Andrea Stella has recognized Red Bull’s courage in implementing significant alterations to a setup that was highly successful last year.
The considerable advancements Red Bull has introduced this season have taken competing teams aback. Many of them had concentrated on deciphering the secrets behind the previous year’s RB19’s success, resulting in designs heavily influenced by the championship-winning car. However, Red Bull has now chosen a divergent path.
“I have to say when I saw the car, I was like, ‘Wow, they certainly were brave in changing some of the shapes that made that car so successful last year,’” said Stella.
“I think they could enjoy such an advantage last year that it gave them confidence from a timeline point of view to take some risks, because you can take these risks early on to actually see whether it works.
“What I would say, though, is that while there is innovation, that we can see macroscopically, like I’ve said already, in these regulations a lot is in millimetres. And a lot happens in work we don’t see between the underneath of the car and the ground.
Stella, alongside McLaren CEO Zak Brown, had earlier expressed concerns over Red Bull’s potential to achieve significant progress in 2024.
They believed that Red Bull could channel its research and development resources more freely since it did not need to significantly enhance the RB19 throughout the previous season.
Stella confirmed that these apprehensions have come to fruition, with Red Bull deploying its resources towards creating an innovative new package.
“I would there are say two elements,” he said. “First of all car design, there’s some element of significant evolution on that car that certainly required time to be developed.
“And I think this is the time that we were referring to Zak and myself, in terms of like Red Bull not having developed last year parts that were introduced on the 2023 car.
“And the second element is performance itself. It looks like they are very strong. So it looks like what they wanted to achieve from a design point of view also delivered what I would say predominantly seems to be aerodynamic performance.”
