Red Bull reject infamous Mercedes comparison with troubled RB20

Red Bull's chief engineer Paul Monaghan has rejected the comparison of its troubled RB20 F1 car to the infamous Mercedes "diva" machines. 

Max Verstappen started his title defence strongly in 2024, with the RB20 fast out of the blocks with seven wins from the first 10 races with the championships looking like an almost certainty for the Milton Keynes-based outfit, but the car is no longer the class of the field. 

McLaren's MCL38 is now widely regarded as the fastest car in the field, with Mercedes also enjoying a recent resurgence with its W15, winning three of the last four races, two of them on merit, with George Russell scooping victory in Austria after the Verstappen-Lando Norris collision.

Verstappen has been particularly vocal over recent races that the RB20 has been leapfrogged, demanding upgrades to the successor to the mighty RB19 of 2023 that won 21 of 22 races. 

At the start of the 2018 season, Mercedes' W09 car was dubbed as a "diva" by boss Toto Wolff after a difficult birth, with the moniker sticking ever since for difficult cars, although the W09 rallied to win both drivers' and constructors' crowns for Lewis Hamilton and the team amid a strong Ferrari challenge. 

Sitting down with select media including RacingNews365, Monaghan rejected the comparison.

"No, I wouldn't describe our car like that," he explained when asked if the RB20 was a "diva".

"Some of the driver comments, good, bad, bits they like or don't like have been with our car at most races if not all, and as such, it is not an unpredictable one when it comes to circuits. 

"We know what we might get, and as such, we have things in our preparation to try and alleviate those and extract more from it. 

"So no, I don't know what characteristics Mercedes are describing, if they said their car was a diva, I don't think ours is."

Where has it gone wrong for Red Bull?

After Red Bull dominated the opening rounds of 2024 in a similar vain to the 2023 season, there were fears that the team would walk away with not only this season's titles, but also those of 2025, given the huge carry-over expected ahead of the rules revamp for 2026.

After victory in China, the RB20 was described as being "on rails", but long-standing problems in the design such as an inability to master kerbs and bumps have come to the forefront, with Monaghan confirming that the team has asked itself what has gone wrong in a matter of months.

"That is the question we've posed to ourselves a few times as you may well imagine," Monaghan replied when asked by RacingNews365 what has changed on the car since Shanghai.

"A surprisingly small amount has altered in terms of our car, the characteristics as you'll often hear us engineering types talk about, haven't really altered. 

"We have revised the bodywork a few times, putting more load in to try and make it more efficient, and there is nothing we see in our research tools or that we bring back from running which says we've made it worse or missed our targets. 

"But that doesn't mean that we can't look again and be thorough to say, 'is the car actually better, or have we just rearranged it a bit, got the same lap-time and made it a bit more difficult?'

"It is an ongoing process and whatever we find it subtle, it is not gargantuan, it is not to say we've made an absolute mess, it is chipping away for a few tenths per lap, and then if you take an average circuit of say 15 corners, if we are missing one or two tenths and if you distribute that around the lap, then it is minute.

Development remains ongoing

Heading into the second half of the season, Red Bull enjoys a 42-point lead over McLaren in the constructors' and Verstappen a 78-point margin over Norris in the drivers' - meaning Verstappen could afford to retire three times in the remaining 10 races with Norris needing a perfect haul of 26 points in each race to draw level.

As the title fight continues, Red Bull stalwart Monaghan is confident that the development pipeline remains strong and that nothing has surprised the team - not that they'd be willing to publicly tell the world...

"I don't think there is anything we've done to make the car particularly bad, we are looking to see whether we've done things to make it not as good as it used to be, but nothing has really been found, which is nice," he said.

"That means our development process is thorough enough that when we bring things to the car, we should be confident of their performance. 

"Clearly, we want to continue to evaluate and if we find something, I'm not sure we'll necessarily be open to saying it.

"The competition is against our opposition, so we hold ourselves together, and we move forwards, backwards, sideways whatever we need to do to get the most out of our car as a team. 

"Ultimately, lap time is a currency."