How Red Bull took design inspiration from F1’s slowest team

Red Bull have been F1’s dominant force in recent seasons, winning 17 of the last 18 races.

It’s contrasting fortunes for Williams, who haven’t won an F1 race in over a decade.

Red Bull won last year’s constructors’ championship, while Williams finished last with just eight points.

Despite the significant gap between the two teams, Red Bull have openly admitted about taking a design idea from Williams and using it on their own race-winning car.

"You can't assume that you have the best solution in all areas of the car when you first put the car on the ground," Monaghan said in Spain.

"Our currency is lap time and that piece of floor design, that was out early-2022. I recall the Williams had it quite early on, some other people had it.

"It didn't necessarily work for us, we've looked at it a couple of times and it's a small benefit - it looks like a slightly larger change than is actually realised.

"It's coming towards the back of the floor so it is not going to be the most influential thing. It helps a little bit. You are quite constrained, if you look height-wise, where we can do it. 

"So it's been there for a while in our work so we were in a position where we could include that in that bit of the floor, and we've done it."

Coincidentally, Williams have received a lot of criticism for the simplicity of their floor after it was exposed when Logan Sargeant's car was being recovered in final practice at the Spanish Grand Prix.

Team boss James Vowles defended the design, although acknowledged a lack of “detail” relative to their competitors.

“There were photos taken of our floor this weekend after Logan went off in FP3 and obviously those have been compared to photography taken of our competitors just a few weeks ago,” Vowles explained.

“I think one thing to point out is that it is a little bit deceptive. What happened here is it’s very focused on that rear diffuser ramp unlike the other photos that perhaps focus more on to the floor and the mid floor where you can actually, within the regulations, add more detail.

“All that said and done though, we are clearly lacking detail relative to our competitors but you wouldn’t have needed the underside of the floor to know that, you can see that from lap times.

“That’s fundamentally a feature of balanced characteristics and how the cars performance and downforce as well at the same time and a lot of that is being generated by the floor.”