Red Bull engineer on how they knew how to make the better car

Rob Marshall, Red Bull's chief engineering officer, was concerned that the design for this year's car could have been a major disaster. Speaking to the F1 Nation podcast he talked about how difficult it was to design the car within an entirely new framework of regulations.

This season, a broad package of new rules went into effect around car design. For teams, this is always tricky, as it often means redesigning everything. With the knowledge of today, it can be said that Red Bull made the right choices in this, as Max Verstappen has now secured his second world title. But at the start of the season, Red Bull was not so sure.

In an interview with the F1 Nation podcast, Marshall talked about how difficult it was to design the car for this year, and what dangers lay therein.

"It is always difficult with new rules to know whether you are doing the right thing or not. The first test already showed that what we had done was far from bad. At least we didn't have the problems that many others did. Some still have those problems."

By this, Marshall seems to be referring, among other things, to the problem with 'porpoising', the bouncing across the track that many cars had problems with, especially in the first half of the season. Red Bull never had those problems, or at least not as seriously as the rest of the field.

'It could have been a disaster'

Building on last year's knowledge was not an option, according to Marshall, because of the sheer volume of new rules. It could have gone badly wrong.

"There wasn’t a carryover nut or bolt on the car. The whole aero regs were different, chassis regs completely different, new suspension, new gearbox – there was nothing you could really go ‘that bit’s alright, so at least we don’t have to worry about that’. The whole thing was potentially a disaster but, luckily, nothing was"