Red Bull Racing's Technical Director explains how Verstappen's talent makes up for the lack of racing!

Red Bull Racing technical director Pierre Wach explains how Max Verstappen's talent masked the racing problems they encountered in 2020 and into 2021.

Red Bull RB16B may have helped Verstappen win the world title, but its 2020 car has proven to be a very difficult and unstable car that is fast in some races but also very difficult to drive.

At that time, although Red Bull Racing tried to remedy the problems of the car, Verstappen was always able to perform as if they did not have these problems. While this doesn't sound like a particularly bad thing, it means it took the team quite a while to realize they were on a cul-de-sac in development.

Speaking to Motor Sport magazine, Wach explained: "At the beginning of the 2020 season, we were not much behind Mercedes, then we had a significant decline in performance in the middle of the season and then a little bit higher. Obviously we went in the wrong direction, but we recovered because we missed something in the analysis of the direction of development. ”

'There's a characteristic of this car that Verstappen likes, it allows him to run faster, so when we develop further in that direction, his lap performance will improve."

"But then there's a bit of instability in the corners, and eventually you get to a point where it's a limiting factor and it can't be faster anymore, which also makes the car very difficult for other drivers to drive."

While Verstappen himself is sometimes plagued by the car's native instability, Wach went on to explain how Verstappen's talent masked the problems they faced with the RB16. He went on to say: "Ironically, in 2020, Max's talent is one of the factors that have caused the problems we have encountered. ”

"He has the ability to control this instability, which is impossible for other drivers. We know that sometimes you can create a faster car by putting the car on the brink of its limits, but you don't realize you're going in the wrong direction because you can squeeze faster lap times out of that design. ”

"The system is so big that rethinking the aerodynamic design of racing cars and starting over again has been a long and painful process."

"It's an advantage for Verstappen, he can set up a car with a car that's a little unstable at the tail and squeeze better performance out of that particular car that's built for him. But if we gave him this less stable car, we limited the potential of the car, and his talent left us a little at a loss for what was going on at the time. ”

Finally Wach revealed that Red Bull Racing discovered the situation in the middle of the 2020 season and then began to correct these problems, while the RB16 car won overwhelmingly at the closing station Abu Dhabi and later became the fastest car on the pitch in the first half of 2021.

"There are some characteristics of our car that make it hard for us to squeeze out the theoretical performance, which we discovered after the mid-2020 season," Wah said. ”

"These traits are the main limitations of the car and we managed to get rid of them. By the end of the season, it was confirmed that we had done it, and that laid a good foundation for our 2021 season. ”