Red Bull drop hints at ‘further evolution’ as Baku floor upgrades optimism revealed

Max Verstappen negotiaties Turn 6 at the 2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Red Bull’s Paul Monaghan says the team isn’t standing still and is hopeful the revised floor in Baku will start rectifying some of their recent balance issues.

The RB20 has a revised floor for use in Baku, with the floor tunnel geometry revised through the raising and lowering of different surfaces – the purpose of which is to improve the pressure gradients along the floor.

Paul Monaghan: The lessons are ongoing

Upgrades introduced to the RB20 so far throughout 2024 have seen the team fall away further and further from the outright pace, as balance issues have plagued Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez, in complete contrast to the car’s domination of the early races this season.

This has been due to a disconnect between the data coming from the team’s CFD and wind tunnel versus what is being seen on the track, according to recent comments from team boss Christian Horner.

Having left Monza cognisant of the fact the championships are in genuine danger as McLaren and Lando Norris close the points advantages enjoyed by Red Bull and Verstappen, the team has responded with a revised floor body for the Azerbaijan weekend – the only team from the top four to show up with a car change for this weekend.

Chief engineer Paul Monaghan spoke to media about the updates ahead of the weekend beginning and said the team is hopeful the revision takes the car back in the correct direction.

“The lessons are kind of ongoing, and the immediate reaction tends to be the later races,” he said of the update, which he described as “remarkably subtle” in terms of geometry changes.

“So it’s a testament to everybody that we got it here, a lot of hard work, and that hard work will continue – Singapore is only a week away.

“So that will be potentially another evolution for us.

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“The scale of the update kind of determines the phase lag in there. So, if we’ve managed to do it for this race, it’s not the biggest one we’ll ever undertake in terms of geometry change. It’s subtle but could the effect be good? Yes, and I think the proof of the pudding will be on Sunday afternoon.

“We hope we’ve got something decent here. But can we blend it for Austin as potentially a further evolution? Yeah, all of that sits before us.

“The question then is, how does the car perform here, and how does the car perform in Singapore and then what can we do? Is it worth spending money to potentially blend those revisions into one or take it further for Austin, we’ll see how good the predictions are and whether it becomes worth it or not.”

With another four-week gap coming up after Singapore, the same gap as the summer break, a key difference is that there is no mandatory shutdown during this break – time which will allow Red Bull the freedom to “potentially do more” as it bids to get on top of its balance issues.

“You don’t force yourself into doing it. The disciplined approach is to say, ‘Is it valuable enough to spend the money to do it, to take it to Austin?’” he said.

“Don’t forget Austin is a Sprint race. So you kind of roll the dice in FP1 and then[go], ‘Okay, yes, no, indifferent, keep it, not keep it’.

“But that then leaves us potentially with fewer of any one piece. So your choices for Austin are team-dependent, somewhat confidence-dependent, and I’ll let you know when we get there, if I’m feeling generous, what we’ve done.”

With Verstappen declaring the championship is out of his control as a result of the RB20 becoming uncompetitive during the middle portion of the championship, Monaghan said the extensive investigations carried out by the team did lead to being able to identify areas to address.

“We’re not going to sit still from his comments or our performance in Monza, and do nothing but come here and hope,” he said, as he explained Red Bull’s investigations focus on trying to figure out why the car can be excellent – like as seen in qualifying in Austria and Belgium – or being as uncompetitive as it was at Monza.

“There are many ways to address what we found on how the cars behaved from Monza, and it touches all the aspects of the car – not just whether we revise a floor geometry or wing geometry.

“So it would be naive of us to think that we can just leave it. So we’ve licked our wounds and learned our lessons.

“The proof in the pudding will be obviously Sunday, but we’ve tried to bring changes to the car and make it better. We don’t want to watch Monza again – it wasn’t the most pleasant event for us, so we’d like to improve relative to our opposition.”

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