The head of the racing division of Honda, which supplies power units to Red Bull, admitted that he was surprised by how much this year’s car of the Austrian stable is different from its predecessor.
Given that Red Bull completely dominated the 2023 season, it was expected that the Austrian team would make more conservative changes to their car for this year.
However, the opposite was ultimately true when the stable from Milton Keynes made several fairly fundamental aerodynamic changes and de facto proceeded to change the concept in this regard.
The president of Honda’s racing division (HRC), Koji Watanabe, has now admitted that Red Bull’s approach surprised even the Japanese automaker itself.
“As for this year’s Red Bull RB20, we were very surprised that they made so many changes. Last year we won 21 out of 22 races together, and yet they made a change in concept. This is unbelievable,” said Watanabe, as quoted by Autosport.
“In connection with this, they also made many requests to adapt our engine to the new concept of the RB20 car,” added the Japanese, according to whom Honda also had to make adjustments. And this both from the point of view of mounting the engine in the chassis, and in terms of improving reliability.
“Of course, we cannot increase the engine performance (due to the current freezing of the engines, editor’s note), but we can adapt the engine to the new single-seater. We can also improve reliability. Thanks to our work, Red Bull had more freedom in the design of the new single-seater, as they could change the location of the radiators and so on,” said the HRC president.
“Last year, we took several risks regarding reliability. For this year, we have therefore made certain adjustments in this direction to improve reliability,” added the Honda representative.
