(Motorsports news) Red Bull dominated the 2023 season, taking home 21 of 22 grand prix victories. The team’s early supremacy allowed them to postpone making numerous in-season car upgrades. Despite the success of its predecessor, the team directed most of its efforts toward 2024, creating a car that is radically different in appearance.
Instead of playing it safe, it decided to go for an aggressive evolution for the RB20, and it paid off, with Verstappen winning four of the first five races of the season and teammate Sergio Perez feeling more competitive and confident in the new vehicle. The radical makeover of the Milton Keynes squad also required many installation adjustments for its Honda power unit. Honda Racing Corporation president Koji Watanabe told Motorsport.com exclusively that the engine maker was surprised by all the adjustments that were made.
“For this year’s Red Bull car, we were very surprised to see that they changed so much for the RB20,” Watanabe stated. “They altered the idea, even though we won 21 of the 22 races together last year. It is just amazing! They requested numerous times that our engine be modified to fit the new RB20 idea. We were shocked by all the modifications made to the RB20 when we finally got to see it in person.”
Red Bull was given additional design latitude to install its cooling solutions by Honda, according to Watanabe, because the company not only modified its mounting points to fit the new chassis but also kept working to improve the reliability of its power unit. “Of course, we cannot increase the power [under the engine freeze], but we can adapt the engine to the new machine,” Watanabe stated.
In addition, we can increase the engine’s dependability. We have spent the last winter acting in such manner. Red Bull now has greater creative flexibility when it comes to their designs and aerodynamic concepts. For this reason, they could move the radiators, oil coolers, and other components.”We constantly need to reduce the risk, which is why we have done everything we can to increase the engine’s reliability even more for this year.
Last year, there was occasionally a chance that we would damage the power unit, but it did not turn out to be a major issue.
