Red Bull: We want quickest car that can be used by the drivers

Red Bull cars up to now have been designed by Adrian Newey who is is leaving the team early in 2025, and his cars, despite being demonly fast are not easy to drive.

That somehow explains how Max Verstappen with his immense talent has always been able to make the best out of his Red Bull Formula 1 cars while all the teammates that shared the garage with him struggled.

Sergio Perez has been the best teammate Verstappen had recently but also struggled massively at some points, with his future under speculation recently.

The man at Red Bull who will most probably take over the baton in the technical department after Newey leaves is Technical Director Pierre Wache and offered some insight on Perez's struggles.

Speaking to Motorsport.com, Wache was asked whether Perez struggled with Red Bull cars that are harder to driver, he said: "One part of the explanation can be that, that is correct.

"What we want is the quickest car, but in a way that can be used by the drivers, that is the main aim," he added. "If we make the car quicker in a way that Checo can use it, that means that both drivers will be able to extract the maximum out of it. Even if both drivers have different needs or preferences, the requirements for the car are still very similar.

"Fundamentally it’s the same. For sure there can be differences in driving styles, but we will not use the development of the car for that. We will use the set-up of the car," he insisted.

Wache revealed that the team tried to find "tendencies" in the car that made Perez struggle but admitted that was tough to fix especially since simulations do have limitations.

He explained: "We try to see some tendencies, but it is very difficult to highlight them because last year he was struggling as well sometimes, so it is difficult for us to find.

"The main problem we have is that we try to reproduce the car and all these things in simulations, but it doesn’t mean that it simulates exactly what the car is doing in all conditions.

"The interaction with the tyres is very difficult to reproduce, even if we try our best. Improving these areas is an important part of our process," he maintained.

While the current ground effect regulations have been described as being very prescriptive, they have been far from straight forward with several teams struggling to get their heads around them, Mercedes took three years to do so.

Other teams in the third season of these regulation still bring upgrades that backfire and need to revert to older specs to make their cars easier to drive again, Ferrari and Aston Martin being an example.

Wache explained that bringing upgrades to these F1 cars is not a straightforward exercise, he said: "That is just a risk with these types of regulations.

"It is what we have seen from some other teams as well, Mercedes for example have said that the balance was a big issue for them in previous years. Even McLaren had it at the beginning of this season.

"The balance with these cars is quite tricky to achieve, because if you create downforce in a specific area of the car that you cannot rebalance mechanically, then it is difficult to use that gain," he concluded.

While Red Bull seemed to have mastered the ground-effect F1 era early on, McLaren and Mercedes have caught up with them, and giving them a run for their money every race now, which should make the final part of the 2024 F1 season that starts with the Dutch Grand Prix even more interesting.