Red Bull reveals correlation issues with their RB20 while Horner puts the blame on the outdated wind tunnel

Red Bull’s technical director Pierre Wache has revealed that the Milton Keynes-based outfit has struggled with correlation that has held their performance back so far in 2024.

Red Bull enjoyed a strong start to its 2024 F1 title defence, winning four of the opening five rounds. It looked like that the Milton Keynes-based outfit would dominate the third year of the current era of ground-effect cars until McLaren and Ferrari achieved a sudden lift in performance.

The Scuderia won in Australia and then in Monaco while the British squad took the victory in Miami. Following a successful upgrade in Monaco, Mercedes also started to claw it way back to the sharp end of the field. So impressive was the step the Brackley-headquartered outfit took that they won three of the last four races.

Red Bull's Christian Horner revealed previously that the Milton Keynes-based outfit's current wind tunnel is outdated, stating, “Our wind tunnel is a relic from World War II.”

Expanding on the team's current struggles, technical director Pierre Waché echoed Horner's words, explaining that some performance issues are linked to the team's old wind tunnel.

“Some aspects related to the fact that we are not achieving the performance we had assumed are related to the correlation,” Wache noted.

“We are using a rather old wind tunnel and as a result of our last placements in the championship we have fewer hours available than our opponents.”

Wache insisted that the team was not taken aback by the improved form of its rivals, claiming that the stable regulation was always going to lead to a convergence in performance across the field.

“For the third year in a row, the regulation has remained identical and therefore the margins for improvement are reduced. We expected the growth of rivals since 2023, but now it has materialized.”