Despite Max Verstappen’s second place in Singapore, Red Bull is not experiencing a particularly simple second half of the championship, with many behind-the-scenes experiments in search of competitiveness to rediscover. In fact, although what matters is the final result, without Ferrari’s problems and Oscar Piastri’s mistakes on Saturday, managing to reach the podium would not have been particularly simple.
Problems that have actually been going on for some time, so much so that in Holland the three-time world champion had chosen to take a step back on the bottom, opting for the unit assembled at the beginning of the season but with some more recent elements. An attempt born from the reasoning carried out during the summer break in an attempt to find the balance lost after the first races.
However, the low point of the season for Red Bull, according to Team Principal Christian Horner, came just a week later, when the Circus moved to Italy for the Monza track. In that event the RB20 was only fourth in strength, even if fighting with Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes would not have been completely impossible, but the strategy and problems with the Power Unit slowed down Verstappen, thus having to settle for sixth place.
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20
Photo credit: Red Bull Content Pool
What weighed, however, was not so much the final result of that Grand Prix, but rather the general behavior of the car, so much so that at the end of that weekend the Dutch driver himself defined his RB20 as a monster, precisely because of the driving difficulties. But the Italian trip proved to be a useful data-gathering exercise, as Red Bull continued to experiment on the road with both cars, highlighting some of the design’s flaws.
Looking back at the telemetry data from that weekend, it clearly emerges that the RB20 was limited in terms of balance both in qualifying and in the race. Despite a more loaded rear wing than its rivals which had a negative impact on the straights, but on which the Milton Keynes team had decided to save by cutting only the flap of the DRS, the car was often unpredictable, even in high speed corners, generally one of the strong points of the Anglo-Austrian single-seater.
Only in the two Lesmos was the RB20 able to keep up with the pace of the McLarens, while in the other high-speed sections, such as the Ascari and the Parabolica, it showed some more signs of difficulty. It is perhaps the last corner that is the most significant, because in the past it was one of those areas where Verstappen was able to make the difference, pushing at the entrance and then finding good support in the center of the corner: on the contrary, this year it is not managed to find the right confidence with the car, particularly when driving.
Norris-Verstappen telemetry comparison in qualifying: the differences can be seen at the Parabolica
Photo by: Gianluca D’Alessandro
“We had already identified the problems, but I think Monza has highlighted perhaps part of the root cause, or helped identify the root cause of our difficulties. So I look at Monza as the low point and we’re starting to build from there.” , explained the Red Bull Team Principal.
When the aerodynamic load was removed to adapt the car to the high speeds of Monza, the problems of poor balance between front and rear emerged even more clearly: “Max has this ability and the possibility of driving a car that has this sensitivity , to drive around the problems, in reality, when we took the load off the car in Monza, the imbalance between the front and rear axles was highlighted, and the numbers we expected to see on the track were very far away. from those in our simulations,” Horner said.
Precisely on the Saturday in Monza there was a meeting with all the top management to outline what the problems were with this car, which the drivers had actually been complaining about for quite some time, thus also setting the stage for the work for the subsequent stages.
A process already started during the summer break, but it takes time to make corrections: a revised fund arrived in Baku and Red Bull started working on the balance, like Perez who fought for a long time for the podium, while Verstappen at on Saturday he upset the setup, but went in the wrong direction. For this reason, the Milton Keynes team hopes that Austin’s updates can give new life to the world fight for Verstappen and not transform the last six races into a defense fight with no tools to counterattack.
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20
Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images
“Obviously the gap to Lando in Singapore was significant in the first part of the race and now we have the break to work hard and try to improve the car’s performance for Austin,” Horner said.
“If you look at where we were a couple of weeks ago, I think we’ve made some real progress. We have a development direction and we’ve understood some of the problems with the car. I think we’re starting to solve them. We went better in Baku and we went better in Singapore So, there will be a lot of sleepless nights in Milton Keynes. McLaren is the reference car at the moment and we have to make up some ground, but we have the people and the capabilities to do it.”
The new features have entered the production phase, but the time required to get the new components through the design and production cycle means that the Milton Keynes factory will be working hard to try to incorporate its latest solutions into the car that will bring it to face a challenging triple date in Austin, Mexico and Brazil.
“There’s a lot of information coming from these events that will influence the car in Austin. We got a lot of useful information from the last two races, but they are very different circuits to the Austin and Mexico corners. Brazil is different too, so it will be interesting. Everyone on the team is extremely motivated,” added Horner.
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