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The Red Bull RB21 will be one of the most eagerly-anticipated new cars of 2025 given the question of whether it will be enough of a redesign to keep Formula 1’s previously dominant team on top.
One detail I’m looking forward to seeing is the nose design.
The airflow that the majority of the car has to work with starts at the very front.
How the front wing affects that airflow can have a positive or negative effect further rearwards. These airflow structures also set your development direction as you optimise the rest of the car around that. If the airflow isn’t optimised, the rest of the car will be, by definition, sub-optimal.
One of my biggest questions of last year was why Red Bull had its nose attached to the forward-most front wing element (pictured above).
In 2022 and ‘23, the nose and the bottom element of the front wing were disconnected and a slot gap was created between those two components. This improved the airflow under the nose and in turn to the centre section of the underfloor, which is important for flow consistency to this critical area. It’s the airflow getting to this section that feeds the diffuser.
Red Bull led the way with this slot gap and detachment concept when the new rules came in two years ago and optimised it in 2023. And others followed. For example, Mercedes started 2023 with a very tidy nose-to-front-flap attachment but then introduced a slot gap that was retained for 2024.
Red Bull's initial nose design for 2024 where it joined the forward element was wide, with very straight sides (highlighted with the green arrows, at the top of the image, above).
This created the maximum airflow blockage for the airflow to the underside of the nose and, in turn, the central part of the leading edge of the underfloor. This really is against the trend that existed even before these ground-effect regulations came into place.
As you can see in this comparison with the other three frontrunning teams (again, in the picture above), their designs are just that little bit more aesthetically pleasing, and in an area like this that creates less blockage and less turbulent airflow.
With its Hungarian Grand Prix upgrade, Red Bull actually reduced the volume of the fairing between the nose and the forward front wing element (pictured below).
Inside this lightweight fairing will be the main frontal crash structure, so to redesign this area more dramatically would require a new crash test as the nose structure would have to be shorter to allow a slot gap to be created. Perhaps Red Bull didn’t feel it needed to, or couldn't really afford it within the cost cap restrictions.
The picture below is a visual of the teams' end-of-season 2024 nose designs.
The ones with a detached slot gap between the nose and the forward front wing element are highlighted with the green ellipses above. Even Alpine redesigned its nose late in the season to create this feature. Given Alpine’s late-season progress, it didn’t seem to hurt to do this.
There is no magic bullet, but if you have enough bullets you will be more likely to hit your target. This feature is one of many that can open up your development window and even if it didn’t improve the peak downforce numbers I’m pretty sure it would improve the aerodynamic consistency.
Let’s see if Red Bull agrees in 2025.
