F1 championship leader Max Verstappen is anticipating in Montreal another potentially challenging weekend for Red Bull’s kerb-sensitive RB20, given the venue’s profile and layout, with no quick fix in the works.
The Dutchman’s early season string of successes came to grinding halt in Miami, with McLaren’s Lando Norris beating Verstappen to the checkered flag.
While the Red Bull driver prevailed at Imola, Monaco’s kerbs and bumps threw another spanner in the RB20’s, with Verstappen clocking in a lowly sixth at the end of the processional race dominated by Ferrari’s Chares Leclerc.
The root cause of the difficulties impacting Red Bull’s car on bumpy tracks that also require a lot of kerb-hopping seems to be a trade-off made during the RB20’s development.
Red Bull prioritized aerodynamic gains, potentially limiting the car's mechanical adjustability for ride settings, a lack of flexibility that restricts its engineers from finding a comfortable ride height without sacrificing crucial aerodynamic performance.
Despite the team's intensive efforts at Milton Keynes to understand and remedy the problem, a solution won't be implemented in the short term.
Reiterating his comments from Monaco, Verstappen acknowledges that these ride issues haven't materialized overnight.
However, their recent impact on race results has magnified their importance, making a swift resolution a top priority for Red Bull if they want to keep Verstappen in the championship fight.
"It takes time," he said. "You have to redesign things, you have to come up with different things on the car and that is work in progress.
"It's been a problem since day one of the new regulations, and this is something that we know and we haven't been able to fix it yet.
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"I do think that after Monaco it gave us another wake-up call. We had a lot of good meetings at the factory and discussions where I feel like there's a bit more focus on that now, to try and improve that.
"I feel like, of course, with everyone catching up, naturally you can't rely on your advantage anymore, even though your kerb riding is bad or whatever. So it definitely needs to be fixed.
"But, yeah, it just takes a bit of time to really make let's say, big changes on the car, because some things, our design, might need to get redesigned or whatever. And you can't do that with the budget cap."
Despite the team’s short-term limitations, Verstappen doesn’t expect Red Bull to lose its footing against its Ferrari and McLaren rivals in the 2024 title battle.
"I still think that we can do a good job this year if everything works out," he said. "But at the moment, yeah, we have to try a few things, see what works best.
"And then, for sure, I think maybe some things will be different next year that maybe are a bit more difficult to let's say redesign this year. But I'm still hopeful and confident that we can do a better job already this year."
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