Red Bull Chief Engineer Paul Monaghan revealed a “subtle” upgrade has been introduced that could aid the team’s re-found form until the end of the Formula 1 season.
The RB21 has been the problematic younger child of the Milton Keynes-based squad, stomping in the shadows of its well-behaved, title-winning predecessors.
Wins in Japan and Imola were offset by, in its own standards, some big dips in form, most notably the catastrophic and impotent performance in Hungary.
But second place in Zandvoort was the precursor to an astonishing upturn in form, which saw Verstappen take dominant victories at both Monza and Baku.
And in Singapore, despite not being able to cope with the pace of Mercedes and George Russell, Verstappen took second place, an achievement given the car has been ill-suited to high-downforce circuits such as the Marina Bay Circuit.
“The car is better,” Monaghan told media including Motorsport Week.
“Now the question is, can we challenge the previous order from the high-downforce circuits and see if we can win? We’ll have a go, see how we get on. It should be a bit better.
“The question is, how much?”
Red Bull front wing ‘should be the last’ upgrade
Ahead of the race, the FIA’s upgrades document published before FP1 revealed a tweaked front wing on the RB21, which, according to the explanation, was “taking further research to increase the camber of some wing sections to extract more load whilst maintaining flow stability.”
“We hope to extract a bit more lap time from it,” Monaghan explained. “It’s quite a subtle revision.
“But as the last one was released [for Zandvoort], more evidence became clear: ‘Oh, we could do this and we could do that.’
“A little bit of capacity is available, so we’ve gone ahead and pushed the button and said, ‘Yeah, we’ll bring that.’”
Monaghan also revealed that the upgrade “should be the last one for this year”.
He added: “There might be some flap trims for Vegas or something like that, as usual.
“But otherwise, yeah, it’s a little bit of performance, and some great work in the factory, and we’ve got it here.
“The manufacturing group is in a bit of a, not a holding pattern, but the 2026 car has not yet swamped them, so there’s a little window to say we could do this, and – brilliant work from them – they’ve got on and done it.”
Monaghan conveyed a strong sense of determination, saying that had it not been successful “then we’re not going to just give up and go to Austin as if we’re not going to do anything.
“We will go to Austin as if we can try and win that race as well,” he concluded.
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