Red Bull engineers feel they’ve ‘overstepped the mark’ developing one area of this year’s car

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Red Bull faces a development race in the second half of 2024 after the latest upgrades to the RB20 have not improved their form.

The team has suffered defeats at four of the last five Grands Prix, with their last win coming from Max Verstappen at the Spanish Grand Prix in June.

Coupled with Sergio Perez’s poor run of form at recent races, which almost led to him being replaced at the summer break before Christian Horner elected to keep the Mexican onboard for continuity, Red Bull now faces a real threat to their Constructors’ Championship.

There are 42 points between Red Bull and McLaren, with the latter looking like the package to beat heading into the Dutch Grand Prix. According to AMuS, engineers at Red Bull have devised a plan that should enable them to beat McLaren.

Red Bull have realised what went wrong for them

Red Bull has been consistently upgrading the RB20 but it has not delivered the performance expected for the Milton Keynes squad, with the team largely struggling with a key component on their floor.

After bringing six different configurations, neither has produced the numbers Red Bull engineers expected from the wind tunnel hours. To make matters worse, Red Bull also has less wind tunnel time allocated than the other teams due to their position in the Constructors’ Championship.

According to the report from AMuS, Red Bull engineers realised that they ‘overstepped the mark’ with their aggressive development programme and have effectively made the same mistakes as the other teams.

Red Bull have previously been told they broke the ‘golden rule’ of the current generation of F1 cars after their updates disrupted the stable aero platform they had previously, which enabled the RB19 and RB18 to be successful for them.

Red Bull plans further upgrades at Monza

Part of the reason Red Bull kept Perez onboard was due to the adverse effect the upgrades had on the RB20, in turn affecting his confidence behind the wheel.

This was displayed at the recent Belgian GP when Perez dropped from second to seventh due to a mix of higher-than-expected tyre degradation and slow speed on the straights.

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According to the AMuS report, Red Bull hopes it can revert to an older specification RB20 to help Perez find his speed, with a plan to use a mix of old and new parts at the upcoming Italian GP.

While Red Bull kept him on board for the foreseeable, Perez could potentially still face the axe if his form does not pick up through the run of races at tracks he has excelled at such as Singapore and Baku.