Red Bull believes that the competition has now understood the ground effect cars and is basing this on observed developments
Red Bull believes that its competitors have slowly figured out the secret to the success of the current ground effect cars. This is based on some “interesting” development paths that have been observed at other racing teams
Many teams have heavily modified their cars ahead of the 2024 Formula 1 season in response to Red Bull’s dominance to date. And although building a Red Bull clone alone is no guarantee of success, as teams need to understand how the concept works, there are signs that the gap is being closed.
Red Bull’s head of engineering Pierre Wache believes that some of the development paths taken by teams – such as Mercedes’ front wing – are the best sign that the competition has understood what made his team’s previous cars so good.
“I don’t know if they understood what we did, but I think they understood it after seeing how they developed their cars,” Wache tells Motorsport.com’s global language edition.
“Even if it’s not exactly the same way – because I’m sure we’re not right everywhere – they’ve found their own way,” he says. “They’ve developed tools or certain development paths based on the problems they have and based on their own understanding.”
“Maybe they’ve found other things that could be very interesting. The possibility of working with three and a half flaps on the element of the front wing is interesting because it gives more downforce.
“They have found another way. I’m not sure they know exactly what we’ve done, because if you just copy without understanding it, it’s useless to me, but all the competitive people in this business go down a path that gives them an advantage,” said Wache.
The form shown by Red Bull’s new RB20 in testing in Bahrain last week has convinced many that the team will be the team to beat at the season opener – and could have an even bigger advantage than last year.
Are Ferrari closing in on Red Bull?
However, Wache is not quite so confident and believes that it is Ferrari’s long runs that make the Italian team a potential challenger.
When asked whether Red Bull’s lead has remained the same over the winter, Wache replies: “No, I don’t think so. I hope the gap will widen, but I don’t know. “
“I hope that we first deliver a car that works well and then we’ll see where everyone stands,” he says. “But to be honest, when I look at Ferrari, they were very fast. So I don’t know, to be honest.”
“Our biggest concern is that this track is very special. How can we transfer that to other tracks with other problems?” said Wache. “The surface is very special. I think we’re going to face a different challenge and I’m not sure it’s going to be easy.”