Newey argues that Red Bull may well have spent too long developing the RB16B

Red Bull Racing was right there from the start of the season, but that was not to be taken for granted. That is what Adrian Newey has been telling Motorsport.com. Indeed, the Austrian racing stable's top designer says there was less time than usual to develop the RB18.

2022 marked the first season under the new regulations, so teams had to work hard last winter to build a competitive car. What did not help for Red Bull was that the 2021 world title was not secured until the last Grand Prix of the season. Newey's men kept developing the RB16B for a long time, leaving less time to be busy preparing for 2022.

Red Bull kept a long focus on 2021

“We had quite a short development period, particularly because we kept developing last year’s car in the battle for the championship, arguably longer than we should have done. That gave us a lot to do over the winter. What we tried to focus on was getting the fundamentals of the car right as this year’s car, and then hoping that would give us the development potential to kind of refine it," Newey said.

Ferrari, on the other hand, gave up on the 2021 season back in the summer and put all its resources into developing a fast car for 2022. It makes Red Bull's performance all the more crisp. At the winter tests, according to Newey, Ferrari was just a bit faster, but thanks to an update introduced as early as the first race of the season in Bahrain, Red Bull found some time and were very much ahead of Ferrari.

Newey, meanwhile, is busy developing the RB19. Because the regulations change very little, therefore, the 2023 car will be an evolution of the RB18. Red Bull is expected to present the new bolide sometime in mid-February.