In the midst of the F1 2024 season came a turning point that, at the time, nobody spotted.
But now, some 18 months on, Alan Permane singled it out as the moment when things began to click for Racing Bulls.
Alan Permane reveals why Spain 2024 was a key event for Racing Bulls
Promoted to team boss at Racing Bulls midway through the F1 2025 season, Permane helped steer the Italian-based operation to sixth in the Constructors’ Championship.
Since its birth as Minardi in 1985, it’s only the second time it has reached that marker, having last done so with Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda in 2021.
Fair to say, then, that it was a good year for those in Faenza.
“I would like to be closer to Williams, of course, but I think they’ve done an exceptional job,” Permane told PlanetF1.com, downplaying his own team’s achievement.
“Not wanting to take away from our drivers at all, but they’ve got two incredibly experienced drivers. And when things are tricky, I think that’s there’s no doubt that helps you.”
Williams scored in 16 of the season’s 24 races, with five double-points results and two podiums courtesy of Carlos Sainz.
Racing Bulls had both its drivers in the points only three times, in Monaco, Azerbaijan, and Sao Paulo, with Isack Hadjar’s third in Zandvoort its sole rostrum appearance.
Statistics alone fail to tell the full picture, and certainly the point Permane was making.
Williams is a team in a building phase. It has attracted high quality, credentialled drivers who have been tasked with leading the team’s recovery alongside James Vowles.
By contrast, Racing Bulls is about development and growth, helping smooth off some of the rough edges before drivers step up into the senior Red Bull team.
Ironically, it’s a process both Sainz and Albon went through before striking out on their own paths in F1. Put another way, they are far closer to the finishing article than Hadjar or Liam Lawson.
That is no slight on the two Racing Bulls pilots, merely a statement of fact and a way of contextualising the accomplishment of the team’s F1 2025 campaign.
“There’s definitely areas we can do better,” Permane insisted, in true F1 fashion as he strives for perfection. “We’ve looked at those and I identified them.
“We just build on that, and we hopefully go from strength to strength and improve as a team.”
Out of the gates in F1 2025, there was nothing to suggest the VCARB02 was an especially brilliant car. It didn’t score points until the Japanese Grand Prix, and had only finished in the top 10 twice before the circus reached Europe.
But from Imola to Baku, it went on a run of nine points-paying results in 11 races, including a Dutch GP podium to drag itself into contention with the likes of Williams for fifth in the Constructors’ Championship.
The start to the season was somewhat reminiscent of the end of the 2024 season; Racing Bulls was mired in the midfield, capable of scoring points but such was the competition, it wasn’t a regular thing.
Lessons learned through that campaign however were applied to the F1 2025 programme, with Permane pointing to last year’s Spanish GP as a key moment for the organisation.
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“If I put one thing that could be a turning point is last year, in Barcleona,” he explained.
“We bought an aero upgrade and it was clearly poor and it really upset the car.
“It really got us thinking on what to do and how to make these cars quicker.
“This year’s car was an evolution of last year’s, and the aero guys spent a long time looking, and in conjunction with all our vehicle performance buys, on what we should do.
“Finding downforce on these cars now, into the fourth year of these regulations, is not the easiest thing, so we focused a little bit on characteristics and produced a car that we felt had very nice aero characteristics.
“I think that paid off very, very well for us.”
The Racing Bulls VCARB02 was widely regarded as a handy package. While without the peak performance of the cars at the very front of the grid, its operating window as perhaps slightly wider and, as a car, more forgiving to its drivers.
That appeared to translate into a car that could be consistently put in the correct set-up window, maximising Hadjar’s and Lawson’s chances of a points finish on any given weekend.
So good was the VCARB02 that Tsunoda admitted giving up on it as he moved to Red Bull for the Japanese Grand Prix was his one regret.
“The only regret I have is missing out on that pretty good f**king car in VCARB,” he said.
“It is like throwing away your kids, your baby – because this is the car that I developed with the team throughout the years, since we had this regulation. I’m sure there’s my DNA inside as well.
“So missing out that and finishing it without finally being able to get at the level that we wanted is something that I miss. But, at the same time, yeah, I don’t regret that decision [to join Red Bull], I would say, still now.”
Having been promoted to Red Bull following the opening two races of the year, Tsunoda struggled with the far edgier RB22.
Going the other way, once he’d found his feet, Lawson was able to turn in some strong results and, by year end, proved a match for Hadjar.
It’s an accomplishment that speaks to both the car and its engineers as much as Lawson’s own determination – a machine capable of rebuilding a driver’s confidence and, if we’re to be brutally honest, save Lawson’s career.
“Yes, we want more downforce,” Permane added of the VCARB02. “Of course, everyone does.
“But without drivability, you can’t use that downforce.
“That’s one area where we’ve been particularly strong, and we were strong in the off-season between ’24 and ’25.
“That’s something we’ve looked at in every upgrade we’ve brought this year. We’ve looked out to preserve that nice characteristic.”
Following the numbers alone saw the team head down the wrong path in 2024, but correcting appears to have been not only a deliberate decision on the team’s part, but an especially astute one that allowed it to equal its best result in four decades of F1 competition.
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