Verstappen: Red Bull still needs to improve on street circuits and kerbs
The RB19âs only defeat in the 2023 season came at a venue where those two elements combined with Red Bull making mistakes on its efforts to adjust its ride height settings among its typical event set-up work, which contributed to Carlos Sainzâs win for Ferrari in Singapore.
Speaking to Motorsport.com in an exclusive interview, Verstappen said for his team âit helps if we know what direction we are working inâ when discussing the ânot idealâ impact of Red Bullâs reduced development time for most of 2023 as a result of its penalty for breaching the 2021 cost cap.
When asked where Red Bull is therefore concentrating its efforts in refining and improving the RB19 â statistically F1âs most dominant car ever â Verstappen replied: âMainly I think just street circuits and low-speed, kerbing.
âThese kind of things, I think we are not the best at the moment.â
Motorsport.com then put these comments to Wache at the 2023 season finale in Abu Dhabi, where the Frenchman confirmed Verstappenâs assessment.
But he also suggested Red Bull would have to be careful not to sacrifice the RB19âs best qualities when it came to trying to address those few areas where the team felt it did struggle this year.
âThe team sees that some weakness, maybe in a different perspective than Max because Max is [a driver], but itâs more or less summarised quite well where we have to work for next year,â said Wache.
Photo by: Motorsport Images
Pierre Wache, Race Engineer, Red Bull Racing, in the Team Principals Press Conference
âLow-speed is clearly [one area]. 90-degree corners we are not the best, as you could see in quali in Baku and a different track [type there]. Singapore also was not a fantastic one.
âAnd also, our capacity to ride the kerbs and the bumpy tracks is also not perfect and we have to improve this area.
âIn our system and in this business, you never have nothing for free.
âYou can improve the overall potential of something, but most of the time itâs also affecting some other aspect of the car.
â[So], we have to be very careful not to destroy what we built in terms of strengths.
âItâs what we are trying to do â improve our weaknesses without compromising too much the strengths we have.â