Mercedes ‘got a nice clutch of images’ from Red Bull F1 floor reveal
Red Bull’s ground-effect floor was exposed to the world when Sergio Perez’s RB19 was craned high into the Monaco sky following his qualifying crash, allowing rivals to get a rare glimpse of a seldom-seen area of the car.
The underside of Mercedes’ 2023 car was also revealed during the weekend after the heavily-revised W14 was hoisted into the air when Lewis Hamilton shunted at Mirabeau in final practice.
Mercedes technical director James Allison said the team have acquired plenty of hi-res images of the RB19's floor to inspect.
“Certainly it always attracts a lot of interest,” Allison said of the unintended floor reveals in Monaco in Mercedes' latest debrief video.
“There’s a lot of scurrying around with team cameramen, not just to rely on the TV pictures, which are low resolution and not good enough grade.
“Photographers are positioned at strategic parts of the track where there is a likelihood that the cranes will be brought into play.
"They are there clicking away furiously and then our inbox is subsequently filled with the hi-res images of other cars.
“Sadly our own car made its own trip into the heavens and they’ll be plenty of photos in our competitors’ inboxes from that.
“But yes, we got a nice clutch of Red Bull imagery and that’s always a good thing for our aerodynamicists to pore over and see if we can pick out details that will be of interest to us in our ongoing test programme.”
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner insisted he isn’t concerned about his car’s secrets being revealed.
“Pictures of floors get taken in and around the paddock,” Horner said. “They arrive in vans, they work with the cars, the shutters are up. Each team will be employing spy photographers to get pictures of the cars when they’re in parts and pieces. So that’s common practice.
“I wouldn’t have thought it’s the first picture of the floor. It’s probably the first time it’s been suspended from a crane. But all teams are always striving for that intelligence.”
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