Red Bull’s season so far has been a roller coaster ride, with ups and downs. At the start of the championship, the RB20 seemed capable of once again imposing itself on its rivals, even with a certain ease, but with the various updates, its rivals have gotten significantly closer, so much so that McLaren has not only managed to catch up, but has also established itself as the reference car in some Grands Prix.
What is clear is that the rivals have managed to make progress with the various updates brought during the championship, while Red Bull has not been able to replicate those improvements, remaining behind in the race for innovations. It is no coincidence that, on the eve of the Hungarian Grand Prix, Verstappen had defined that appointment as crucial to understand how the championship would go, because an uncompetitive RB20 despite the innovations would have pushed towards a second half of the year much more complex than expected.
This issue of updates that do not seem to have guaranteed the hoped-for progress, as confirmed by the Dutch driver himself, is also linked to the balance difficulties encountered in the last GPs. In the first races of the season, the Red Bull seemed to be a simpler car to set up but, as the championship continued and the rivals got closer, the limits emerged, especially in terms of balance, making it more difficult for the drivers to find the right confidence in the car.
Sergio Perez, Red Bull Racing RB20, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20
Photo credit: Red Bull Content Pool
On several occasions the team was forced to throw away the preparation work done in the factory and have to start the search for the setup directly on the track, effectively wasting part of Friday. For this reason, the summer break was also useful to do a general reset, understand something more about the data collected so far and try to understand what did not work as expected, also keeping in mind that the correlation with the simulator and the wind tunnel has not always proved accurate, so much so that the Anglo-Austrian team is investing in building a new wind tunnel.
According to Sergio Perez, what emerged during the summer break is that Red Bull is aware of having taken the wrong path with some of the updates introduced in the first part of the season, but the Mexican believes that the work during the break could have provided useful indications.
“I would say it was a very positive break for Red Bull. We were able to find out a lot of things by looking at the data. I think we at least know where we are with the car. There were one or two updates that probably took us down the wrong path,” Perez said on the eve of the Zandvoort Grand Prix, the first event after the summer break.
“I think we now know exactly how the car works, which is a very positive thing, because I think it wasn’t so clear in the last races. However, whether we can fix it and get back to the level we were before is another question. For sure at a certain point we took a direction that wasn’t the right one.”
Clearly, if the balance were to be improved, the one to benefit most would be Perez himself, who with a car more on the limit showed greater difficulty in taming the RB20, while Max Verstappen was able to adapt while still remaining at excellent performance levels.
“I think that, especially with the problems we had, I struggled from this point of view. Obviously I can’t go into too much detail, but a lot of my difficulties were also due to these problems. It’s not that I was a better driver at the beginning of the year than I am now. There were definitely some things that didn’t go right and that hurt me more, which meant I wasn’t getting the most out of the car.”
As already seen in Spa, it is possible that Red Bull could alternate the specifications depending on the Grand Prix, so much so that in Zandvoort the solution without a “bazooka” at the rear was reviewed, discarded for Spa where higher temperatures were expected. What is certain is that the team will continue with the experiments to try to solve the problems: Perez himself during the world championship was of great help in the search for the set-ups, with the team often using the Mexican during free practice for a more extreme set-up work in more directions, so much so that he lost his compass in some appointments.
“We will certainly try many things to try to solve the problem. We have certainly taken the wrong direction, but obviously it is not something that is easy to solve in a short time. Everything takes time,” added the Guadalajara driver.
“Of course, we’re going to have to compromise until we get a definitive solution. We’re going to have to compromise a little bit here and a little bit there, but I’m not too worried. I think the most important thing for us is to understand where we are, and then we can go from there.”
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