Ferrari appears to have pursued a different approach with its 2025 car than several of its rivals, says Red Bull team principal Christian Horner.
He described Red Bull’s new RB21 as an extensive but subtle evolution of last year’s car, which the team struggled with at times. In the fourth year of largely unchanged technical regulations, teams’ designs are increasingly similar.“It’s clear that the cars have converged and they look very, very similar,” said Horner. “I think, probably, Ferrari is a standout as probably being a differentiator.
“But it’s inevitable that marginal gains are going to be there. Every surface on our car is different to last year, it just looks similar because it’s a similar philosophy. And you can see other cars have converged with that.”
Horner pointed out they still won the most races of any team last year, and the RB20 served as a good starting point for development.
“I think we’ve just got to improve across some of the characteristics of last year’s car,” he said. “The team [have] worked very hard on that over the over the off-season.
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“Let’s not forget we still won nine [grands prix] and four sprint races with that car last year so we had a reasonable basis from which to develop.
“But the competition is is very tight and, of course, in the last year of this set of regulations, you can see the convergence. The cars all look incredibly similar today and I think it’s going to be very, very competitive throughout the season from the first race all the way through the season.”
“We’ve had a good winter,” he added. “This car, whilst it doesn’t look a huge amount visibly different to last year’s car, is subtly different in many different areas and particularly in the areas that you can’t see.”
Red Bull do not intend to introduce any significant changes to the car before the new season begins in Australia next month.
“It’s basically the car that will start the season,” said Horner. “There may be some subtle changes introduced between now and then, but fundamentally it’s what we’ll be taking to Melbourne.”
The team’s new driver Liam Lawson had a brief spin during his stint yesterday, which Horner blamed on the blustery conditions at the track.
“The wind is pretty tricky out there and I think it just caught Liam out on the exit of turn two. We’ve seen a lot of cars having different moments as the gusts are pretty strong out there. But I think Liam’s had a good first official session for us and settled in well so far.”
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An Sionnach
27th February 2025, 16:46
Let’s see about that. There seems to have been something in last year’s Red Bull that wasn’t dissimilar to the undriveable cars that Schumacher could get a result in, but nobody else could. Perhaps the difference between it and the 1994 Benetton was that the RB20 was underwhelming even in the hands of a maestro quite a bit of the time.
jpvalverde85 (@jpvalverde85)
28th February 2025, 13:59
So they are still trying to figure it out RB20 in this upgrade, rebuilding it, early yet but still looks like a handful, Marko justifying that Lawson is all over the place (like Checo would, but now giving some credit to the driver). We have to wait but just as last year ended, Red Bulls aren’t lookin good so far, even Williams found solid ground and I would not be surprised if both Carlos and Alex start the season stronger than Max and Liam.