Adrian Newey claims Red Bull is 'struggling to find the gains' as the prescriptive regulations enter their third year

Red Bull CTO Adrian Newey claimed they are struggling to find the gains to extract maximum performance from the car as the regulations have entered their third year.

The Austrian team has been the dominant force since the beginning of the 2022 regulations and has won most of the races, including the last 24 of 26 races since 2023.

Many feared the worst at the start of the 2024 season when the world champions unveiled their RB20 after their successful 2023 campaign. But Red Bull have failed to pull away from the rest of the grid in a similar fashion as they did last year.

In his exclusive interview with RacingNews365, Adrian Newey spoke about the reason behind the team's struggle to find the gains:

“They're starting to converge now, but we’re now into that sort of: ‘okay, we've done some visual changes for this year scar, but the principles are the same’, so the differences are reducing internally."

“In our case, we’re struggling to find the gains, if you like, in terms of aero gains in percent per month, or whatever, are flattening, without doubt," he added.

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Red Bull team boss provides a positive update regarding their engine for 2026

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner stated that he was pleased to see that they were hitting the targets they had set for their new engines ahead of the new regulations in the 2026 season.

Speaking with Motorsport, Horner said it would be difficult to gauge their targets against their rivals:

“We are hitting the targets that we're setting ourselves. Now, how those targets stack up to our competitors is always difficult to know. But the effort that's going in behind the scenes is huge because it is literally a race against the clock to the start of 2026.”

“With the engine, we're on an aggressive curve being a brand new power unit manufacturer. But the team is really rising to that challenge. Our facilities are complete, both from a test and development point of view with dynos and rig rooms, etc, and manufacturing capability," he added.

Red Bull would be developing their engines from their powertrains with American giant Ford as their partner.

There were some concerns regarding their progress in the engine department with the new regulations fast approaching but this update would be music to the years of the team's supporters across the globe.