All the talk of an RB14 was quickly silenced when Red Bull revealed their developments on Friday at the Spanish Grand Prix, however this is not to say that the car hasn’t changed significantly.
The low-drag concept remains but there were a number of geometry alterations from front to rear and clearly the team has taken a step forward in understanding the car’s behaviour on the setup side, qualifying just six tenths shy of Lewis Hamilton's pole time.
Red Bull have spent a lot of time running different rear aerodynamic setups during practice so far this season, and in Barcelona most of the parts from this experimentation came together. The revised rear diffuser, first seen in Russia, has a number of vertical slots made into the outboard area, drawing air from the top side of the floor through and enticing the low pressure flow out from beneath. This is paired to a simple twin-element monkey seat winglet that stands above the exhaust plume, interacting with the diffuser below and rear wing above to extract more downforce.
The key visible change to the car is in the bargeboard area. The turning vane is now split into three elements, the leading edge virtually in contact with the trailing arm of the front upper wishbone and filling the whole available area within the regulations. This design will capture more airflow passing along the monocoque and pull it around the sidepod undercut more aggressively than the previous iteration.
Critical to Red Bull’s high rake setup is how they manage the air along the sides of the floor, and the new board’s footplate features more slots than the previous design to help do so. A horizontal vane has also been moulded into the vane, bridging the gap between the leading two elements to provide support and possibly preventing flow from spreading to unwanted areas.
The sidepod ‘wing’ has been shortened too, providing downwash over the sidepod shoulder only rather than along the entire bodywork behind.
