The RB20 ‘diva’ theory answered by Red Bull in frank assessment

Red Bull’s Paul Monaghan has said there have been no indications in the team’s data to suggest the RB20 is a ‘diva’.

The RB20 hasn’t won a race since the Spanish Grand Prix in June, with Max Verstappen’s winless streak of four races being the longest he’s had since retiring from the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix.

Paul Monaghan: The RB20 has changed by surprisingly small amounts

It’s been a strange season of form for Red Bull, who started the season with their new concept RB20 in a similar fashion to how 2023 had progressed – in a completely dominant fashion.

Aside from a brake issue in Australia, which cost Verstappen what still seemed a likely victory, and an unfortunately-timed Safety Car in Miami, there was little reason to doubt the superiority of the Verstappen/Red Bull package in the first quarter of the season.

But the second quarter of the season saw McLaren , Ferrari, and Mercedes step forward to claim at least one victory apiece – with McLaren’s MCL38 capitalising on its upgrades to reach the summer break as, arguably, the fastest car on the grid.

Red Bull, meanwhile, appears to have slipped back in the pecking order despite its own upgrades, with the RB20 now appearing to be the second or third-quickest car on any given weekend – its dominant performances from the early season having been consigned to the past.

Speaking to PlanetF1.com in a joint interview, Red Bull’s chief engineer Paul Monaghan was asked about what has changed since the Chinese Grand Prix – a race in which Verstappen had said the car was on rails – to the concerning inconsistencies in handling that are now being experienced.

“That’s a question we’ve posed to ourselves a few times, as you may well imagine,” Monaghan mused.

“A surprisingly small amount has altered in terms of our car. The characteristics, as you have often hear us engineering types talk about, haven’t really altered.

“We have revised the bodywork a few times, putting more load into it, trying to make it more efficient. There’s nothing we see that in our research tools or what we bring back from running, which says we’ve made it worse or we’ve missed our targets.

“But it doesn’t mean that we can’t look again and be thorough to say, is the car actually better? Or have we rearranged it a bit with a similar last time, and just made it more difficult?

“So that’s an ongoing process. Whatever we find is subtle, it’s not gargantuan. It’s not to say, ‘Oh, yeah, we’ve made an absolute mess of this or that’.

“It’s chipping away for a few tenths per lap, and if you then take, say, an average circuit with 15 corners – if we miss one or two tenths, if you look at that distributed around the lap, it’s minutiae.

“So I don’t think there’s anything we’ve done to make the car particularly bad.”

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With Mercedes having previously referred to some of its recent F1 offerings as being a “diva” due to narrow operating windows and inconsistent behaviour, Monaghan dismissed the idea of the RB20 being along the same lines.

“No, I wouldn’t describe our car like that,” he said.

“Some of the driver comments – good, bad, whether it’s bits they like or bits they don’t like, I would say, have been with our car most races, if not all.

“As such, it’s not an unpredictable one when it comes to the circuit. We know what we might get and, as such, we have things in our preparation to try and alleviate those and extract more from it.

“I don’t know what characteristics Mercedes was describing when they said their car was a diva, I don’t think ours is, no.”

Having introduced upgrades, including new sidepods and an engine cover, at the Hungarian Grand Prix – which appeared to have little effect on forward momentum for the RB20 – Monaghan said reviews of the car have not resulted in any alarm bells ringing out about slipping back into the pack being down to the car having any issues.

“We are looking to see whether we’ve done things to make it not as good as it used to be – nothing’s really been found, which is nice, because it means our development process is thorough enough that, when we bring things to the car, we should be confident of their performance,” he said.

“Clearly, we continue to evaluate. And, if we find something, I’m not sure we’ll be open to necessarily say!

“The competition’s against our opposition, isn’t it? So we hold ourselves together, and we move forwards, backwards, sideways, whatever we need to do to get the most out of our car as a team.

“Ultimately, lap time is our currency, isn’t it?”

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