Was Verstappen surprised by Newey's RB20 concept? He answers himself!
F1 News
Mercedes were pretty much convinced at the time: the so-called zero-sidepod concept was not a masterstroke. No doubt Mercedes then looked to Red Bull Racing, who had a completely different approach for the RB18 and RB19. For the RB20 too, Red Bull opted for a remarkable concept, resembling Mercedes' zero-sidepod.
At the end of 2023, Verstappen first saw the drawings of the RB20. Adrian Newey chose to go towards the concept disliked by Mercedes. No one was there at the time, but it is easy to imagine that Verstappen frowned at the time upon seeing the master designer's idea.
Verstappen believes in Newey and consorts
During the test week in Bahrain, the three-time world champion was asked about this. "Honestly, I trust everyone in the team that they know what they are doing," Verstappen told us. "So I don't care how they design the car as long as it's faster. Of course, it's quite interesting what they come up with every single time and it looks nice. And, yeah, for the rest, I'm not an engineer. I'm here to do my job in the car and they are here to do their job."
Verstappen was fastest on the opening day of the test, the closing day the Dutchman had to beat Ferrari in the timesheet. But that is scoreboard journalism. Instead, Verstappen is happy with what Red Bull has done with the RB20. "I think so far everything that we hoped for worked very well. And that's always a little bit of a question mark when you get to the real track. But I have to say the last few years already, I think that has been a good strength of ours."