Ted Kravitz thinks he’s spotted a ‘red herring’ part on Red Bull’s new RB20

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Sky Sports reporter Ted Kravitz believes he’s spotted a ‘red herring’ on Red Bull’s new RB20 after recording back-to-back victories this season.

Max Verstappen has picked up where he left off and once again comfortably took the chequered flag in Saudi Arabia.

Speaking on the Sky Sports F1 Podcast, Kravitz shared what he’d noticed when taking a look at their 2024 car.

Ted Kravitz examines Red Bull’s RB20

Every team on the grid would have hoped to close the gap to Red Bull after their dominant campaign in 2023.

They each revealed their new cars and some were more similar to the RB19 than others, with everyone taking some inspiration from the most dominant car in F1 history.

However, Red Bull moved much further away from that design than many anticipated.

The car Red Bull first revealed wasn’t exactly what appeared on the track, but Kravitz believes the RB20 contains one part that doesn’t do what people expect it to.

It’s an extremely quick car and Verstappen has had no trouble adapting to his new machine and leading the field once again.

He still found something to complain about during the latest Grand Prix weekend in Saudi Arabia, but it made no difference to the final result.

Red Bull’s newest Formula 1 car analysed

Reflecting on Adrian Newey’s latest creation, Kravitz said: “The more I see it and Saudi was quite good in that I didn’t get to see prolonged shots on TV.

“Obviously, my job keeps me in the pit lane. I saw some of it in testing on the TV monitors.

“But, even on my not very good only just HD TV, just to sort of study what they were doing, the whole package of the RB20 makes more sense to me now.

“I know I focused on the vertical inlets there and the F18 Concorde-style air intakes underneath that crash structure, but the more you look at it, the more that all makes sense.

“And the more you think, that’s a bit of a red herring because yes they’re rather cool and now that they literally cool the car it’s quite clever with the inlets going in either side of the halo, but that’s all just to make the mother and father of all undercuts underneath that side pod and then on top of the floor, to make that floor.

“And I’d love to see the bottom of that floor, hopefully for Max and Checo’s sake they won’t have a crash and we can get pictures of it, but that must have been an area of huge improvement and development as well.”

The other nine F1 teams in the paddock will be looking at the same parts Kravitz is inspecting on Red Bull’s RB20 and wondering whether they need to take the same steps.

With only one more year of the current regulations, there’s still time to improve their current offering, but eventually, they need to start turning their attention to the new ruleset.

Red Bull won’t be far away from moving onto their next car given the gap they’ve already created to the rest of the grid.

The wait goes on for another team to stand on the top step of the podium…