Pierre Wache, as Red Bull’s technical director, describes how he perceived the turnaround in the 2024 Formula 1 season in favor of McLaren
Until the Miami Grand Prix, Red Bull dominated the 2024 Formula 1 season. Then, however, McLaren began to play at the top, and it became more difficult for world championship leader Max Verstappen. But what exactly happened in Miami that caused Red Bull to falter and allowed McLaren to suddenly become a contender?
“That’s a good question,” says Pierre Wache in an interview with Motorsport.com Netherlands. The Red Bull technical director still cannot explain the turnaround beyond doubt. His reasoning: ”We didn’t change the car [in Miami]. We also didn’t change the direction of the setup.”
Wache does not believe that Red Bull simply failed to detect a possible mistake: “We really looked at everything. That’s our job, and we want to understand it.”
“It just seems that the turnaround was more likely to have come from other teams than from major changes at our end. We were simply surprised by how much progress the others had made, even though the update wasn’t that extensive. But: that suddenly changed the package completely, and that was a huge surprise.”
How McLaren rebuilt the MCL38 in Miami
Because Miami marked Lando Norris’ first victory in Formula 1 and for Red Bull, it marked the turning point of the 2024 season. “After that, we weren’t the fastest anymore,” says Wache. “Something had changed, especially with McLaren: their tire wear was lower than any other team’s. And the McLaren package seemed to work very well after that.”
“I don’t know exactly what they did. You’d have to ask McLaren themselves,” says Wache. Or you could take a look at the official document from the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), which outlines the technical adjustments to the cars before each race weekend – according to the individual teams.
McLaren had submitted its first major update of the year for Miami, consisting of a total of ten individual components: front wing, front suspension, underbody, air intakes in the side pod, engine hood, cooling slots, rear suspension, brake shafts and beam wing. So much was new about the MCL38 at the sixth race weekend of the 2024 season.
Red Bull made only a small modification in Miami in favor of reliability
Red Bull made only a small modification in Miami in favor of reliability: To save weight without compromising the rigidity of the underbody, the team removed a clamp on the outer edge of the underbody. Nothing more.
According to Wache, this measure did not have a significant impact on the Red Bull RB20. He says: “Our car behaved similarly to how it did in China, where we won dominantly.”
Before that, Red Bull had used various technical innovations in Japan and China that had worked “very well” according to Wache. “We were more or less on the same level in Miami, but McLaren got their performance spot on in the race.”
“But honestly, we should have won the race anyway.” However, an unfortunate safety car period from Red Bull’s point of view, as well as damage to Verstappen’s underbody, played into McLaren’s hands and paved the way for Norris to claim his first victory in Formula 1.
Afterwards, there was a lot of speculation about why Red Bull was unable to maintain its early form in 2024. There was talk of an “asymmetrical brake”. But Wache dismisses this: “Something like that doesn’t influence me. Speculation doesn’t do us any good. It also doesn’t change the fact that I’m under pressure every weekend to deliver the best possible car.”
