Red Bull has revealed how the late-season update that eased the balance issues with the team’s 2024 Formula 1 car came at an expense to the RB20’s ultimate “potential”.
The Austrian outfit’s attempt to respond to McLaren’s mid-season surge unravelled as developments accentuated the handling difficulties that both drivers had reported.
Red Bull’s troubles came to a head at Monza as Verstappen trailing home in sixth place culminated in him lamenting that the team had turned the RB20 into a “monster”.
The Dutchman has since divulged how that transpired to be a turning point as it led Red Bull to “throw in the bin” the original developments that it had in the pipeline.
Red Bull then capitalised on the autumn break to introduce a revision to the floor upon F1’s return at the United States Grand Prix that helped Verstappen secure the title.
However, Red Bull lagging behind McLaren and Ferrari at the season finale in Abu Dhabi cemented that the then-reigning champions were no longer the benchmark.
Red Bull Technical Director Pierre Wache has explained that the changes in Austin tackled the car’s capricious traits but put a lower ceiling on the RB20’s competitiveness.
“We modified the floor and could remove some correlation issues,” Wache told Autosport.
“It came with a loss of the overall car potential, but we massively improved the correlation and a lot of balance characteristics.
“But as I have said before, it is not enough yet. The package did exactly what we wanted. The aero department did a very good job on that.
“It means that our understanding of the issues was correct and that we moved into the right direction.
“It doesn’t mean that we have fixed everything, but at least we have improved the balance characteristics a lot.
“The FIA document just applies to the shape and the parts that you changed, that doesn’t mean the characteristics and the number of downforce points that you have gained from those changes.
“The upgrade package was bigger, although I don’t know what the others have done.
“But we told the truth: we modified the floor, we found a big delta in terms of load, and we correlated it a lot better to the wind tunnel.”
Wache also contended that Red Bull had been “working” on implementing a solution prior to Verstappen’s call to discard the updates that the team had been planning.
Why Monza exposed Red Bull’s problems
But he did admit Verstappen’s brilliance had masked the complications that Red Bull were experiencing, despite his then team-mate Sergio Perez long having struggled.
The Frenchman has revealed that it took until the trip to a low-downforce track like Monza to expose the depth of the intrinsic problems that Verstappen had concealed.
“I think it is clear that when you have a balance issue and start to reduce the downforce, the underlying balance starts to become even more dominant for the lap time and the feeling of the driver,” he elucidated.
“That is especially true for the driver we have in Max. He can filter quite a lot of those balance issues with his talent.
“It is clear that a low-downforce track reduces the possibility for a driver to filter these balance issues.
“In some ways that weekend has been very positive for us, because it massively highlighted the problems we had.”
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