Pierre Waché: “I don’t know if I will change teams one day”

Tomorrow you will be at Silverstone for the start of the British Grand Prix weekend. What does that pre-race day look like?

We often hold a verification meeting with the departments involved in the assembly, operation, reliability and performance of the car. Half of the staff are already on the circuit, the other half still at the factory, like me. Because apart from this meeting, I am mainly busy developing the car, both the 2024 and the 2025. I spent the whole morning there before seeing you for example.

Where are you taking us?

We're going to drive a little bit to show you Bedford, where our current wind tunnel is located, 40 minutes' drive away, before soon giving way to a brand new tool which will be built next to the factory.

Before becoming the designer of Red Bull in recent years, in what context did you grow up? 

My family is from Nord-Pas-de-Calais. My father was a veterinarian and my mother a doctor. They moved when I was little near Langres (Haute-Marne), in the middle of nowhere. I grew up in the countryside. The relationship with the automobile is different in this kind of place. It is above all a means of transport. The rules were also more flexible in terms of what one could do or conduct.

We could still drive a Citroën C15 in a field and have fun searching for the limits of physics...

This is exactly what I'm talking about. (Laughs) Basically, the automobile is not a vocation. I always loved it, but I loved the motorcycle and moped even more, the performance of which I spent time modifying. Being very attracted to technology and engineering, I naturally followed scientific studies. As a family, we watched the Grands Prix. It must be said that there were not a thousand channels on TV. It was the time