Red Bull’s technical director Pierre Wache is not satisfied with the test week in Bahrain because the car is not performing as desired – Are the problems continuing?
Does Red Bull have bigger problems than expected after all? At the beginning of the test week, motorsport consultant Helmut Marko was still very satisfied and emphasized that the problems from the 2024 season had been “largely” if not “perhaps completely” resolved.
Two days later, however, the Red Bull camp sounded rather disgruntled: “I’m not as satisfied as I could be,” complained technical director Pierre Wache, who is in charge this year without Adrian Newey. The reason: “The car didn’t always react the way we wanted it to.”
Are the handling problems that made life difficult for Red Bull and Max Verstappen last year still there? The Dutchman was only able to manage his large championship lead in the second half of the season, while the team itself slipped to third place.
Verstappen himself had stated after the first day that he had fun driving, which was the most important thing. On Friday, however, he lost control of his car once and spun at turn 1.
A spin for Max Verstappen at the first corner! F1Testing F1 pic.twitter.com/zPrZ4G7pOA
— Formula 1 (@F1) February 28, 2025
“I think we had a decent day today,” says the world champion. “There were a few small problems, but overall we got some of what we set out to do done. I think it wasn’t bad, but at the same time there is still some work to be done. However, that was to be expected and we will continue to work and try to improve.”
“Hopefully when we come to Melbourne, analyzing all the data, we can learn even more and see where we stand. It’s hard to gauge what the pace of the other teams is, so we still have work to do,” he says.
Fewest laps of all teams
What did become a problem for Red Bull in the days leading up to Bahrain, though, was the mileage of the RB21. As on Thursday, when they had to deal with a leak in the radiator, Red Bull was also the team with the fewest laps on the final day: just 81. All the other teams completed triple-digit numbers.
In total, the team completed 304 laps over the three days. By comparison, Mercedes completed 458 laps, which is almost three full Grand Prix distances and 50 percent more than Red Bull.
“The tests didn’t go as smoothly as we had expected,” Wache admits, “but it’s better to find problems here than later in the season. That’s exactly why we’re here – to understand the car.”
“The weather wasn’t on our side and not really representative of this track, but we tried to explore the car’s potential and understand how it reacts to different setups. I think we’ve largely succeeded in doing that,” he continues.
But it is difficult for the team to gauge exactly where Red Bull stands. “You can see that four teams seem to be quite fast – we are one of them,” says Wache, “but we didn’t focus too much on the others, we concentrated on our own program.”
