Baku will be the ultimate test for Red Bull’s DRS

During the Spanish Grand Prix, Max Verstappen experienced an issue with his DRS. The rear wing of his RB18 was not opening all the time, and even closed on its own several times during the race. Faced with this problem, Red Bull naturally sought solutions, and Monaco didn’t really provide a comparison point as DRS has little influence there.

The Chief Engineer of Red Bull, Paul Monaghan, emphasizes the work that has been done to find the source of the problem. There is a sigh of relief after the work that some very intelligent people have done, the research and checks. They have done a phenomenal job in a very short amount of time. The challenge has changed from one circuit to another, the waiting time changes, the opening speed changes, the conditions change.

Monaghan believes that the team has learned from its mistakes, as he considers that this issue was caused by Red Bull itself. We inflicted our DRS problem on ourselves, I think if we’re being honest, so now we have learned the rather painful lessons from it. […] I am confident, much happier with what we have learned in Spain. I guess the frustrating part is the lesson we had to receive on a silver platter, so yes, take that on the chin and move on.

Even if the problem did not appear during the Monaco Grand Prix last weekend, Baku, being in a configuration where DRS is crucial, the Azerbaijani track will be the ultimate test for Monaghan. Baku presents slightly different issues. Your opening speed is 160km/h in Monaco, in Baku it is 300km/h. […] I think it would be foolish for us to rest on our laurels. We know what we did wrong. It was our mission to fix the problem, and so far, everything is going well.

If the DRS problem were to reappear on the streets of Baku, the disadvantage could be much greater than in Barcelona, since the circuit’s configuration highlights top speed.