Gary Anderson on the new Red Bull Racing car

Gary Anderson, like many, was quite surprised when he saw the new Red Bull Racing product during yesterday’s presentation, and in the pages of The Race the former race car designer discusses the key features of the RB20.

The backdrop against which Red Bull Racing’s presentation took place is very turbulent, but the team must try to ensure that none of this hinders the implementation of its 2024 plans. She dominated the previous two seasons and continuing to perform at the same level is not an easy task for any team. Red Bull has won 38 of the 44 races held under the current technical regulations, suggesting further improvements would be difficult to achieve, but Milton Keynes doesn’t seem to think so.

We are entering the third season of ground effect cars and it is probably not so easy to find an unusual solution that will attract everyone’s attention, but Red Bull is trying to squeeze maximum downforce from the car and at the same time reduce the weight of the chassis down to the last gram.

A lot has changed with the new car, and my first reaction was this: this is not just a modification of last year’s very successful RB19. I think the engineers from other teams were really surprised when they saw her.

Personally, I am not sure that at the tests and at the first race in Bahrain we will see exactly the same car as was presented during the presentation. But for now we can only talk about what we have already been shown – even the renderings that Red Bull presented on Thursday evening differed from the car shown directly at the presentation.

This seems like a more realistic version of the RB20. Let’s take a closer look.

Front fender and front suspension

The front wing and end plates are very similar to those of the 2023.

But since this is a removable part, given the team’s ability to produce new parts very quickly, there is plenty of time before the start of testing, and Red Bull will still have time to release an upgraded version . I especially don’t think we’ll see these kinds of nose cones in Bahrain.

The first thing you notice is that there is no air duct in the nose, although everyone knows that Adrian Newey is a great master at optimizing the airflow passing through this part of the car. In addition, Red Bull is said to have suffered from the nose, which did not immediately pass the FIA’s frontal crash tests. Personally, I suspect we’ll see a shorter version of it, where only the third and fourth wing elements will attach directly to the fairing, and the remaining two will appear to hang from it, creating a double gap between the planes.

The front suspension configuration is the same as last year: wishbones work together with rods. But the tie rod is mounted separately and this differs from the approach of most other teams. On the one hand, this element of the front suspension forms an unnecessary obstacle to the airflow, on the other hand, it is also a part that directs the flow coming from the front wing.

The air intakes of the pontoons were surprising

The air intakes on the side of the pontoon surprised everyone, including me. We haven’t had a chance to look at this area in detail yet, but photos taken from a side angle show that it doesn’t look like everyone expected.

The very narrow vertical air intake is located very close to the side of the chassis, leaving plenty of room for the pontoon corner bevel. Everything looks very compact and at the top of the air intake opening there is probably an attachment point for the upper element of the side impact safety structure.

It seems to me that this indicates a change in the concept inherent in the design of the car, and I still do not understand what the point of this approach is, since last year’s RB19 this area was organized very rationally.

As you can see, the top of the bevel on the sidepod is much deeper than on last year’s car, and we can only assume that Red Bull Racing wanted to implement exactly this solution, and to achieve this feature, air intakes of this shape were necessary.

Some journalists present at yesterday’s presentation spoke of similarities between this approach of Red Bull and that of Mercedes last year. However, the solution we see with the RB20 is still very different from the Mercedes concept.

There was no bevel at all on the W14’s sidepods and the airflow was directed along the sides of the car towards the rear, while Red Bull tried to direct the flow towards the front of the car’s underside, which we haven’t yet done. to see .

Rear suspension

The rear suspension configuration is also similar to last year’s RB19: it is based on pushrods. It can only be assumed that the end of the pusher, which is located on the body, is slightly moved forward and that the front attachment point of the upper triangular arm is slightly lower.

At the presentation the team went to great lengths to prevent photographers from getting good shots of the front and rear of the car, but if I’m correct, this suspension geometry is more effective at preventing unwanted upward movement of the rear during braking.

Hind wing

With the new Mercedes W15 we saw that this team followed the direction that McLaren took last year, namely: I tried to separate the rotating plane of the wing from the end plates. It seems that Red Bull has gone even further in this area.

Over the past two seasons, the Milton Keynes team have produced the most effective DRS systems. Last year we didn’t see many Red Bull drivers having to overtake the cars of other teams with closed DRS, because the RB19 had a clear downforce advantage. During the chase, the rear wing is open, which reduces air resistance, and the DRS system is also used in qualifying. Unsurprisingly, Red Bull sees this system as an important part of the car’s overall concept, and not just some kind of add-on.

conclusions

Based on what we saw at the launch of the RB20, Milton Keynes has changed the concept and we can expect the team to take the next step in this new direction towards Bahrain. And the opponents will have to be surprised again.

However, a change in concept could cause some unforeseen problems for the team, although I didn’t expect this. Over the past two years, Red Bull had studied the technical regulations so closely that it is unlikely that they have made any mistakes now.