Red Bull has turned up to Bahrain with a Formula 1 car that looks remarkably similar to the RB20 it ended the 2024 season with.
Team boss Christian Horner says “every surface of the car is different to last year” but it looks similar because Red Bull has stuck with a “similar design philosophy” to the RB20.
He said it’s “subtly different in many different areas” and as I often say, the devil is in the detail - details that often aren’t visible.
But let’s take a look at the changes that we can see.
It’s the old saying ‘you can run but you can’t hide’ or to put it in a better way, ‘when you start running you can’t hide anymore’. Our eagle eye pitlane photographers miss very little.
Sidepod
To keep it all simple the areas in the red ellipses have changed and been replaced or redesigned by the areas in the green ellipses.
The gulley in the sidepod is a little less aggressive and appears to me more integrated with the body surface. The body surface on the inside of that area is still quite bulbous to allow for the small inlet duct highlighted with the yellow arrows and it’s associated ductwork, which it has retained beside the driver's headrest area.
The beam wing, which we will come onto later, is also different.
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Below I have cropped this comparison of the driver's headrest area of the 2024 compared to the 2025 Red Bull. There are all small detail changes but they all add up, the parts changed or removed are highlighted with the red ellipses.
Also, the duct raised section highlighted with the red line in the top image above the driver's head has gone, giving a more compact surface coming off the top of the driver's headrest area.
The parts highlighted with the green ellipses in the bottom image above are new editions, these small horizontal vanes will help stabilise the airflow to stay attached as it comes off the end of the rear halo mounting.
It's interesting to see the flow-vis that Red Bull has put in the inlet of those small ducts. As I often say managing the spillage when the duct just can’t flow anymore is critical to consistency.
You can see this spillage just travels along the duct's lower intersection between it and the top surface of the sidepod, this will then travel down that sidepod gulley.
Beam wing
The beam wing is something that the teams change to suit circuit requirements, it works hand in hand with the diffuser, and if working correctly, can increase the drag reduction when the DRS on the upper wing is used, resulting in increased top speed.
The comparison between the '24 and '25 Red Bull is not really a new concept, it’s simply what Red Bull believes is best suited to the Bahrain circuit requirements. The regulations state that there is a box area that you can fit a maximum of two elements in.
I have highlighted what I will call the main element with the red arrows, and the second element with the light blue arrows. This 2025 version that’s on the car now will be a little more efficient, not produce quite the same levels of downforce while still giving a reasonable drag reduction when the DRS is open.
Floor
In some of these pictures, it’s really difficult to see the detail of the small turning vanes etc, but we can only comment on what we think we can see.
This fin highlighted in red, which I think was fitted more or less horizontally on the side of the floor keel, looks to have been reduced in size. The fin is used to help realign the airflow to the leading edge of the underfloor.
Again I have highlighted this fin in this side view picture below. Here it looks like a slightly different curvature.
Also the turning vanes highlighted with the red ellipses on the floor edge are slightly reprofiled in both these pictures below.
This version on the 2025 car looks a little less aggressive.
All of these are as Horner says, are small detailed developments. We all want to see someone reinventing the wheel but I’m afraid those days have long gone. Now it’s down to optimising the finer details and it’s the stopwatch that will tell the difference.
