Red Bull engineer shoots down RB20 ‘conspiracy’ theory with ‘bull****’ response

Red Bull’s 2024 form has tailed off since Max Verstappen won in China in April

Red Bull engineer Calum Nicholas has branded a “conspiracy” theory that the removal of a key element of the RB20 car is behind the team’s F1 2024 slump as “bull****.”

Having produced the most dominant season in history in 2023, winning 21 out of a possible 22 races as Max Verstappen eased to a third consecutive World Championship, Red Bull had been widely tipped to crush the opposition once again in F1 2024.

Red Bull RB20 theory dismissed by leading engineer

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

Yet despite starting the campaign with four wins from the first five races, Red Bull’s form has stuttered in the face of a renewed threat from the likes of McLaren and Mercedes.

Despite holding a 78-point lead over Lando Norris ahead of the final 10 races, Verstappen has been restricted to just three wins across the last nine rounds with Red Bull’s advantage over McLaren in the Constructors’ standings reduced to 42 points.

Red Bull’s loss of form prompted Verstappen’s father Jos to declare that the team’s dominance had “come to an end” in the aftermath of May’s Monaco Grand Prix, with the Milton Keynes-based outfit losing such senior figures as Adrian Newey and Jonathan Wheatley as the season has unfolded.

F1 tech analysis: Red Bull’s F1 2024 struggles

 Explained: Why do Red Bull struggle at very specific F1 circuits?

 Red Bull RB20 upgrades explained with Hungary performance under the microscope

Nicholas took exception to the suggestion by F1 commentator Peter Windsor that the forced removal of a rear cross-brake inertia valve is behind the RB20’s mystery slump since the Miami Grand Prix in early May.

Responding to Windsor’s post on Twitter, Nicholas wrote with an accompanying rolling-eye emoji: “Yea [sic]… this is bull***… unsurprisingly.”

PlanetF1.com understands that the regulation change related to this area of the car only came into effect on July 31 following the most recent World Motor Sport Council meeting and therefore could not have had a bearing on Red Bull’s performance since May.

The tweak to Article 11.1.2 reads as follows: “The brake system must be designed so that within each circuit, the forces applied to the brake pads are the same magnitude and act as opposing pairs on a given brake disc.

“Any system or mechanism which can produce systematically or intentionally, asymmetric braking torques for a given axle is forbidden.”

PlanetF1.com has approached both the FIA and Red Bull for comment.

Windsor’s theory was supported by F1 technical analyst Craig Scarborough, who agreed that the removal of the clever brake trick could have contributed to Verstappen’s retirement at the Australian Grand Prix and his struggles with the turn in of the RB20 car since the Miami GP.

Responding to Scarborough’s comments, Nicholas said: “I’ve been building the car for the last 14 races, he hasn’t.”

Nicholas went on to express his frustration with the media coverage of Red Bull’s recent woes, insisting the team’s rivals should get the credit for closing the gap at the front of the grid.

He added: “The only reason I care about this stuff is because really, people should just be giving the other teams the credit they deserve for putting in the work and catching up.

“Not everything has to be some big conspiracy.”

In an interview with PlanetF1.com at last month’s Belgian Grand Prix, chief engineer Paul Monaghan insisted that Red Bull have done nothing to “make the car particularly bad” since the start of the season.

Asked what has changed since April’s Chinese Grand Prix, where Verstappen won comfortably from pole position, Monaghan replied: “That’s a question we’ve posed to ourselves a few times, as you may well imagine.

“A surprisingly small amount has altered in terms of our car. The characteristics, as you have often heard us engineering types talk about, haven’t really altered.

“We have revised the bodywork a few times, putting more load into it, trying to make it more efficient.

“There’s nothing we see that in our research tools or what we bring back from running, which says we’ve made it worse or we’ve missed our targets.

“But it doesn’t mean that we can’t look again and be thorough to say: is the car actually better? Or have we rearranged it a bit with a similar lap time and just made it more difficult?

“That’s an ongoing process. Whatever we find is subtle, it’s not gargantuan. It’s not to say: ‘Oh, yeah, we’ve made an absolute mess of this or that.’

“It’s chipping away for a few tenths per lap, and if you then take an average circuit with 15 corners – if we miss one or two tenths, if you look at that distributed around the lap, it’s minutiae.

“So I don’t think there’s anything we’ve done to make the car particularly bad.”

Read next: The RB20 ‘diva’ theory answered by Red Bull in frank assessment