F1 | Red Bull: There’s a keel in the diffuser like on Ferrari

“We realized that we had taken the wrong path in development.” Helmut Marko’s analysis is crude, but terribly realistic. The Red Bull consultant is aware of how decisive the Azerbaijan GP could be in Max Verstappen’s race towards a fourth world title. The Dutchman has a 62-point advantage over Lando Norris, which is a lot if the world champion team knew where to put its hands to resolve the crisis of the RB20 which is suffering from balance problems with the car behaving very differently from track to track.

In Monza, Red Bull fell to being the fourth force, proving unsuitable for the temple of speed in Brianza. Verstappen, moreover, had to reduce the power of the Honda power unit during the race due to a problem that, however, allowed him to finish the Italian GP in sixth place.

Baku and Singapore, at least on paper, should be two tracks more suited to the characteristics of the RB20 and the Milton Keynes team is looking for the key to give greater consistency to the performances that have collapsed after a start to the championship that seemed dominant with four wins for Max in the first five races.

While most teams did not bring any major innovations to the race on the Azerbaijan circuit, Red Bull introduced a major change to the rear diffuser, following Ferrari’s development line, which debuted a keel-shaped rear end at Monza.

Pierre Waché’s aerodynamicists went in the same direction: Giorgio Piola’s images, in fact, show us how the triangular section was added to the previous solution, producing a flow pattern that perhaps, like on the red one, will not give an increase in aerodynamic load, but will contribute to making the single-seater more manageable for drivers with less nervous behaviour.

We had already shown yesterday the change in the rear wing and in the beam wing: the mobile flap was not cut as in Monza, but returned to the usual chord, while the only element of the lower wing was trimmed seeking a new balance in the flow trend.

Red Bull RB20: Rear deformable structure modified to create new flow.

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

It is interesting to highlight how the cut did not affect the area under the exhaust and it is not overlooked that a portion of the rear deformable structure was also slightly worked on, which was shaped specifically to create a new air passage that perhaps manages to exploit the little bit of blowing that the central exhaust is able to produce with the hot gases.