Formula 1 race winner Johnny Herbert has warned Red Bull of a potential pitfall when developing the successor to the dominant RB19 car.
The RB19 took them to the constructors' title at a canter, with Max Verstappen claiming 19 out of 22 possible race wins on his way to a third straight drivers' title.
With their success brings a limited amount of time they are permitted in the wind tunnel and other preparations – hence why they began focusing on the RB20 halfway through last season.
And current Sky F1 pundit Herbert has revealed that a failure in trying to extract performance from the car could possibly derail Red Bull in their preparations.
Herbert: RB20 failure could affect preparations
Speaking in an interview with Mega Dice, Herbert expressed his scepticism about the F1 teams and their ability to forecast their performance at this point in the year.
He went on to say that while it’s impossible to tell where their rivals are in terms of being able to challenge them, Red Bull could stumble in their tracks if the car experiences difficulties in testing.
“Red Bull are just trying to find more performance out of the car,” he explained.
“Sometimes you are always going to be on the edge. When it does fail it doesn’t help the preparation. It is a good thing to get it done early.
“Once Red Bull sort themselves out it won’t affect them because they know there is a performance to get from the car. It is an important aspect of F1 to ensure the cars are able to absorb the unexpected nowadays in terms of safety.“