21 to be compromised by poor F1 2024 choices?

Having enjoyed the most successful season in history last year, winning 21 out of a possible 22 races as Max Verstappen collected a third consecutive World Championship, Red Bull were expected to dominate once again in F1 2024.

Yet despite starting the season with four wins from the first five races – including three one-two finishes for Verstappen and team-mate Sergio Perez in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Japan – Red Bull have faded as the year has developed.

Although Verstappen continues to hold a 62-point lead over Lando Norris, the reigning World Champion remains without a win since the Spanish Grand Prix on June 23 – a current six-race drought his longest barren run since the 2020 season.

Red Bull’s lead over McLaren, meanwhile, has been cut to eight points ahead of next weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix, where the Milton Keynes outfit could lose the lead of the Constructors’ Championship for the first time since May 2022.

Speaking to media including PlanetF1.com after the race at Monza, Verstappen admitted that it is “not realistic” for Red Bull to retain both titles if the situation remains unchanged and called for the team to “turn the car upside down” after making the RB20 “a monster.”

Appearing on the Red Flags podcast, Steiner argued that the team’s lack of a low-downforce rear wing for Monza was a reflection of the “arrogance” at Red Bull following their strong start to F1 2024.

And he fears the team may not have a competitive car for the start of F1 2025, having struggled to resolve the RB20’s mid-season woes.

Steiner said: “Next year, we need to see where the Red Bull is.

“It doesn’t seem like that they are making a lot of advances, that they will be ready for next year.

“I think they were a little bit underperforming in Monza.

“Max said they didn’t have a special Monza spec – they didn’t develop one – and I think that came out of [their early F1 2024 dominance].

“When you start to think about the Monza spec, you’re developing it at the beginning of the year.

“And they said: ‘Our car is good enough anyway, we don’t need the Monza spec, let’s put the effort into other things.’

“And then here you are. You needed a Monza spec, because everybody else brought quite a big package for it. Everybody else put a lot of effort in to bring one.

“I think Red Bull were the only ones not bringing one and this obviously was not what they wanted, but it was too late to change their mind or too late to develop something, so that is where they ended up.

“They were in a [good] position at the beginning of the year and they keep on going backwards, making bad decisions.

“No specific aero kit for Monza? It’s almost arrogance.”

In an exclusive interview with PlanetF1.com in July, Red Bull technical director Pierre Waché acknowledged the team had pushed the boundaries “maybe too much” with the design of the RB20, resulting in “some characteristics not designed for the driver.”

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Waché went on to suggest that Red Bull plan to “develop this car as much as possible” ahead of F1 2025, before teasing that the RB21 concept “will be different than this year, for sure.”

With Verstappen voicing his displeasure, Steiner believes Red Bull now face a pivotal decision over their current concept with it now “too late” for an upgrade to make a significant difference in F1 2024.

He explained: “I think for this year, what Max means is that the concept they’ve got on the car now, with just making changes to this concept, they cannot get [back to the top].

“He’s saying: ‘With this concept, we are at a dead end. We try to do a package, but it doesn’t bring performance. Whatever we do doesn’t work anymore. We need to make changes to the car, which we cannot do on this car anymore. We need to put a new concept in place for next year.’

“I think that’s what he is hinting at, so whatever you put on now you can make it a little bit better.

“But I do not think that on this car, which they have got now, any upgrade package will make a big change. It’s too late.

“After you develop it and produce it, [it won’t arrive until] after Abu Dhabi. No point.

“The thing they have to decide now is: ‘Do we do something big for this year still? And do we have the money? Under the budget cap, is there still something we can do on this car?’

“Take a risk. Maybe doesn’t work again, like a few packages they’ve had.

“Or let’s say we squeeze out from the packages – because they swap around between packages at the races, depending on the track layout – let’s continue to do this and focus on next year so we are back to our strength.

“Because that will take money as well. The money you spend for next year is going into this year’s budget, so I don’t know.

“They know what they tried and what worked and what didn’t work.

“I think whatever they put on, it doesn’t work like it does in the wind tunnel. I think in the wind tunnel they find gains.

“With this [generation of] car, they’re not the only ones having this problem. A few other [teams] are having these problems.

“You go in the wind tunnel and find 10 more points of downforce, then you put it on the car but you cannot use them because the car is not driveable and the car actually goes slower.”