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It's not unusual for Formula 1 teams to reserve judgement on or take a little time to extract the potential from upgrade packages, particularly under the current regulations.
But RB driver Yuki Tsunoda didn't pull any punches during the Italian Grand Prix weekend, particularly in qualifying where over the radio after his elimination in Q1 he described the car as "ridiculous, it's so difficult to drive".
The rest of the team weren't quite so blunt, but it's clear the upgrade was, as Tsunoda put it, "not working".
That's a huge concern for RB. Its last major upgrade, introduced for June's Spanish GP, also didn't work as anticipated. Some of the new parts continued to be used but not all - as the team had trouble achieving anything close to a good through-corner balance.
The Monza upgrade was originally scheduled for the next race in Azerbaijan, but the team was able to rush through a set of parts for Tsunoda's car at Monza to gather data, an objective that was frustrated in the race when Tsunoda was clattered into by Nico Hulkenberg and sustained damage that forced his retirement.
The upgrade package included the usual Monza-specific low-drag parts, with a low-downforce front and rear wing, beam wing and mirror body. But the key changes were to the floor, which were primarily not visible thanks to being in the underfloor.
RB's upgrade declaration stated the objective was "increased local downforce generation and management of the flow structures and losses as they travel downstream".
Tsunoda wasn't happy from the first day of practice. He said after FP2 that it had been a "difficult day" with "a lot of things to understand" but hoped there was room for improvement. The hope was that set-up changes for Saturday would transform the car but while they did yield a small improvement, Tsunoda still struggled.
And that's worrying for RB, especially given Tsunoda's suggestion of correlation issues.
"First of all, it's completely different behaviour to what I feel on the simulator - and second, on paper it should work and to see the numbers I should gain decent laptime," he said.
"But so far it's not been close to that. [It's] pretty far off from where we want it. So something to understand, it's not clear. At least we have a good opportunity now to compare properly."
Daniel Ricciardo was six hundredths of a second faster than Tsunoda in Q1 and felt he extracted the most from the car on his way to 12th on the grid, which is a fair indication of where the RB is currently.
At Monza, it was not quite at the level of Williams and Haas, and appeared to be nip-and-tuck with Aston Martin.
Given the RB was, early in the season, the midfield standout and a Q3 regular, the trajectory is concerning - even if Ricciardo might have had a chance of points had he not ruined his race by shoving Hulkenberg off at Ascari on the first lap and being hit with a five-second penalty (which led to a 10-second penalty when a crew member touched his front wing as the first punishment was served). Ultimately, RB is trending downwards and is under threat from Haas, six points behind, in the constructors' championship.
RB has had the chance to crunch the numbers between Monza and Baku, as well as the chance to run for a day at Monza - with Liam Lawson driving on the second day of a Pirelli tyre test, having driven the Red Bull the day before.
That means there's the potential for the upgrade to work better in Azerbaijan. However, given Tsunoda's struggles and the problems it had with the Spain upgrade, it may be that RB is lacking some understanding of how to get the best out of these capricious cars.
It's among the teams that have struggled to produce consistent gains with upgrades, so there's every chance there will be more problems with the package that it needs to get to the bottom of.
It might be that Tsunoda's reaction exaggerated the negatives, and the tricky new Monza track surface might have contributed to the problems with the car sliding around too much.
However, the team was hardly effusive about its performance and, as team principal Laurent Mekies said, "our focus is on the analysis of the data collected here before going to Baku".
Monza will have come as a shock. Having worked hard to get the upgrade out early, Tsunoda's frustration with the car and the fact the old-specification machine was as quick if not a little quicker made the debut of RB's latest upgrade the worst of any seen so far in 2024.
