Adrian Newey has admitted his rush to design Red Bull’s title-defending car for 2014 was a cause of the early-season technical crisis.
Much of the blame for the team’s situation, where the RB10 struggled merely to run at the recent Jerez test, has fallen on troubled engine supplier Renault.
But Newey says Red Bull must also take the blame.
“What stopped us at Jerez – on our side as opposed to Renault – was a problem where the bodywork local to the exhaust was catching fire,” he is quoted by the Daily Star.
“It was really a lack of time. It was something we could have proved out on the dyno if we had managed to get everything together earlier.”