“Hidden” Red Bull sidepod innovation revealed in early stages of F1 testing

F1 testing is underway in Bahrain and some of the early innovation around the Red Bull RB20 has been revealed, as explained by Ted Kravitz.

Red Bull caught the headlines during F1 launch season for their aggressive-looking RB20.

Remarkably, their 2024 F1 challenger had similarities to last year’s Mercedes - notably, the engine cover and the sidepod area.

In a bid to remain ahead of their competitors, Red Bull have made radical changes to the sidepod area.

While their rivals have converged to Red Bull’s old design, the team have adopted an overbite where the surface of the sidepod inlet extends beyond the main intake.

Naturally, given they were F1’s dominant team, focus is already on what Red Bull are doing, and whether it will work given Mercedes’ own struggles with a similar type of design.

Speaking during F1’s testing coverage, Kravitz offered some insight into Red Bull’s sidepods and cooling.

“How are they cooling it? Where’s the air going to go into the sidepods to cool the car? Well we have our answer,” he said. “There is the vertical sidepod entry but actually there’s a hidden sidepod air intake, just around the ‘O’ of Oracle, just north, upstream of it on the sidepod.

“Do you remember last year they had the underbite effectively for the sidepod entry, so the hole was above and then it went down into the sidepod.

“Well they’ve flipped that, they’ve reversed that, they’ve turned it on its head. It’s an overbite now. The top of the sidepod sticks out and then the underneath is where they are taking in air for the radiators to cool.”

Given the substantial design changes, there’s still some uncertainty whether Red Bull can make work, with Kravitz describing it as a “big question mark”.

“No doubt, radiator technology has come on and Red Bull has taken advantage of that - they don’t need such big sidepod entries to cool the car but this is just one of the main things that they’ve changed that is the big question mark - is it going to work?,” he added.

“Are those air cooling Mercedes-like cannons that we can see, those big sausages, the cooling cucumbers going to the back of the car like the Mercedes, are they going to work? Are these new sidepods going to work? Is this new nose going to work?”