Max Verstappen’s thoughts on Adrian Newey departure impact on Red Bull performance

Max Verstappen doubts Adrian Newey’s looming departure from Red Bull has had any impact on the performance of the current RB20.

The long-time Red Bull chief technical officer is currently serving a soft gardening leave from the Milton Keynes-based squad, as he has stepped back from Formula 1 duties to concentrate on the company’s RB17 hypercar before a full departure by mid-2025.

Max Verstappen: Immediate performance drop not down to someone leaving

Speaking to media, including PlanetF1.com, Verstappen addressed the question of whether Newey’s step back from the coalface of working on the performance of the current F1 car has had an impact on its competitiveness.

The announcement of Newey’s departure coincided with the weekend at which Red Bull‘s dominance of the early part of the season came to an end, with victories proving increasingly difficult to come by in the months since – Verstappen was beaten by 22 seconds at last weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix.

But the reigning F1 World Champion doubts that Newey taking his eye away from the RB20 had made any meaningful difference to the team’s competitiveness.

“Normally, not,” he said when asked if Newey’s step back is making a difference.

“It’s just, since it was announced that he was leaving, it’s been more difficult.

“But, I mean, it shouldn’t matter if someone is, say, leaving and, on the spot, immediately the performance drops, because the car has always been the same.

“So, yeah, normally not.”

The Dutch driver also confirmed his contact with the 65-year-old has decreased as Newey’s involvement does, revealing that the designer has moved offices within the Milton Keynes campus.

“Whenever I do see him, I mean, we have a good relationship,” he said, “so that’s never been a problem.”

As for whether Verstappen has asked Newey to weigh in on the issues with the RB20, he said: “No, and I think it would also be a bit unfair.”

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With the RB20 falling away from the top of the sport, Verstappen reiterated his calls for Red Bull to get to the bottom of the balance issues which have crept in through the car’s upgrade path.

“We’re trying a lot of stuff to try and improve the balance of the car,” he said.

“I wouldn’t want to call [Zandvoort] a wake-up call. It just was not the best weekend for us, for different reasons.

“We couldn’t get the car to work how we wanted it. Probably, the wind made it very difficult for our car with the balance issues that we have and yeah, it was just not the strongest weekend.”

With Red Bull having run their cars in different specifications to evaluate the differences between new and old, Verstappen said it had shed some light on what is going on but it hadn’t unlocked more speed.

“We had a bit of an idea because of the cars, but it’s not like Checo’s [Perez] car was suddenly very fast, right?” he said.

“So we need to find more performance and better balance because we were still complaining about the same balance issues.

“Some things might not have correlated how we wanted it but, in general, I think we need to fix the general balance of the car, the behaviour. This is something that crept in, and now we have to try and get rid of it.”

As for whether the issue is related to setup or the inherent characteristics of the car, Verstappen said, “It’s mainly the car, and that’s why you’re limited with setup to try and prevent it.”

Given the fact the car was dominant at the start of the season, Verstappen said the fact other teams have developed so strongly negates the possibility of pulling back some of the upgrades introduced to the RB20 in a bid for more speed.

“I don’t think it will be faster,” he said.

“Other teams, of course, have been upgrading the car really well. So for us to, let’s say, downgrade the car for better balance, it’s not necessarily faster over a lap.”

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