The RB20 has earned comparison to the Mercedes W14 from 2023 courtesy of new engine cover bodywork that features a high waistline, with full-length gulleys running from the edge of the halo.
Red Bull has also moved away from an underbite-lookalike sidepod inlet, a feature now widely used by other teams, to an overbite where the top surface extends beyond the main intake.
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But Autosport understands that this design is due to remain only for the hot conditions of pre-season testing and the opening rounds in Bahrain, Australia and Saudi Arabia.
As F1 then moves to Japan in early April, where temperatures will drop and cooling will be less marginal, the RB20 will be upgraded to a design reminiscent of the Mercedes size-zero sidepod.
This was a concept that Mercedes struggled to unlock throughout 2022 and 2023.
Mercedes’ theory was that by shrinking the bodywork to increase the surface area of the prepotent floor for the new ground effect era, greater downforce could be achieved.
However, while these strong numbers were simulated in the wind tunnel with perfect control conditions, the car was moved outside of its narrow operating window by the bumps in the surface at real-world circuits.
Mercedes eventually abandoned that layout for the 2023 Monaco Grand Prix, where the team shifted to more conventional downwash sidepods, as pioneered most notably by Red Bull.
Red Bull should be able to facilitate its own move to a so-called ‘zeropod’ as the launch-spec RB20 appears to have more compact vertical sidepod radiator inlets to allow for tighter bodywork.
Source: Autosport