Sorry airfoil, but pressure changes are the driving force behind the whole process. As an object moves through a gas, the gas molecules are deflected around the object. If the speed of the object is much less than the speed of sound of the gas, the density of the gas remains constant and the flow of gas can be described by conserving momentum, and energy. As the speed of the object approaches the speed of sound, we must consider compressibility effects on the gas. The density of the gas varies locally as the gas is compressed by the object.
For compressible flows with little or small flow turning, the flow process is reversible and the entropy is constant. The change in flow properties are then given by the isentropic relations (isentropic means "constant entropy"). But when an object moves faster than the speed of sound, and there is an abrupt decrease in the flow area, shock waves are generated in the flow. Shock waves are very small regions in the gas where the gas properties change by a large amount. Across a shock wave, the static pressure, temperature, and gas density increases almost instantaneously. The changes in the flow properties are irreversible and the entropy of the entire system increases. Because a shock wave does no work, and there is no heat addition, the total enthalpy and the total temperature are constant. But because the flow is non-isentropic, the total pressure downstream of the shock is always less than the total pressure upstream of the shock; there is a loss of total pressure associated with a shock wave. Because total pressure changes across the shock, we can not use the usual (incompressible) form of Bernoulli's equation across the shock. The Mach number and speed of the flow also decrease across a shock wave.