What Red Bull team principal Christian Horner thinks about the cars of the Formula One competition and what his team is specifically planning with the new RB21
When a regulation cycle comes to an end, many Formula 1 cars look very similar and the field is usually close. According to Red Bull team principal Christian Horner, this is “inevitable”. But one of the 2025 generation of race cars surprises him: “The Ferrari is probably the exception. This car stands out,” says Horner.
What makes him say this? Horner does not explain it. Perhaps it is the fact that Ferrari is the only top team to have made a change to the front axle suspension on the SF-25: while a pushrod suspension has been used so far, Ferrari is switching to a pullrod suspension in 2025.
This means that in this area of the car, Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull are “on an equal footing”. Only Mercedes, as the fourth top team, has a different philosophy here.
This may be one of the “marginal advantages” that Horner says could decide between winning and losing in 2025. Because that’s exactly what the last year of the expiring regulations is all about: optimizing details. That’s why the new Red Bull RB21 differs only slightly from its predecessor RB20 in visual terms.
But there are still some new things: Team boss Horner speaks of “many subtle changes,” but admits that most of them are “not directly visible,” so they are under the fairing.
He also hints that the current RB21 is not much more than a starting point for the season opener in Australia. Horner predicts: “It will be a development race from Melbourne to Abu Dhabi, and it will be about making incremental performance improvements.”
How varied will the 2025 season be?
Horner also expects track-specific fluctuations, as they have occurred in previous years. “Some cars work better than others on certain tracks. That’s what will make the races so close this year,” he says. The key, therefore, is “getting everything right on the day” and getting your technical package right.
“The biggest winners are the fans and spectators,” says Horner. ‘Because, as Zak [Brown] says, we could well see eight different race winners this year. There could also be a few surprises. So we may really be in for a very open season.’
Harmloser Dreher von Lawson beim Testauftakt
At the start of the Formula 1 winter tests in Bahrain, however, Red Bull initially faced a question mark: new team member Liam Lawson spun off the track in the morning session. It was a lucky escape: he only damaged the tires, the car remained unscathed.
What caused the spin? Horner points to the “treacherous wind” on the first day of testing and says: “I guess the wind just caught Liam at the exit of Turn 2. The gusts are pretty strong in general, so some cars had problems with that. But in general, Liam did well in his first outing,” says Horner.
