Newey: Ferrari, Mercedes want to be ‘right back’ in F1 title fight

Red Bull chief technical officer Adrian Newey says the team is braced for a “tough year”, expecting Ferrari and Mercedes to “be right back” in the Formula 1 title fight.

Red Bull stormed to a first world championship double in the V6 hybrid era last year, winning 17 of the 22 races as Max Verstappen sealed his second drivers’ crown in succession.

But after its dominant campaign, the Milton Keynes-based outfit is anticipating its title defense to be a trickier affair as it carries over its punishment for breaching F1’s cost cap in 2021.

Under the aerodynamic sliding scale, Red Bull was already set to have the least amount of wind tunnel time after winning the championship, but after being found to have breached the financial regulations it was handed a further 10% reduction, along with a $7m fine .

With this in mind, Newey is convinced the team will not enjoy such a dominant season as last year, believing Ferrari and Mercedes will provide stern competition.

“The reduction in wind tunnel testing means we can therefore evaluate less different components, less different ideas,” explained Newey, as quoted by Motorsport.com.

“If we’re really smart and always putting the right things on the model, then of course it doesn’t make much difference.

“Ferrari won’t be resting, they’ll be sorting out their weak areas. They had a couple of reliability problems. They made a couple of pit wall mistakes. So they’ll be right back.

“And then of course, you saw Mercedes starting with a car that was quite a long way off the pace, and evolving it to the point that it won the last race but one.

“You know they will be right there. So it’s going to be a tough year, for sure.”

Red Bull recovered from a double-DNF in the season opener in Bahrain and a further retirement for Verstappen in Australia to become a dominant force in 2022, finishing over 200 points ahead of Ferrari in the constructors’ championship.

The RB18 was the most successful challenger Newey has designed throughout his illustrious career and the 12th car that went on to win the drivers’ title.

Newey said it was evident from the first race that there were areas of the Red Bull that needed improving, believing the way those weaknesses were ironed out was key to last year’s title success.

“We focused on trying to get the fundamentals right, trying to get the package in the way that would include suspension, front and rear suspension, the layout of the monocoque, the layout of the radiators and so forth,” said Newey.

“It was so that we would have the package that hopefully, even if it didn’t start out as the quickest car, we could develop through the season.

“In pre-season testing, we were a little bit worried before we got there, so we’d already done a lot of research and knew roughly what we needed to do to improve it.

“When we put the race one package on in Bahrain, just before the race, then that catapulted us from definitely behind Ferrari to broadly level, let’s say.

“The car definitely had some weaknesses in the first half of the season. We still have some weaknesses of course. But we reduced those weaknesses, and certainly by the second half, then we had a fully competitive package.”