Have Red Bull cured F1 car problems with Baku floor upgrade?

Red Bull introduced a revised floor at the F1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix and enjoyed a positive first day of running, leaving the team confident they are "heading in the right direction".

The updated floor body marks Red Bull’s first attempt at addressing the issues which have plagued their 2024 car and exacerbated their recent competitive struggles.

Speaking to media including Crash.net ahead of FP1 in Baku, Red Bull chief engineer Paul Monaghan described it as a “remarkably subtle” change in geometry. He hinted a further evolution could arrive in Singapore next weekend.

"The lessons are kind of ongoing and the immediate reaction tends to be the later races so it's a testament to everybody that we got it here," Monaghan explained.

"It's a lot of hard work and that hard work will continue. Singapore's only a week away so it'll be potentially another evolution for us.

"The scale of the update kind of determines the phase lag in there, so if we've managed to do it for this race, it's not the biggest one we'll ever undertake in terms of geometry change.

"It's subtle, could the effect be good? Yes. And I think the proof of the pudding will be on Sunday afternoon.”

After a torrid outing at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, where Max Verstappen could only finish sixth with Sergio Perez eighth, Red Bull looked much more competitive in Baku.

Verstappen, who holds a 62-point championship lead over McLaren’s Lando Norris, set the pace in the opening session. Despite being less happy in FP2, where he complained about a lack of front grip following a near-miss with the Turn 5 barriers, he still labelled it as a “positive” day for Red Bull.

Perez fared better and ended up just 0.006s slower than Charles Leclerc’s timesheet-topping Ferrari. He is sure the changes Red Bull have made have helped.

“We are heading in the right direction,” he stated after second practice. “We are finding that we can put the car together. There is still a long way to go, but it’s promising.”

Earlier on Friday, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said he was confident his side now have a “clear direction” to pursue as they look to arrest their woes.

“Definitely coming out of Monza was a tough weekend for us. But I think out of every negative comes a positive,” he said in the FIA press conference between the two practice sessions.

“I think the negativity of that weekend exposed some key areas of the car that we've been grappling with for some time. And I think it's given a clear direction.

“The whole team, from the drivers putting in large amounts of time on the simulator, all the way through every single department are really determined and pushing as hard as possible.

“Some long hours going in in Milton Keynes at the moment from all the men and women back there. And hopefully, we can turn things around.”

Horner added: “We've had some imbalances in the car that we've been looking to understand and I think we've got a clear direction on that now. But, of course, it takes a period of time.

“It's one thing understanding the issue, it's another thing addressing it and getting the parts on the car that enable that to happen.”

Expanding on the development issues which have hurt Red Bull’s RB20, Horner said: “I think that there's several aspects.

“One thing you're talking about is in terms of absolute load that you're putting on the car through upgrades, but then you have balance as well. And I think we had a better balanced car at the beginning of the year.

"I think as we've put load on the car, it hasn't correlated with what we've seen in our tools. And I think a couple of other teams have had that as well.

“So as we're starting to push the extremities of these regulations, Sometimes you find that correlation drops out between track and your simulation tools, which are primarily the wind tunnel and CFD. And so there's been obviously a big push to understand that and address it.”

After seeing his title advantage shrink at Monza and Red Bull’s lead over McLaren in the constructors’ cut to a precarious eight points, Verstappen had urged Red Bull to make big changes to their car in order to have any hope of winning both championships.

"We're not going to sit still from these comments [from Verstappen], or our performance in Monza, and do nothing to bring here, and hope,” Monaghan added.

"There are many ways to address what we found on the car or the car's behaviour from Monza, and it touches all the aspects of the car, not just whether we revise a floor geometry or wing geometry.

"It would be naive of us to think that we can just leave it. We've licked our wounds [and] we've tried to bring changes to the car and make it better.

"We don't want to watch Monza again, it wasn't the most pleasant event for us. So, we'd like to improve relative to our opposition.”

Red Bull are believed to be targeting further fixes for their floor in time for the United States Grand Prix at Austin in late October, which follows an unusual three-week break after Singapore.

Unlike the mandatory summer shutdown in August in which teams cannot work on their cars for a 14-day period, there are no such restrictions for the upcoming gap.

"It gives us the freedom to potentially do more," Monaghan acknowledged.

"The real [priority] is you don't force yourself into doing it. The disciplined approach is to say, 'Is it valuable enough to spend the money to do it, to take it to Austin?’

"And don't forget, Austin's a sprint race, so you're going to roll the dice in FP1 and then go, 'OK, yes, no, indifferent, keep it, not keep it'. But that then leaves us potentially with few of any one piece. So your choices for Austin are team dependent, and somewhat confidence dependent."