Red Bull has admitted that it would have been “naive” to decide not to accelerate a floor update to Formula 1’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix to help resolve its current issues.
The Austrian outfit has endured a tumultuous run in recent months as a dramatic regression in competitiveness has seen it not score a single win in the last six races.
Red Bull’s slump reached a low point at Monza in the previous round as Max Verstappen, who trailed home a distant sixth, branded his mishandling RB20 a “monster”.
The Dutchman’s frank comments have appeared to provide a wake-up call to Red Bull, which has introduced a revised floor geometry to this weekend’s round in Baku.
According to the pre-event notes, Red Bull’s tweaked element contains “changes applied to improve the pressure gradients along the floor to improve the flow locally”.
Red Bull Chief Engineer Paul Monaghan has expressed that the side has been made to act fast to come up with a response to the dismal outing it delivered at Monza.
“We’re not going to sit still from his [Verstappen’s] comments or our performance in Monza and do nothing to bring here and hope,” Monaghan told Formu1a.uno.
“There are many ways to address the car’s behaviour from Monza, and it touches all the aspects of the car, not just whether we revise a floor geometry or a wing geometry.
“So it would be naive of us to think that we can just leave it. So we’ve licked our wounds, learned our lessons.
“The proof in the pudding will be, obviously Sunday, but we’ve tried to bring changes to the car, and make it better.
“And we don’t want to watch Monza again. It wasn’t the most pleasant event for us, so we’d like to improve relative for our position.”
Monaghan has indicated that Red Bull will be bringing additional parts to Singapore next weekend as it strives to solve the balance issues that have blighted its pace.
“The lessons are kind of ongoing, and the immediate reaction tends to be at the later races,” he explained. “So it’s a testament to everybody that we got it here.
“A lot of hard work, and that hard work will continue. Singapore’s only a week away.
“So it that will be potentially another evolution for us. The scale of the update kind of determines the phase lag in there.
“So if we’ve managed to do it for this race, it’s not the biggest one we’ll ever undertake in terms of geometry change. It’s subtle.
“Could the effect be good? Yes. And I think the proof in the pudding will be on Sunday afternoon.”
A looming three-week gap between Singapore and Austin will give Red Bull a much-needed break to dissect the problem and put together a more permanent solution.
However, Monaghan has acknowledged that the returning Sprint format will provide a headache as it will grant the team one practice hour to dial in potential updates.
“It gives us the freedom to potentially do more,” he added. “The disciplined approach is to say is it valuable enough to spend the money to do it, to take it to Austin?
“And don’t forget, Austin’s a Sprint race, so you’re going to roll the dice in P1 and then, okay, yes, no, indifferent? Keep it, not keep it?
“But that then leaves us potentially with few of any one piece. So your choices for Austin are team dependent, and somewhat confidence dependent.”
