Red Bull to move toward 'zeropod' design after early races

Red Bull are set to run with a ‘zeropod’ design reminiscent of their rivals Mercedes’ cars after the opening rounds of the 2024 season.

The RB20, which was officially revealed on Thursday, has been likened to the Mercedes W14 from 2023, due to its new engine cover bodywork with a high waistline and full-length gulleys running from the edge of the halo.

The Milton Keynes-based team have also opted to move from an underbite-lookalike sidepod intel to an overbite, allowing the top surface to extend beyond the main intake.

However, it is reported that this design will only be used in pre-season testing and the opening rounds of the season in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Australia for the hot weather conditions.

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RB20 'zeropod' design revealed

When F1 heads to Japan in April, where the temperatures are lower, the RB20 will upgrade to the ‘zeropod’ design - a concept that Mercedes struggled to maximise when the ground effect era first begun.

The idea back in 2022 was to achieve greater downforce by shrinking the bodywork to increase the surface area of the prepotent floor.

But while the perfect conditions of the wind tunnel gave strong numbers in the simulations, it did not translate to good performances in reality, due to the bumps in the surface on the race circuits.

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Mercedes eventually scrapped the design at the Monaco Grand Prix in 2023, where they then moved to a more conventional downwash sidepod, pioneered most notably by Red Bull, and speaking at the launch of their 2024 challenger, team principal Christian Horner has said he has seen that the other teams have “taken an influence from the RB19.”

When asked about their decision to move to a Mercedes-style engine cover with the RB20, Horner replied: “It's not tactical. It's based on performance and what we're seeing through our simulation tools.”

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