A masterpiece of understatement from Red Bull's technical director, Pierre Wache, who admits that last season was "challenging".

Five rounds into the season and it was looking to be a repeat of 2023, with Max Verstappen having won four of the opening rounds and a Sprint. This was despite the behind the scenes turmoil as the Horner saga continued.

Then came Miami, where McLaren introduced an upgrade package that helped turn the season on its head, and while rule stability meant that Ferrari and, to a lesser extent, Mercedes, came into play, Red Bull began to lose its way.

While Verstappen continued to fight the fight, his teammate failed to support him, while numerous high-profile departures, not least Adrian Newey, left the world champions floundering.

Understandably choosing to focus on the positives, Pierre Wache insists the season wasn't the disaster it appeared to be for his team, claiming it went pretty much as anticipated.

"The season was basically as challenging as we expected," he tells Autosport. "I would say we were more surprised at the beginning of the season because of the gap we had.

"We expected the whole season to be like the end of the season, a big fight with the others," he adds. "We didn't expect such a big hole in the middle of the season ourselves, but we did expect a big fight with others."

Ignoring the various distractions that must have played their part, Wache cites the lack of correlation between on-track reality and simulations.

"There are multiple aspects to that story," he says. "The first one is the correlation, that the car had some different characteristics than what we expected in terms of aero. Another aspect is that we didn't expect some elements would affect the car performance as much as they did.

"They were not there by desire," he adds, "but maybe we didn't focus enough on them. Those elements were still there at the end of the season, and we have to fix them for 2025.

"We had a loss of downforce in some areas of the map and therefore we didn't perform on track as we thought we could based on the wind tunnel, so there were some holes. That is a correlation issue and in terms of delivery on track it was mainly a balance issue."

Such was the RB20's dominance in those early rounds the issue wasn't that obvious, but as the season progressed it became clear that the car suffered an inherent balance problem.

"I think we spotted it," he says, "but after that the car was quick, and we didn't want to modify it massively. When we came back to Europe and were challenged more by McLaren, then it started to become more and more evident that it was one of the biggest issues for us to go quicker."

Following the example of others, not least Mercedes, reverting to a previous spec wasn't a realistic option. Indeed, citing Qatar, Wache insists the RB20 was still competitive.

"In Qatar the car had the same characteristics, and we were able to win fairly and make the quickest car for this track," he says. "So performance is always relative to the others."

Wache also refutes claims that the mid-season ban on asymmetric braking systems was a major factor and led to the team making changes.

"We didn't change the car," he insists, "we didn't change the way we set up the car, so it looks like it's more the others that did a big change instead of us.

"To be fair, in Miami we should have won the race," he adds. "However, we were not the quickest any more. We were even and clearly something changed in terms of what was done, especially by McLaren. They were able to have less tyre degradation than everybody else and their package seemed to work very well afterwards.

"I don't know what they have done, you have to ask them and not me. But I know about ourselves and what we have done with the car. The behaviour of the car was similar to what we had in China.

"We brought an upgrade in Suzuka and in China and those things were working very well. In Miami, we were more or less there but during the race, we saw that McLaren found the sweet spot in terms of their performance.

"The car didn't change, just to make it clear," he adds. "There was also nothing fundamental in the car set-up either that could explain why we were slower.

"I think we were more surprised by the step of the others," he admits. "If you see what they have done, it was not massive," he continues, referring to updates, "it was more that the whole car came together, so it was a very big surprise.

"The speculation doesn't affect me. It doesn't change the fact that every weekend I have the pressure to deliver the best car and that the team has the pressure to deliver the best car to win the race. The speculation and what happens around it doesn't change the way you react to things. I have enough pressure and I don't need to create anything more for myself."