"Until this year it did everything right": Max Verstappen avoids placing blame on Red Bull's 'cold war relic' wind tunnel for the team's issues

Max Verstappen has dismissed suggestions that Red Bull's somewhat older wind tunnel could be the issue behind the team's struggles this season. The 2024 F1 season began similarly to 2023 for the Dutch driver. He dominated the first few races, and the car looked strong compared to the rivals. As the season has continued to evolve, things have changed a lot in terms of the pecking order.

Since McLaren introduced its major upgrade in Miami, the pecking order has had a major reshuffle. Red Bull has continued to go back; after the summer break, there have even been races where Verstappen had a car that was just 4th fastest on the track.

One of the factors, pointed out by many, might be that Red Bull continues to operate with a wind tunnel that has been described as a 'cold war relic' by Christian Horner.

With the out-of-date Windtunnel, it ]makes it hard to get the perfect correlation for the team when it comes to bringing upgrades to the track. Verstappen, however, does not think that the wind tunnel alone is a factor, as before this season, Red Bull had been formidable with the same tools. He told Autosport,

“It’s true that we have a fairly old wind tunnel, but until this year it did everything right. Some things are just hard to understand. You see that with all the other teams as well, except McLaren."

He added,

“All teams have had their own problems, including teams with modern wind tunnels. I think it is just extremely difficult to fine-tune things perfectly or to get exactly the right data out of it. That can be down to a lot of things in the wind tunnel itself or how it correlates with the track.”

Max Verstappen details early struggles with the car

Max Verstappen talked about how the feeling with the car was not that good from the beginning, but since the other teams were slower, the team was able to work around the deficiencies. As soon as the other teams started catching up, it became harder to just paper over the cracks for Red Bull, and the troubles became more pronounced. He said,

"Early on I realised that the feeling was very different from last year’s car in terms of balance. At that time our car was still a lot quicker than the others, or maybe I should say that the others were not so good back then, so at that stage we could still compensate for our difficulties."

He added,

"In the races after that it got worse and worse. At one point our car was just very difficult to drive and at the same time the others made real progress.”

Heading into the last six races of the season, Max Verstappen has a 52-point lead to defend against Lando Norris. A lot would depend on the upgrade that the team brings to the car in Austin.