Red Bull says it has “pushed the boundaries” with the design of its new Formula One car, the RB20, as it prepares to defend its position as the dominant force in Formula One for a third year running.
The reigning champions revealed their new car on Thursday, six days ahead of pre-season testing, although much of the focus at the launch event was diverted by an ongoing internal investigation into team principal Christian Horner.
Red Bull design chief Adrian Newey insisted the new car is an evolution of last year’s RB19, but a number of visual design changes — including a couple of features reminiscent of last year’s Mercedes — suggest the team is still finding significant gains in its wind tunnel.
“We can see rival cars have been influenced by RB19, and we’re expecting other teams to converge,” Horner said.
“I think the team have done a wonderful job on RB20, they haven’t sat on their laurels and you can see that they’ve pushed the boundaries with the car. We’ll only see when we get on track what the relative pecking order is for the start of the season.
“There’s some great innovation on the car as well which will no doubt get scrutinized over the coming weeks. 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, there’s some great innovation on this car.”
Unlike the RB19, the new RB20 features vertical sidepods inlets, similar in shape to those on last year’s Mercedes W14. However, where Mercedes persisted with its now infamous ‘zero-pod’ design, Red Bull has retained conventional looking sidepods with deep undercuts.
The RB20 also features a bulge running the length of the engine cover under the car’s main Red Bull motif, which was another prominent design feature of the cooling arrangement on last year’s Mercedes.
When it was put to reigning champion Max Verstappen that there were some “Mercedes-style” ideas in the RB20’s design, the reigning champion said: “I would still call it a Red Bull style, but I know what you mean.”
Verstappen’s teammate Sergio Perez added: “It just shows the hunger that we have. We have such a dominant car…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at www.espn.com – RPM…