The Milton Keynes-based team fast tracked a major revision to the sidepods and engine cover last weekend, getting rid of its characteristic Mercedes-style gulleys.
The new direction was about maximising downforce because, although it is less efficient aerodynamically, that compromise did not matter at a tight and twisty track like the Hungaroring.
Ultimately, the changes proved to be a bit of a disappointment with Max Verstappen, who exclusively ran the new arrangement, feeling they had not delivered the step forward hoped for.
The lack of progress has triggered some concern from him that Red Bull could find itself on the backfoot against the increasingly strong McLaren team which is now widely acknowledged to have the fastest car in F1.
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner admitted after the race that the team now needed answers as to why progress had not been as great as it had hoped for.
“I think we have to look at all the data, now that we have it, and look at obviously where we need to optimise, and where we’re not getting the performance that we obviously want to achieve,” he said.
For this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix, Verstappen is set to go back to the old style bodywork – but not because what ran in Hungary was a disappointment.
Instead it is because Spa-Francorchamps is a track that demands extreme aero efficiency, so the high-drag version ran in Hungary would not work there.
So Red Bull in effect has taken track specific car changes – which in the past mainly just involved front and rear wing levels – to now include widescale bodywork tweaks.
Technical director Pierre Wache admitted in Hungary that there was even scope for Red Bull to change its package race-by-race.
“If the cooling level requirement and track characteristic will push us to change, yes, we will,” he said. “We try to make the quickest car…. [Changing] at each track, then it could be a possibility, yes. We don’t know yet.”
What were the Red Bull changes
Red Bull took more of a radical approach than many expected with its RB20, after dominating the last two seasons.
It obviously knew that it was only a matter of time before rivals got on top of the issues that had proved problematic in the ground effect era.
This resulted in some out of the box thinking when it came to cooling, with a design that flipped its widely adopted underbite inlet arrangement on its head and saw it supplement it with a vertical inlet beside the…
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