McLaren has identified a part of the RB22 that Team Principal Andrea Stella has labelled “quite smart’ following the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix.
Red Bull brought seven upgrades to Miami in an attempt to close the gap on Mercedes, McLaren and Ferrari after a disappointing start to the season.
The impact of the upgrades became in qualifying for Sunday’s race, when Max Verstappen secured second on the grid.
However, Miami became an example of “what might have been”, after the four-time world champion spun at the first corner, putting him on a strategy out of sync with the frontrunners, securing fifth at the chequered flag.
But the changes to the RB22 caught the eye of Stella, who outlined the different approaches by the top teams in upgrading their cars.
“For those who are technically interested, we are in a very interesting phase,” he said to media, including Motorsport Week after Sunday’s race in Miami.
“It’s a very interesting phase because if you see the sidepod concept that Red Bull introduced, that’s quite different to the sidepod concept that, for instance, Mercedes and Ferrari have adopted. The McLaren style is further different.
McLaren predicts convergence following Red Bull ‘innovation’
Stella then confirmed his view that, in time, the grid will begin to converge on design, praising Red Bull’s design pathway.
“I think there will be a stabilisation at some stage, a convergence, but we look like we are quite far from this convergence. So I think there will be a process of looking at each other, testing things, certainly each team will be testing, taking a look at the Red Bull concept, see the advantages.”
“They have also been quite smart and innovative in the way they have used some legality concession to introduce such geometry. I think that the overall design of the car is far from converging.
“This doesn’t mean that some things have already started to look like that’s the direction that everyone is taking. But with the 2025 cars, after a few years of the regulation, they started to look very similar to each other. I think we are still far from these conditions.”
Copying rival designs is almost guaranteed in F1, provided it brings all-important lap time. At this stage of the season and rules cycle, it seems teams are in an exploratory phase, and will likely spark off each other in the quest to improve their cars.
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