Red Bull’s chances of clinching another F1 world title in 2025 are looking shaky, according to the team’s technical director Pierre Waché.
"I am not confident about 2025," Waché admitted in a recent interview with Motorsport.com. "I think the others will also be very fast. It will be a battle of a whole year."
It’s quite a shift in tone from a team that’s dominated F1 recently. Max Verstappen just secured his fourth straight championship at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, capping off what started as another dominant year for Red Bull.
But things haven’t been so rosy lately.
Since summer, Red Bull hasn’t even been the fastest team on track, sometimes struggling just to make it onto the podium. While their rivals have been making huge improvements, Red Bull took some wrong turns with their car development.
Now they’re playing catch-up, racing against time to make sure their 2025 car can fight for wins at every track.
What’s really interesting is how surprised Waché seems about their competitors’ progress. He actually thought other teams would have caught up to Red Bull much earlier in 2023.
"It was not that we were doing better, it was more that other teams were not yet doing well at that time," he explained. "McLaren started late this season, although that’s not our fault."
The F1 grid is getting closer and closer as teams figure out the current regulations. That’s making Red Bull’s job of staying ahead much harder.
Their car hasn’t changed much in absolute terms, but that’s becoming a problem. As Waché puts it: "We need to find more performance, because the others are now also very fast or even faster."
The real question is whether Red Bull can recapture their early-2024 form when the new season kicks off. With their rivals improving so quickly, 2025 could be the most competitive F1 season we’ve seen in years.
