Max Verstappen has repeatedly stated in 2024 that in his eyes the window in which the RB20 worked well was far too small. Only in a certain number of circumstances, with a certain set-up, did Red Bull Racing manage to get the most out of Verstappen’s car. But for most of the season, the Dutchman drove a suboptimal car.

The reason for this was that the RB20 was a ‘diva’, as Verstappen’s 2024 car was described by team boss Christian Horner. The RB20 had a small operating window and if Red Bull’s engineers went even slightly outside that window, the car performed a lot less than expected. According to Verstappen, the most important task was to increase the operating window for 2025.

But technical director Pierre Waché has to give Verstappen bad news. It may be the four-time world champion’s wish to have a larger working window, but that does not necessarily mean that the car will perform better. If the RB21 gets a wider window, the overall performance of the car will suffer, the Frenchman believes.

“As a dream, you want that, of course, but you know that the overall potential decreases as you increase the window ,” Waché told Motorsport.com . “If you look at other teams’ cars and how they lay, they’re all insanely stiff. What you want is to make the fastest car, but it’s not like a car is slow just because the window it’s working in is small.”

Red Bull has learned from mistakes

However, it is not all bad news for Verstappen. According to the technical director of Red Bull Racing, the team has learned a lot from the mistakes it made in 2024. Where they had gone in the right direction in 2023 with the development of the RB19, which was also clearly visible in the results, they made mistakes in 2024. Mistakes that they have learned from.

“The most important thing is that you are always looking for ways to make the car faster and at the same time make sure that the drivers can get the most out of it. In 2023 we proved that our direction was right, because we were faster than the others. Last year we learned that we were wrong then. It is always about finding a balance between the balance of a car and its overall potential. We have to solve that problem for next season.”