Former F1 World Champion Villeneuve believes Red Bull faces challenging transition after Newey exit

Ahead of the 2025 season, Red Bull finds itself at the crossroads. Pre-season testing has raised concerns about its performance, and with the team’s key contributor Adrian Newey stepping back, the team faces a challenging period of transition.

Jacques Villeneuve, 1997 World Champion, believes that while testing problems aren’t always a disaster, they could impact Red Bull’s early-season form.

“It’s really hard from the outside to know what’s going on [in pre-season testing],” Villeneuve admitted. “But you want to have problems in testing – you don’t want to have them on race weekends. It is enough time for the teams to rectify it, to work on it,” he said.

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“But now they’re stuck with what they have for the first few races until they go back to Europe. If the problems were not major, then they would have fixed that by now,” he told the media ahead of the Australian Grand Prix this weekend.

Though Max Verstappen protected his drivers’ crown, the team lost out to McLaren in the constructors’ championship.

Red Bull’s form saw a dip towards the end of the 2024 season and the departure of Newey added to the challenges, leaving the team with uncertain prospects.

Villeneuve said that the 66-year-old engineering mastermind played a role much bigger than just designing the car. “He was a very important part of the Red Bull program. He was the head, the top of the pyramid. And that’s the most important position. He understands how to work with drivers inside a car as well. He also understands the psychology of the human being that actually sits in the car, and that’s what made him very good,” he added.

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“He still is very good at finding grey areas in the rules and exploiting them to their maximum,” Villeneuve pointed out. “So, he could get the most out of what was written in the rules.”

With Red Bull’s technical team now operating without its long-time leader, the challenge will be maintaining the same level of innovation. Villeneuve believes the team has strong people in place, but the adjustment period will be crucial.

“The people in place are still good, they just need to get their rhythm going. And for that, you also need the help of the driver,” he explained.

“It’s a work that happens hand in hand with the driver, and if the driver is not into it, it becomes very difficult.”

(Formula 1 will be broadcast LIVE on FanCode in India)