Red Bull adds another hole in its cooling system next to the cockpit

During the Japanese Grand Prix, the Red Bull team once again surprised with its technical innovations by making significant modifications to its single-seater. While the revisions did not include major changes to its aggressive sidepod solution, which sets it apart from its competitors, a notable modification was made to the engine cooling inlets surrounding the cockpit. Indeed, a new air intake has appeared further forward on the car, in addition to the inlets already present behind the cockpit, as explained by Paul Monaghan, Red Bull’s chief engineer: « When you try to create a cooling inlet, it would be really stupid to place it where the pressure is low. So, we try to optimize and choose the highest pressure inlets to make radiator cooling as effective as possible. That is the reason behind this modification of the air inlets. This gives us some advantages. »

These adjustments are not the result of a reaction to problems encountered at the beginning of the season, but are part of a planned improvement process even before the start of winter testing. It was actually done before we even turned a single lap during the pre-season tests. So, it was planned for a performance gain. The question was, ‘could we really put it on the car during this sequence of multiple overseas trips?’ We looked at it and thought, ‘yes, we can’. We made some parts and sent them to Australia, so some started there. And then we recovered the rest here,” explains Paul Monaghan to Autosport.

In addition to the air intakes, Red Bull also revised the floor of its single-seater, with subtle changes and an increase in camber to improve the flow towards the floor edge wing. These adjustments, combined with the reduction in size of the front brake ducts, have allowed the Austrian team to gain downforce while maintaining an adequate level of stability. Paul Monaghan emphasizes the importance of these modifications by stating: “Visually, it’s quite striking and in terms of the interest of this novelty… that’s precisely why we made an upgrade.”

Note that the size of the front brake coolings has been reduced here in Japan due to less demand than on other circuits.