Ask most engineers to grade their own work at four or five out of 10 and you'd brace for bad news. Pierre Wache, Red Bull Racing's technical director, offered that score for the team's first homemade Formula 1 power unit, and it feels like a threat to the rest of the grid. Put simply, Red Bull thinks its in-house engine is somewhere between 40 and 50% of the way to where it can be, and it considers that a good place to start.
Asked by RacingNews365 to rate the project on a scale of one to 10, Wache said: "I'd say a four or a five." When the follow-up asked whether that leaves a lot of room to grow, he warned: "Absolutely, the potential is massive."
What this means
Throughout its two decades in Formula 1 from 2005 to 2025, Red Bull relied on external engine manufacturers - Cosworth, Ferrari, Renault, and Honda among them - rather than developing powerplants in-house. Beginning this season, this has changed as the team undertakes its first independent engine program in partnership with Ford. The unit is the 1.6-litre turbocharged V6 known as the Red Bull Ford DM01, built by Red Bull Powertrains in Milton Keynes, where Ben Hodgkinson leads the engine side while Wache handles the RB22 chassis.
According to RacingNews365, the FIA's ADUO assessment revealed that Red Bull's internal combustion engine generated the highest output among all competitors on the grid. That makes a self-assessment of four or five rather intriguing. If this is the half-finished version, other teams likely have a reason to be nervous.
"You have to do more, and you also feel more responsible for what we can achieve," he said. He also sees the upside of owning the whole package: "Ultimately, we'll have more freedom. As you say, it's a success story. But you know, the journey isn't over yet. We have plenty of stuff to improve together."
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images
Does the in-house building make life easier?
"So, I wouldn't say it's easier, because we have a lot more capacity and a lot more possibilities that we haven't explored and exploited yet.
"But the capacity and the potential to have a better performance are higher, and this is why we are doing this."
Engine people and chassis people don't think alike
Putting an engine department and a chassis department under one roof sounds like the most organised option, but Wache admits it wasn't as easy as it sounds. "The collaboration and the integration within the team are taking time because the way we work is a little bit different," he said, before adding: "Just by nature, the people on the engine and chassis side are quite different."
A big reason is the calendar. An engine takes far longer to develop than a chassis, so the two groups see problems and deadlines differently. "Anyway, it's a learning process for the full team because the lead time on a chassis is a lot quicker than an engine, so the way you see stuff is different, and the way we work with them is different compared to what we used to do when we were a customer."
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, Isack Hadjar, Red Bull Racing
Photo by: Anni Graf - Formula 1 via Getty Images
As a customer, Red Bull simply received a finished power unit and designed around it. Now the chassis team's tight turnarounds have to match an engine program that thinks in much longer cycles.
That is the real significance of the four-or-five rating. It suggests Red Bull is still building its own working processes as much as it is building horsepower, and that the performance it has shown so far comes before those habits have fully settled. A team admitting it is only about halfway through its first engine, while already becoming the benchmark, is either being very modest or very confident. With Red Bull, it's usually the second.