Red Bull will have to delay some of their upgrades to the RB20, Helmut Marko has confirmed. The reigning Champions are already losing ground to their immediate rivals, with McLaren and Ferrari closing the gap. Updates to the RB20 in Japan and Imola worked as expected but have failed to match the gains found in Woking and Maranello. To make matters worse, their development budget has taken a hit.
The Monaco GP was something of a disaster – both from a sporting and financial perspective. Red Bull hasn’t struggled so much since last year’s Singapore GP. Unlike last September, however, it was pure performance (rather than external variables) that hampered the reigning Champions.
Sergio Perez failed to even reach Q1, which doomed his chances on Sunday. To add insult to injury, his RB20 was wrecked from a lap-1 incident with Kevin Magnussen.
Red Bull has already confirmed that a grid penalty could be imminent – since there is potentially irreparable gearbox and power unit damage. However, perhaps a more concerning development from last weekend is the damage costs.
In the modern era of F1, every penny counts as teams spend in accordance with the budget cap. Helmut Marko wrote on Speedweek that mid-season development at Milton Keynes will be compromised:
“Sergio Pérez had a costly crash on the first lap, which cost us between two and three million euros.
“This is of course a serious disadvantage due to the budget cap, as this kind of damage affects the development budget.”
RED BULL ON THE BACKFOOT
Typically, teams will allocate around $2 million to crash damage repairs per season. Therefore, sustaining up to $3 million in damages from one incident is hugely significant.
Before the season began, there were already whispers that Red Bull was reaching diminishing returns with their development. This is a fairly normal process in F1, particularly in the final years of a regulation set.
When you’re at the front of the pack, continuing to innovate and unlock more performance is difficult. The other teams, by contrast, enjoy the luxury of being able to build upon the ideas and concepts already established by the top team.
In this sense, Ferrari and McLaren (like all teams) share some of the macro-concepts from Red Bull. However, the factories Maranello and Woking have established their own philosophies. Their new platforms have been capable of accelerating their trajectory and catapulting them to the front.
In this environment, Red Bull must rise to the challenge posed by an increasingly demanding Formula 1.
