Red Bull Critical Of RB21 After Pre-Season Testing As Car Fails To Meet Expectations

Red Bull technical director Pierre Waché is critical of the progress on the team's 2025 challenger, the RB21, stating on the final day of pre-season testing that the car fell short of his expected improvements. While acknowledging that the weather did not favor the RB21, he noted that the team still gathered valuable data to analyze and improve upon.

According to Waché, Day 3 of testing did not go as smoothly as expected, as he identified issues with the car that need to be addressed. However, he remained optimistic, noting that it was better to encounter these problems during testing rather than at the season opener in Melbourne. Thus, Waché pointed out that it would be tough to predict where the RB21 would be placed on the starting grid at the Australian Grand Prix. He told the media:

“I think it’s very difficult to see a starting order for Melbourne across the grid right now, you see that four teams look quite quick, including us, but we didn’t look too much at other teams, we tried to focus on our programme.

“It was not as smooth a test as we expected and the Team expected, but it is better to find some problems here than later down the line and it is why we are here, to understand the car.

“The weather was not with us and not very representative of this track, but we tried to explore the potential of the car and tried to understand how it responds to different set-ups, and I think we more or less achieved that.”

Concluding his assessment of the test, Waché said:

“I am not as happy as I could be, because the car did not respond how we wanted at times, but it is going in the right direction, just maybe the magnitude of the direction was not as big as we expected and it’s something we need to work on for the first race and future development.”

Red Bull only managed 304 laps on the final day of testing at the Bahrain International Circuit, with four-time champion Max Verstappen admitting that the team has work to do before the race at the Albert Park Grand Prix circuit. He said:

“I think we had a decent day today, there were a few little problems but overall, we completed quite a bit of what we wanted to do.

“I think it wasn’t bad but at the same time there is still a bit of work to do.

“However, it is what we expected and we will keep on working and keep on trying to improve and hopefully, as we go into Melbourne, we will learn a bit more by going through all the data and see where we are at.

“It is difficult to tell where everyone’s pace is, so there is still a bit of work to do for us. We are looking forward to starting racing properly again in Australia.”