Karun Chandhok admits one F1 team ‘surprised’ him with 2024 car design

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Karun Chandhok admits Red Bull ‘surprised’ the Sky Sports F1 pundit by ‘improving on perfection’ with the RB20 car that Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez will drive in 2024.

The Milton Keynes natives have largely revolutionised the car design that dominated F1 last year. Red Bull won 21 of the 22 Grand Prix and five of the six Sprint events, with Verstappen winning 19 Grand Prix and four Sprints. Perez added two wins and a Sprint for his 2023 haul.

Only Carlos Sainz and Ferrari would deny Red Bull the first-ever perfect season in Formula 1 by winning the Singapore GP. While Oscar Piastri of McLaren won the Sprint at the Qatar GP as a rookie. But their tepid triumphs failed to overshadow Red Bull’s success with the RB19.

Red Bull refused to rest on Verstappen’s dominance in 2023

Verstappen broke record after record en route to setting F1’s best win per cent of all-time at 86.36%. He blitzed Alberto Ascari’s record of 75% from 1952 while making the most Grand Prix podiums (21), leading the most laps (1,003) and winning from pole the most (12) so far.

Yet dominating Formula 1 in 2023 did not stop Red Bull from transforming their car with the RB20 for 2024. Instead, it let the team from Milton Keynes start focusing their development time on their latest challenger earlier than most of their rival teams on the 2024 grid would.

Chandhok admits Red Bull’s 2024 F1 car design ‘surprised’ him

Red Bull have incorporated some features akin to Mercedes’ now-ditched zero-pod concept with minuscule inlets and sidepods akin to the Silver Arrows’ cars from 2022 and 2023. Their RB20 also likely separates from the RB19 by having its internal facets closer to its centreline.

Even Andrea Stella admits the McLaren team principal’s initial reaction to Red Bull’s 2024 F1 car design was simply ‘wow’. The Woking chief found their design of the RB20 ‘brave’ having been so successful in 2023. And ex-HRT driver Chandhok says Red Bull also shocked him.

“Just when you think a car is perfect, they come out and improve on perfection, which is quite amazing,” Chandhok told the Sky Sports F1 Podcast. He added: “They had such an advantage last year they didn’t need to keep developing last year’s car.

“At some point, they could switch focus and it just shows, we’re still in a relatively immature stage of this rules cycle, we’re only in year three. And, bizarrely, we’re only going to get four years of it. Normally, we get a longer run in on a rules cycle.

“So, they’re still finding new things. So, I wasn’t surprised that they have found new stuff. I think that I’m surprised that, of all the teams, they seem to have made the most progress when you think normally there’s a lot of diminishing returns.”