Red Bull explain RB20 F1 car upgrades that were fast-tracked to Hungary

Red Bull have fast-tracked their upgrade package for this weekend’s F1 Hungarian Grand Prix, reports Lewis Larkam in Budapest.

The reigning world champions have introduced their biggest upgrade of the season on their RB20 car at the Hungaroring, featuring a revised engine cover, front wing and aerodynamic elements to both the front and rear.

Red Bull have faced intense pressure from their rivals in recent races, with Mercedes claiming back-to-back victories in Austria and Britain, and McLaren also emerging as close challengers.

“It’s linked to temperature and the track nature,” Red Bull chief engineer Paul Monaghan explained. “So we’ll see how it pans out here, won’t we? If the lap times are poor in relative terms, we’ll have to consider.

"But our belief is we’re going forward with this. Everyone at the factory has done a stunning job because we got it here earlier than expected. We’ll hopefully make good use of it.”

Monaghan added: “We’d looked to see how quickly we could bring this, and this is the earliest opportunity.

“Everybody’s close to us, aren’t they? So we need to be at the top of our game, and this is another small step. The upgrades bar one part of it are on both cars, so it’s a huge statement of thank you to everyone that’s got to this point.”

Max Verstappen appeared to ramp up the pressure on Red Bull when he told media on Thursday that he views this weekend’s race as being “important” for the team, adding he hopes the upgrade will provide “quite a bit of lap time”.

“Based upon the data we’ve got coming into this race, it should be valuable to us,” Monaghan said.

"I think really we rate it in terms of what everyone else has done, don’t we? We’ve made the biggest step we can make. Is it enough? We’ll find out on Sunday afternoon. That’s really the rating of it.”

Both cars will be running the same update package bar the revised engine cover, which is only on Verstappen’s car, with teammate Sergio Perez sticking to the old-spec design.

Asked if running two different cooling specs will give Red Bull more workload, Monaghan replied: “More work? No, not really, because you do the two cars anyway.

“So the fact it’s a subtly different shape, not really, it’s not going to change our world. It doesn’t change how we try to optimise it.

"It’s something we hopefully will dispose of by I guess Zandvoort.”