Red Bull staff share what impact Adrian Newey’s exit has made on this season’s car troubles

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Red Bull faces uncertainty over defending its Constructors’ Championship this season after encountering problems with its RB20.

The season started off promising for the defending champions, with Max Verstappen regularly winning races by similar margins to the 2023 season and Sergio Perez achieving a one-two.

Things changed once rival teams McLaren and Ferrari brought their first major upgrades to their 2024 challengers, with both seemingly achieving a breakthrough in performance that suddenly put them on par with Red Bull.

Although the RB20 is an evolution of the dominant RB19, it features a more aggressive design platform that has thrown up some problems for the team this season. Red Bull broke one of the ‘golden rules’ of the current ground effect cars with its upgrades, delivering too much downforce that impacted the ride height.

The team later traced its problems back to an update made as far back as the 2023 season in Spain, and have since been playing catch up. Red Bull later brought a big upgrade to their floor at the US Grand Prix which appeared to put them back on course, but they are still third quickest compared to their rivals.

What makes things worse for Red Bull is the departure of Adrian Newey, who is set to join Aston Martin in March next year. Although their problems date back before Newey’s exit, according to journalist Scott Mitchell-Malm on The Race, the team is still missing his valuable input on race weekends.

Red Bull’s troubles down to Adrian Newey’s departure

Mitchell-Malm was asked how much Red Bull not having the fastest car anymore was down to Newey’s departure and he said: “If you ask anybody inside Red Bull, they’ll say it has nothing to do with that because some of the problems date back a lot further back in Newey’s late Red Bull career to last year and the floor upgrade in Barcelona in 2023.

“Some evidence that they started to see manifest itself later in the season.

“I think Horner’s talked about Austin 2023 as being one [race] where they really noticed some stuff wasn’t being resolved as hoped.

READ MORE: Adrian Newey resigned after Red Bull staff did something to 2024 car he was ‘strongly against’

“Also, there are some people within Red Bull who say Newey’s had no major influence on the last couple of Red Bulls.

“I think that does him a little bit of a disservice but unless you’re there on the ground actually part of that technical organisation knowing exactly what it is he influenced and how much he helped come up with ideas, how much he would troubleshoot others, you can’t say for certain.

“What I would say is I am sure they’re missing his input in trying to fix these problems.”

Max Verstappen set to take power unit penalty in Brazil

Heading into the Sao Paulo Grand Prix, Verstappen might be about to take an engine penalty after switching out one in his pool over the Mexico City GP weekend.

Verstappen would face a grid drop of five places or more depending on how many parts they have to change. This was after his engine was down on power for most of the race in Mexico, with him clocking the second-slowest speeds through the intermediate speed trap.

READ MORE: The most successful F1 drivers at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix and ever in Brazil

Helmut Marko believes any new engine will come as a boost to Verstappen’s title chances, as he will also have increased top speed. This would make coming from the back of the grid a lot easier for Verstappen, especially considering it is a Sprint weekend.

Much of the talk will also be centred around Verstappen’s driving, which has come under the spotlight again after he received two 10-second time penalties in Mexico for moves on his title rival Norris.