Newey reveals weakness of RB19: 'We chose it deliberately'

The RB19 of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez had one weakness: warming up cold tyres in qualifying. Speaking to The Race, Adrian Newey tells us that this was precisely a conscious choice and is what makes Red Bull so strong.

Red Bull Racing won almost all Grands Prix in 2023. 21 out of 22 race weekends ended with the Austrian national anthem. Yet the bolide designed by Adrian Newey and his team had a weakness. Namely, the RB19 struggles to warm up the tyres when it is colder. However, this appears to be a deliberate choice.

Why Red Bull considers qualifying less important

"Yes, that’s just the way we’ve developed the car. We’ve tried to prioritise race performance more than qualifying. We made that decision back in ’21 when we were designing the car, to try to prioritise the race performance over one-lap performance," said Red Bull Racing's chief technical officer after Red Bull's successful season.

"It was a deliberate choice and we felt that if the overtaking was going to become easier then that presumably meant qualifying performance would be slightly lower priority than in the past and it seems to have worked out."

The choice of a car that is good in race conditions is also reflected in the statistics. In 2021, Red Bull was still on pole position 10 times, while a year later, when the team did take the constructors' world title, it only started from pole eight times. By contrast, it did record 17 victories in 2022. In 2023, Red Bull added to that with 14 pole positions and 21 wins.