For the 2025 Formula One season, Red Bull has set itself the goal of building a car with a wider operating window to make it easier for Liam Lawson too
“It was by no means the easiest car,” Red Bull team principal Christian Horner admits with regard to the RB20 from the past 2024 Formula One season. Because although Max Verstappen secured his fourth consecutive world championship title in the car.
In the Constructors’ Championship, however, the Bulls did not finish higher than third because team-mate Sergio Perez only contributed 152 points – and thus only a good third of Verstappen’s points (437). The Mexican subsequently lost his cockpit for 2025.
This year, Liam Lawson will be sitting alongside Verstappen, and even before the New Zealander’s official announcement, Horner emphasized: “It’s very important for our team that both drivers perform and that there is no big gap [in performance].”
Interestingly, Horner does not see only the driver himself as being responsible, because he explains again: “The RB20 is definitely one of the most demanding cars we’ve ever built. The operating window for maximum performance was very, very small.”
Horner: Verstappen is “the toughest teammate”
You therefore have to make progress for the 2025 season “to expand it,” the team boss knows. Otherwise, Lawson could face a similarly difficult situation to Perez before him. “Max is the toughest teammate you could have in the world,” Horner recalls.
“So it’s a difficult job to sit next to Max and get the maximum out of the car,” says the team principal, and Helmut Marko also explains in his column for Speedweek: ‘I’m sure we can expect a close fight for the lead next year.’
“That’s normal in the last year of a regulation term. The field is closing. Because it is common practice in Formula 1 to copy the successful concepts. And the longer the specifications remain stable, the more similar the cars become,” says Marko.
“This automatically increases the performance density,” he warns, and also emphasizes that the new car needs ‘a wider window for working in so that it doesn’t lose its balance as soon as there are slight temperature fluctuations or minor technical changes.’
Marko: Verstappen sets the direction of development
“40 points of downforce are good, but four tenths of a second on the stopwatch is what interests me and the driver. The driving behavior must be predictable for the driver so that he can build the necessary confidence,” says the Austrian.
With Verstappen, you have “the fastest and best driver in the field,” says Marko, and therefore it is “also obvious that we respond to his preferences when it comes to developing the driving characteristics of the car,” says Marko.
In other words, the four-time world champion will continue to set the tone for the further development of the car. Newcomer Lawson will therefore have to work with equipment that has largely been developed according to Verstappen’s wishes.
Nevertheless, Red Bull will try to make life as easy as possible for him, so that he does not suffer the same fate as Pierre Gasly, Alexander Albon and, most recently, Sergio Perez at the side of the Dutchman.
