Reigning world champions Red Bull have finally revealed their car for the new 2024 F1 season, which has attracted attention due to the radical design of the side cooling intakes that are not seen in the studio photos.
Red Bull dominated last season with 21 wins in 22 races, and over the winter they had the difficult task of improving the near-perfect RB19 car, which was fast at every track except Singapore.
Due to the large pace advantage at the start of the 2023 season, Red Bull was able to switch very early to the car design for 2024, and while almost all teams in 2024 copied the Red Bull design to a greater or lesser extent, especially the side intakes, Red Bull turned to another solution in search of performance.
In the studio photos, the side intakes cannot be seen in their usual position – it is suspected that they are positioned vertically, similar to the initial specification of last year’s Mercedes F1 W14, but that they are much narrower and harder to notice due to the black paint on that part of the chassis.
Red Bull probably processed the studio photos to hide the position and shape of the intake for as long as possible, but the car has already done its first kilometers this week with only a few blurry photos from a nearby hotel being leaked to the public.
Interestingly, the car in the studio photos does not even have intakes for cooling the brakes, which further hides the car’s track-ready specification.
The shape of the sidewalls is an evolution of the design on the RB18 and RB19, but with even sleeker lines and more room for airflow underneath while Red Bull has turned to a cooling solution similar to last year’s Mercedes with long horizontal hot air outlets that start at the end of the halo shield.
The space around the bottom of the sidewalls is even larger than last year’s RB19 due to the almost non-existent side intakes, and the front and rear wings shown are traces of last year’s design, which is a common practice of teams who want to reveal as little as possible with the first photos.
Verstappen is aiming for a fourth consecutive championship in 2024, and Perez wants to at least get close to his level, otherwise his place in the 2025 team could be in jeopardy.
