Red Bull is one of just two teams to bring a new component to the Singapore Grand Prix, with a front wing update to help it try and put further pressure on McLaren.
Max Verstappen has won back-to-back grands prix in Monza and Baku, coinciding with Red Bull bringing a floor upgrade in Italy. This weekend in Singapore, a front wing development is designed as “an evolution of the design taking further research to increase the camber of some wing sections to extract more load while maintaining flow stability.”
Chief engineer Paul Monaghan says Red Bull saw further opportunities after it introduced its last front wing, and decided to spend the resource time it had at its disposal to get it to the car quickly.
“We hope to extract a bit more lap time from it,” Monaghan said. “It’s a make from for us so it’s quite a subtle revision. But as the last one was released more evidence became clear that we could do this and we could do that. A little bit of capacity is available so we’ve gone ahead and pushed a button and said, ‘Yeah, we’ll bring that.’
“It should be the last one for this year. There might be some flap trims for Vegas or something like that as usual. But otherwise it’s a little bit of performance and some great work in the factory and we’ve got it here.
“This is like futures gambling now, isn’t it? Here we are ahead of P1 and you’re saying to me, ‘Have you unlocked the car?’ I’ll tell you what, come and see me on Sunday and I’ll tell you!
“Clearly our aims are extracting a bit more lap time and I hope we’ve made strenuous efforts. The car is better. Now the question is can we challenge the previous order from the high-downforce circuits? We’ll have a go and see how we get on. It should be a bit better – the question, is how much?”
The nature of the Singapore circuit is very different from those Verstappen achieved recent success on, so if he can win here too… Simon Galloway/Getty Images
The floor update in Monza is seen as a potentially pivotal item given Verstappen’s wins since, and Monaghan says it has allowed the team to get the car working better as a whole.
“In terms of expectation, it delivered pretty much what we expected. There was nothing in there which sort of said, ‘Oh my goodness, this is so much better than we expected.’ It’s behaved itself.
“What we are getting on top of is the complete behavior of the car. We’ve learned things, we’ve found things and the combination of the new aero part, the new bodywork surfaces plus some other stuff.
“So it’s a combination of many little changes, not just one and we’ve picked up a little bit of pace. It’s not massive – if you look at a lap time isolation over a 60-lap race it can look a little bit daunting but corner by corner it’s really small gains.”This weekend’s race in Singapore has been singled out as particularly important as it is a high-downforce venue, compare to the lower-downforce tracks of the past two rounds. If Red Bull is competitive, it could signal a significant switch in the title picture, but Monaghan says the outcome of the race will not impact the team’s future motivation.
“I think it will give us a nice confidence boost, perhaps a little bit of a massage, so to speak, if we go really well here. But if we don’t then we’re not going to just give up and go to Austin as if we’re not going to do anything. We will go to Austin as if we can try and win that race as well.
“All sorts can happen here – you can go to Turn 1 and get punted out. I remember the footage of Seb [Vettel] arriving there with a couple of Ferraris and it’s chaos. We will do our best here; we will extract what we can from the car.”
As well as the front wing upgrade, Red Bull also has a more efficient cooling solution within its engine cover, while Mercedes is the only other team to submit a new component to the FIA, courtesy of a reprofiled front wing flap.
