Red Bull has ditched their hollow nose for the first time after more than two years and introduced more conventional shape of the center extension and also introduced an agressive floor update with heavily sculpted fins near the front end of the sidepods.
Red Bull has been using their hollow nose since 2017 on RB13 and the idea was to reduce the negative effect of airflow separation at the high pressure tip of the nose and to utilize the airflow through the nose for feeding the S-duct system.
It is not known why Red Bull has dropped the hollow nose or whether this change is final, Monaco specific or just a comparative test with the old nose to compare its aero effect on the rest of the car.
Red Bull also brought interesting new additions on their floor, which was first tested by Ferrari and which Mercedes also uses on their F1 W10, but on Red Bull RB15 the fins are positioned at the front part of the floor, under the sidepod shoulder.
Unlike the vortex generators seen so far, Red Bull shaped them very aggressively with their curvature and height increasing towards the longitudinal edge of the floor, creating mini tunnels that boost the vortex intensity.
The four vortex generators work in combination with the longitudinal slot near them, pumping vortices under the floor along its front edge that will help isolate the airflow under the floor from external turbulence, increasing underbody efficiency.
This is the ultimate goal of all longitudinal, transversal and angled slots and vortex generators located on the floor, but the Red Bull solution has very agressively shaped vortex generators at the very beginning of the floor edge that work in combination with long longitudinal slots behind them.
Also, the teams try to send the energyzed airflow along the sidepods, especially along their lower edge, towards the top of the diffuser to increase the flow speed and the amount of energy that passes over the top of the floor, thereby increasing the pressure difference and downforce.
