© Jiri Krenek for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
Red Bull’s Technical Director Pierre Wache explains why the team decided to adopt a version of Mercedes’ controversial ‘zero sidepod’ design.
When Red Bull revealed its 2024 car, a lot of observers were very surprised, because the car featured some of the concepts that Mercedes had previously used and ultimately decided to abandon.
For example, Red Bull decided to included the full-length engine gulleys, similar to the ones that Mercedes had used in 2023.
Red Bull also decided to include slimmer sidepods, somewhat reminiscent of Mercedes’ controversial ‘zero sidepod’, which was introduced at the beginning of 2022, and then abandoned during the 2023 season.
So, while other teams have very much converged on Red Bull’s old designs, the Austrian team now seems to be ‘copying’ what are thought to be ‘failed’ designs of its opposition.
The team’s Technical Director Pierre Wache was asked whether he thinks there’s a certain irony in that fact.
“I don’t see it in this way, I see it more in another way,” Wache explained.
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“You try to not be emotional [with design choices], as the first reaction is: ‘Ah, it’s better to have your own ideas.’
“But at one point you just have to take a step back and say, ‘is the stopwatch and our system saying what’s better?’ So you test stuff and you take what is better.
“As a human being, you say, ‘I would prefer to do my own stuff’, but it is dangerous because you have to go with your criteria, and if the criteria is ‘what is better’, we go for what is better.
“And also it is not exactly the same to be fair…it’s a lot better.”
Wache was then asked what prompted the team to radically change their car’s design, when their 2022 and 2023 car were so dominant.
“It was based on the simulation and numbers. You know you have to improve quite a lot because the others will come back, and you know that your concept is more or less at the plateau of what you can achieve with it.
“Well maybe not the plateau, because some others will find more, but if you want a different rate of development, you have to take a little bit of a bet and more risk. So we took this decision to take more risk quite early.
“It is an evolution of how we developed the car, but was clearly a push to give us the freedom to make a big change to the strategy overall.”
Wache added the changes the team has made were calculated risks.
“We don’t gamble – we just take risk. It is different. You don’t do things based on what you don’t know.
“You say, ‘I want to go to this direction, what can I do to achieve it? What do I have to do?’ And the solution is coming by itself.
“You don’t gamble. Instead you say that if I do that, it is more risky than if I keep it. After that you say: ‘Okay, we minimise the risk by studying more and more and more.’
“And to be honest, aero did a very, very good job on it,” the French designer concluded.
