Mercedes motorsport director Toto Wolff described Red Bull’s replication of its own Zeropod concept as “courageous”, but at the same time he also put the importance of performance into perspective, because this was particularly important in the Formula 1 cars of the ground effect era is obtained via the subsoil.
Red Bull caused a stir with its new RB20 because they decided to take a radical step and didn’t simply adopt the concept of the successful RB19. The side pods are similar to the variant that Mercedes failed to make work in the past two years and therefore discarded.
Wolff has to give his competitors respect for this advance. For him, the change in concept is “an extremely courageous step,” as he says on “ORF”. “If we had taken a conservative approach, we would have developed a really good car,” he says.
Because Red Bull actually had no reason to change anything in its concept: the racing team won all races of the season in 2023 with the exception of Singapore and became driver and team champions by a huge margin.
But Wolff believes that Red Bull based its development on the data, and this would have shown that this new direction brings significantly more downforce and better driving characteristics. “Otherwise Red Bull wouldn’t have done it,” says the Austrian.
“They have always been innovative in recent years and have been the team that has been the benchmark. And in this respect I am convinced that they already knew what they were doing.”
What’s curious is that Red Bull has taken over some elements from Mercedes that hadn’t gotten along particularly well in recent years. According to Wolff, this is not just the Zero Sidepod, but also the bodywork of the engine cover, which the Silver Arrows have called “The Great Wall”.
But Wolff puts the copy into perspective: “The real performance takes place on the underbody. These are ground effect cars, where it’s also about what the mechanical downforce is and the mechanical driving characteristics,” he says.
“And they have been very strong in recent years and there will probably have been further development,” says Wolff, “but not such a radical change in concept as you see at first glance at the bodywork.”
After the three-day test drives in Bahrain, Red Bull is considered the big favorite ahead of the new Formula 1 season in 2024.