Christian Horner has made it clear where he wants his Red Bull team to improve in 2025.
Though their 2024 car, the RB20, was good enough for Max Verstappen to win the drivers’ title again with it, it was only quick enough for third in the Formula 1 constructors’ championship. And the Dutchman made it clear on many occasions that he was not happy with his machine.
That was understandable, given his previous two F1 cars had been by far the class of the field. Sergio Perez also struggled, complaining that the machine did not suit his driving style as he scored just 21 points after the mid-season summer break – form that led to him being replaced by Liam Lawson for 2025.
And after listening to his drivers complain about how difficult the RB20 was to drive, rather than a focus on pure speed, team principal Horner has asked his engineers to make their next machine more “user-friendly”.
“We’ve got a good understanding of where things weren’t [good],” he said. “I would say around Imola we introduced an upgrade that made the car far more peaky in its performance and it became a very narrow operating window.
“When you got into that window, like the four laps in Austria that were good enough for pole, it was very much in that window, but if you stepped a millimetre either side, it became a problematic car to drive. Max was able to mask it and drive around it, and that’s where Checo particularly this year [struggled].
“The engineers have been very focused on how you broaden that window, not necessarily adding ultimate performance, but just broadening the window so we’re across the different challenges and have a much wider operating window.”
Verstappen is hoping that his Red Bull team can get on top of their issues over the winter. If they cannot, the Dutchman has already admitted he is not likely to head into the 2025 campaign as favourite to retain his drivers’ crown.
He said: “I am not expecting us to go into next season as the favourite, but that’s a good challenge, I like it. “We went into the 2024 season as favourites and maybe it is good for us as a team, like a little wake-up call like, ‘Come on guys, we have to be on it’.
“It is a nice challenge to try and be back on top, because I think we’re still not quick, but we are getting there and sometimes are able to win again… It is a good challenge over the winter to push on, learn from the mistakes, learn from what we learned in the season and how to optimise the car and find more performance.”
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