Verstappen: New RB20 designed with ‘controlled aggressiveness'

Reigning F1 world champion Max Verstappen commended Red Bull’s engineers for designing the team's 2024 RB20 with a measure of “controlled aggressiveness”.

While claiming that its new contender is an evolution of last year’s RB19, Red Bull have opted for several bold design choices, the team even daring to move away from several significant trends it initiated under F1’s ground effect rules and which its rivals are only starting to embrace.

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner pointed to RB20 incorporating some “absolutely exquisite detail”.

“There’s some great innovation in the car as well and it will no doubt get scrutinised over the coming weeks," Horner said.

"Creativity has been strong in the team and you can see that in some of the solutions that they’ve come up with. It’s not a conservative evolution.”

Interestingly, the RB20’s vertical sidepod inlet is similar to the shape featured on Mercedes’ 2023 car, while the cooling gulleys – or shoulders – running down the side of the engine cover also follow a concept exploited by the Brackley squad.

• Read also: Red Bull showcases new RB20 contender for 2024 F1 season

Despite the bulls dominating last year’s campaign with an astonishing 21 wins from 22 races, Verstappen was delighted to see that Red Bull had not taken a “conservative” approach to the design of their new challenger.

“I’m quite happy with I think the direction that they chose,” Verstappen told the media at the launch of Red Bull’s 2024 Milton Keynes on Thursday evening.

“I saw the drawings I think in Abu Dhabi, the last race, [and] I was like, ‘wow, that’s quite different in a way’. And they’ve not been conservative, let’s say like that.

“I think what I like about the team is that we had a great package, but they took the chance to really go all out, I would say and try to make it better.

“Of course, time will tell if it’s really, really good. But from what I see within the team everyone is just happy with what they have achieved in the winter.

“But then again, we don’t know. We can’t control what the other people did.”

It has already been suggested that Red Bull has taken excessive risk by pushing the boundaries of its dominant 2023 platform. But Verstappen disagrees.

“There are no signs that we got it wrong,” he added. I think it’s controlled aggressiveness.

“So everyone is just happy. It doesn’t seem like it’s a question mark of what they’ve done, like, they’re not entirely sure.”

Ahead of Thursday’s unveiling, Red Bull shook down its RB20 challenger at Silverstone. But the limited mileage and damp track conditions yielded little information regarding the car’s potential performance according to Verstappen.

“It was wet and cold. But everything was fine,” commented the Dutchman.

“It’s literally just the filming day, the car started up well, it’s about just making sure that once they’ve put the car together that everything is running, because basically from there, the car gets sent to Bahrain.

“And that’s where it really starts, you really start to learn more about the car, you put the proper programme together, and you do a lot of different kinds of running.”

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