What is going on with RB’s F1 downgrades?

RB looked set to be the best of the rest in Formula 1’s 2024 midfield, even overtaking Aston Martin as the fifth-fastest team. But in recent races the Anglo-Italian squad has struggled to sustain that trajectory, with its wide-ranging Barcelona upgrades sending it up the wrong path.

From grabbing solid points in Monaco and Canada, RB was nowhere in Spain as both Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo finished a lap down.

With Barcelona the first leg of a triple-header, there was little time for RB to figure out what had gone wrong and it headed to Austria mixing and matching various new and old parts hoping to find more answers.

At the Red Bull Ring trouble for Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris flattered the team as it elevated Ricciardo into the points, but it took until Silverstone for RB to have a better understanding of where its updates had gone wrong.

Debriefing the triple-header with Autosport, team principal Laurent Mekies admitted its Barcelona upgrades had actually made the VCARB01 slower and RB reverted to most of the old package, taking off its new floor.

The Barcelona package was intended to trade in some of RB’s outstanding low-speed performance for better high-speed stability, which didn’t translate into the real world. It also dealt with a fluttering new rear wing, but a temporary fix meant the more efficient wing could stay on.

“The big picture is that we had to reverse most of the Barcelona upgrade. Not all of it, but most of it, and unavoidably it cost us performance,” Mekies explained.

“We were hoping to add performance compared to where we were in Canada and Monaco, and instead of that we have to backtrack.

“We certainly understand why we didn’t go faster with it. There is some question over why it actually made us slower, because we think that’s what it did.

“The beauty of these cars is that they are extremely complex. It’s all down to the very last details and second order of things, stuff that we weren’t looking at a few years ago.

“I would say we have a fairly clear idea of what we want for the next package. Are we 100% sure? No, absolutely not. It’s a work in progress. It will take us some time.”

Much like Ferrari lost over two months of in-season car development by having to take its updates back off the SF-24, Mekies pointed out RB’s misfiring upgrades will continue to hurt the squad’s performance over the medium-term as it feeds back its…