Red Bull still limited by old wind tunnel

Red Bull says its Miami upgrade has finally delivered encouraging signs on correlation, but Pierre Wache admits the team is still constrained by the same ageing wind tunnel and will not have its new facility available until the beginning of 2027.

The technical director said the latest RB22 updates showed progress between simulation and track performance, a key issue after a difficult start to 2026. "Yes, it's going in the right direction, but still we have the same tool and the same issues," Wache told Motorsport.com. "We are limited by... Well, we are trying to maximise what we have and we'll see for the rest."

That limitation matters because Red Bull's opening races exposed a mismatch in the car rather than its new power unit. While rivals in the paddock viewed Red Bull's all-new engine as surprisingly competitive, the RB22 chassis was underwhelming across the first three race weekends, putting fresh attention on whether the team's development tools were accurately reflecting what happened on track.

The concern sharpened in Suzuka, where Max Verstappen said he could not really feel the difference from Red Bull's first significant upgrade of the season. The larger package introduced in Miami was the first update that behaved exactly as the team had predicted, giving Red Bull some evidence that it is moving in the right direction even if Wache stopped short of calling the problem solved.

For now, the team still has to develop with the Bedford wind tunnel that former team principal Christian Horner repeatedly described as a "Cold War relic." Horner also compared the correlation problem to looking at "two different watches," after wind tunnel data repeatedly failed to match the car's real behavior on track. The facility is around 70 years old.

Wache said Red Bull's new wind tunnel, which is being built on the Milton Keynes campus, should become a longer-term answer rather than an immediate one. "But we have a new tool coming soon and I hope it will bring us another step," he said. He added that the team hopes to have it "running at the beginning of next year," which means it is unlikely to play any role in 2026.

That leaves Red Bull trying to recover with its current infrastructure for the rest of this season. Wache has already confirmed a minor update for Montreal and another bigger step at the start of the European season, all while the same old tunnel must also support the first development work on Red Bull's 2027 car.