Red Bull believes it would be wrong to just go with the existing design of its all-conquering RB19 going into the 2024 F1 season, with Chief Engineer Paul Monaghan explaining the team will not “throw away” the current design, but instead evolve it further.
Photo Credit: Red Bull Content Pool
Despite a single exception at the Singapore GP, Red Bull has been unstoppable in 2023, winning both the drivers’ and constructors’ titles with several rounds remaining. The team’s current RB19 still dominates any other car in terms of performance, but the fact that rivals like McLaren are turning on the heat shows that the gap between them is closing.
Additionally, Red Bull knows that it cannot get lazy when it comes to making slight modifications to its 2023 rivals ahead of a winter season when teams including Mercedes and Ferrari are expected to make major changes to their cars.
While the team won’t substantially change their current design on its 2024 car, Red Bull chief engineer Paul Monaghan indicated that the team needs to make improvements if it hopes to hold off the competition.
“It would be wrong of us to just leave it alone because our opposition is getting a bit closer, but the rules are quite tight compared to what we’ve had in previous years and with previous generations of car, where we could do a little bit more and move things around.” he said. “It perhaps wouldn’t surprise you if I said it (the 2024 car) will be an evolution of the current car, as it will be a bit foolish to throw this concept away.
“But equally, we’ve got to make some progress. We’ve got to find some lap time. The opposition is on us and if they do a step, then we’d better have a bigger step.
“But it (the RB20) carries over a lot of the lessons and benefits of the current car, and then from Bahrain next year, we’ll see whether we’ve done a good enough job.” he concluded.
Photo Credit: Red Bull Content Pool
Red Bull’s 2024 car layout will profit from having more wind tunnel time than its RB19 counterpart. A 10% decrease in wind tunnel and CFD runs was placed on the team last year as a penalty for breaching the cost cap limitations in 2021. Currently, the penalty has expired.
Along with the rest of the team, Monaghan stated that the limitations that the team had the previous year allowed it to be highly effective, which will be highly beneficial particularly with more pacing. He said:
“It forced us to look again at the efficiency with which we do tests in the wind tunnel environment and in CFD,” he said. “And whilst everybody has a restriction, everybody wants the efficiency, so that caused us to make some small improvements.”
“I don’t think they will be revolutionary, but any of those refinements we will keep as our benefit because, as we get a few more morsels of testing, then we use those morsels more efficiently.,” the British engineer added.
