F1 | Red Bull: GP overturned and 2nd place gold, but the limits remain

A weekend turned upside down in 24 hours. This is the summary of the Red Bull weekend in Singapore that, after an extremely difficult Friday, so much so that Helmut Marko pointed out that nothing was working at the end of the first day of action on the track, was able to turn the fortunes of the weekend around, obtaining a golden second place.

For Max Verstappen and Red Bull, settling for second place seems like a paradox, but in a technically inferior condition, and on a track that marries well with certain characteristics of the RB20, those 18 points represent a golden booty. Curiously, on the tracks where Lando Norris has dominated since his return after the summer break, the Dutchman has always managed to take second place, while in those events where the three-time world champion has encountered greater difficulties in terms of results, the Englishman has not been able to maximize, thus limiting his comeback.

The Marina Bay weekend, in fact, had started with the aim of limiting the damage, because Red Bull were aware that Ferrari and McLaren could have had something more in Singapore, a track that would test the RB20’s weak points on bumps and kerbs.

At the end of the first day of testing, however, it emerged that the limit of the Milton Keynes single-seater was not so much the kerb travel, but rather the general grip, given the difficulty in managing to make the tyres work in the correct operating window. Beyond the chronic understeer, the overheating of the tyres during the lap also had an impact, causing a further lack of grip.

Both Verstappen and Perez were not satisfied with the handling of the car and there was a real risk of being stuck in the midfield, especially considering that there were at least three or four teams within a few tenths of each other. At the end of the free practice, Helmut Marko himself, Red Bull consultant, had underlined that nothing seemed to work on the RB20, so it was clear that a radical change was needed.

The classic set-up work was carried out overnight, also thanks to the work done in the simulator, which allowed the car to be overturned, going more to the limit in terms of performance, putting aside the conservative approach with which it had arrived at the start of the weekend. Given that there was a concrete concern that the problems of 2023 could be repeated on the kerbs and on the roughness of the asphalt, similar to what had already been experienced in other events this year, a more conservative setup was chosen on a mechanical level. Clearly, however, this also had a negative impact on the aerodynamic front.

Also playing in its favor was the fact that a good part of the track has been resurfaced compared to last season and, while it clearly hasn’t eliminated all the roughness, in some sections it has helped several cars in terms of set-up and ride height. For Saturday, Red Bull chose to sacrifice some concepts designed to make the car potentially more driveable, focusing instead on pure performance, which, while it made the car more on the limit, helped in terms of results, with Verstappen doing his part in qualifying.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

“I think we wanted to avoid a repeat of last year and maybe we overdid it in trying to compensate for some things,” said Christian Horner after the race. “I think the way the team reacted, the effort that went into that reaction, allowed us to give Max a better car on Saturday. And obviously in the race we couldn’t compete with Lando. [Norris]but we beat the rest of the grid.”

From the early stages of the race, in fact, it was clear that Norris had the pace to escape and, when McLaren asked him to push to increase the advantage, the difference in pace emerged even more clearly. Two other factors also weighed on the Dutchman’s pace: on the one hand, the excessive wear on the medium tyre, which did not recur so markedly on the hard, where Verstappen maintained an extremely constant pace, while on the other hand, the chronic difficulty on the kerbs remains. With the choice to return to a more rigid set-up, it became extremely difficult for the three-time world champion to attack the kerbs, so much so that he often had to go around them, while McLaren, which managed to find an excellent balance on the mechanical front, can afford to tackle them with greater ease.

In the second part of the race, moreover, it is evident how Norris chose to manage his pace much more carefully, going for a constant “lift and coast” at the end of the straights, that is, the technique that pushes you to lift the accelerator in the final part of the straights. This, combined with the linear pace maintained by the Dutchman, explains why the McLaren driver was unable to extend his advantage as in the first part of the race, to which is added, clearly, the issue of lapped cars.

Now Red Bull hopes that the updates in Austin can make the difference, because they will be the crossroads of this world championship: many teams, including Ferrari and McLaren, will show up in the United States with technical innovations and there is the awareness that in Singapore, with a more effective Red in qualifying, second place would have been difficult to defend. “I think we have a vein of development and I think we have understood some of the problems of the car. I think we are starting to solve them,” said Horner.