The remarkable RB20 rocketed off the starting blocks, and Red Bull seemed set for a record-breaking year. However, a spanner in the works sent the car into a downward spiral. Our technical expert, Rob van den Heijkant, discusses where things went wrong.
“From the Chinese Grand Prix onwards, the RB20 has been steadily falling back in the field. The main reason for this, as the team itself has indicated, lies largely with the outdated wind tunnel,” says Van den Heijkant. “You can keep updating it until you’re blue in the face, but at some point, it reaches its limit. The wind tunnel has been causing correlation problems for years, meaning there’s a discrepancy between the simulation and reality. It’s quite a puzzle to figure out where the problems lie when things aren’t going smoothly.”
“Why this didn’t come to light earlier is because Red Bull quickly found the right direction in the early stages of this regulation. At that time, you’re still looking for the big differences,” our expert knows. “Now that all teams have caught up and are close together, you need to look for the small differences. When a wind tunnel isn’t accurate enough, that’s a tall order. Moreover, because of last year’s world titles, Red Bull has been allocated fewer hours in the wind tunnel, which certainly doesn’t help.
