The reigning world champion team surprised rivals this year when, rather than going for a simple evolution of its dominant RB19 2023 challenger, it undertook an aggressive overhaul.
That work appears to have paid off, with Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez finishing 1-2 in the first two races of the season.
Speaking about the motivation for the change, Red Bull’s chief engineer Paul Monaghan said that the change was about ensuring there was scope to keep unlocking performance over the remainder of the rules cycles before the reset that is coming in 2026.
“If we choose to make some bigger changes on the car it opens up more options for us,” he said. “That’s part of our reason to say ‘let’s go ahead and change it more fully’.
“It’s probably the last big roll of the dice because into 2025 you have to be looking at the 2026 car.”
With teams needing to get as early a head start as possible on the 2026 rules, Monaghan says there will be decisions made soon about how to split resources into next year.
“You will see quite early on in terms of aerodynamic research if we are bumping into some limits,” he said. “At that point you have to say ‘okay, can we look at it differently and what do we need to change?’
Source: Autosport