Red Bull has explained how wanting to avoid hitting a ceiling with its concept inspired the team to adopt some Mercedes-style innovations on its 2024 Formula 1 car.
The Austrian outfit had been expected to evolve the title-winning RB19, which was steered to 21 wins from 22 races last term as the side retained both titles with ease.
However, Red Bull provided a surprise earlier this month when it unveiled an RB20 challenger that possessed some striking modifications from its dominant predecessor.
Red Bull has crafted a vertical sidepod inlet reminiscent of the Mercedes ‘zeropod’ solution and has also derived inspiration from the marque with a deep engine gulley.
Red Bull Technical Director Pierre Wache has admitted that there was a degree of conservatism when it came to plumping for a design route that its rivals had ditched.
Asked whether he sensed there was an irony to Red Bull replicating Mercedes solutions, Wache told Autosport: “I don’t see it in this way, I see it more in another way.
“You try to not be emotional [with design choices], as the first reaction is, ‘ah, it’s better to have your own ideas.’ But at one point you just have to take a step back and say, ‘is the stopwatch and our system saying what’s better?’ So you test stuff and you take what is better.
“As a human being, you say, ‘I would prefer to do my own stuff.’ But it is dangerous because you have to go with your criteria, and if the criteria is what is better, we go for what is better.
“And also it is not exactly the same to be fair…it’s a lot better.”
Wache has opened up on how the concern that its competitors could capitalise on Red Bull encountering diminishing returns prompted it to pursue a radical direction.
“It was based on the simulation and numbers,” Wache responded when asked about the thinking behind making wholesale changes to a strong platform.
“You know you have to improve quite a lot because the others will come back, and you know that your concept is more or less at the plateau of what you can achieve with it.
“Well maybe not the plateau, because some others will find more, but if you want a different rate of development, you have to take a little bit of a bet and more risk. So we took this decision to take more risk quite early.
“It is an evolution of how we developed the car, but was clearly a push to give us the freedom to make a big change to the strategy overall.”
Max Verstappen dissipated the potential doubts surrounding Red Bull’s latest developments when he topped the opening day of pre-season testing by over a second.
Wache has clarified that Red Bull never viewed its aggressive design choices as a gamble but rather an educated risk that had a larger upside in performance terms.
“We don’t gamble, we just take risk. It is different,” the Frenchman added.
“You don’t do things based on what you don’t know. You say, I want to go to this direction, what can I do to achieve it? What do I have to do? And the solution is coming by itself.
“You don’t gamble. Instead you say that if I do that [change], it is more risky than if I keep it. After that you say, ‘okay, we minimise the risk by studying more and more and more.’ And to be honest, aero did a very, very good job on it.”
