Christian Horner had earlier admitted to halting the RB19’s development fairly early in the 2023 season. That was because Red Bull wanted to focus more on their 2024 car to get an edge over their rivals. However, Horner recently gave a worrying update on the RB20’s development that is likely to please Red Bull’s rivals.
BBC reported Horner as saying, “According to our engineers, our development has reached a phase of diminishing returns.” The development may not have gone as planned, but the thought process behind it was well thought out.
It was clear from the first race itself that the RB19 was miles ahead of its rivals. Moreover, owing to the wind tunnel penalty imposed by the FIA over their 2021 cost cap breach, the Milton Keynes-based team had to use its resources strategically.
But Horner points out that the progress has hit a plateau. To be fair to Red Bull and its engineers, hitting a roadblock is not an unheard phenomenon.
Ferrari and Mercedes too complained about the same with their respective design philosophies. Hence, they were forced to bring radical changes and switch to a different thought process altogether.
Christian Horner expects to see many RB19s in 2024
The ground-effect regulations came into being in 2022. Adrian Newey, who has a mastery over the subject, and is among the very few engineers from F1’s original ground-effect era, nailed the design right from its first iteration.
Barring a couple of shortcomings, Newey’s philosophy has proved to be a force to reckon with. At least the records broken in the last two seasons suggest so.
That is exactly the reason why Horner feels there could be many RB19 clones in 2024. His suspicion is not unfounded given how several teams took inspiration from their design to incorporate them into their own cars in 2023.
In 2024, however, this could turn out to be a challenge to reckon with for Red Bull. Teams like Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren, and Aston Martin now have a better understanding of the regulations. Hence, if they can incorporate the reigning champions’ design with their own added expertise, Red Bull could face stiff competition.
