Is Red Bull on the rebound with its RB21?

Red Bull had ample reason to be concerned after the Miami Grand Prix. Max Verstappen may have successfully pounced for pole position, but there was a sense of inevitability that he would be leapfrogged by the two McLarens as the orange machines of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris hove into view.

After introducing some minor floor updates for Miami, Red Bull followed up with new additions to the car at Imola. The floor trialled on Max Verstappen’s RB21 through the weekend in Florida was now fully minted with the inclusion of new sidepods, plus revised rear-wheel aerodynamics and duct work around the wheel hub.

It took the full gamut of Emilia Romagna GP practice sessions to dial them in; it’s rare that anything simply works off the bat in F1, and each upgrade has its own requisite tinkering time to get it to play with the existing bits on the car.

The initial long-run numbers didn’t look great after Friday’s running, with estimates having Verstappen around 0.4-0.5 seconds per lap down on the McLarens, but the most important part was that it was in possession of said numbers.

Once the trackside engineers and the support engineers back in Milton Keynes got their mitts on them, the overnight work could begin. From there, it appears that the tide has started to turn.

Much has been said of Red Bull’s RB21. We’ve contended previously that it’s a genuinely quick car with a tiny operating window, although this assessment has not been good enough for a handful of fans because it doesn’t fit the narrative that Verstappen is proving transcendent in a hopeless chassis.

But nuance can exist in F1 discourse. Verstappen is absolutely demonstrating his class this year and has been by far the most impressive driver, but performing exquisitely in a car and getting good results out of it by definition proves that it’s possible for the car to achieve those things.

It’s all about how the driver operates it, and he is walking the high-wire perfectly. But even he couldn’t hope to compete in races where tyre degradation was a considerable factor.

Verstappen could not keep the McLarens at bay in Miami

Photo by: Hector Vivas / Getty Images

Even in the event that Verstappen got every single micro-correction right during a stint – minimal slip, no scrub through the longer-radius corners, and no lock-ups – the Red Bull still had a tendency to chew through the Pirellis in the final third of a race stint, while McLaren did not.

Accusations that the Woking squad was doing something untoward to maintain that tyre degradation advantage didn’t wash – at some point, rather than point the finger outwards, it requires you to look inwardly.

And, awarding full credit to Red Bull, it has. There are two mechanisms to this: consistent downforce, and temperature management – both of which the team has addressed.

The downforce characteristic is one that’s easy to explain: if you’ve got an aero package that delivers strong levels of downforce in both high and low-speed corners, the rear axle is simply less prone to sliding because the tyres have more vertical load placed upon them.

The build and retention of heat in the tyres is different for both qualifying and race conditions

In Red Bull’s approach, there have been several facets in its development over the recent rounds that have allowed this: that it has concentrated on drawing more performance from the underbody with its sidepod and floor updates, and from the more direct revisions of the aerodynamic furniture clustered upon the rear-wheel uprights.

This is all great, and minimising the lateral forces through the tyres is a justified pursuit. But it only gets you so far if the mechanism of maintaining a sensible temperature within the wheel assembly is not well developed.

Suggestions are that McLaren’s superiority in mitigating tyre degradation lies in this area, and spy shots of the exposed wheel hubs do suggest that the thermodynamicists have been busy understanding and building optimal flow in this region.

The build and retention of heat in the tyres is different for both qualifying and race conditions. On a single lap, the tyres need to be up to temperature at the start. You can afford to be slightly aggressive here, with the caveat that the tyre shouldn’t overheat halfway through the lap and knock the car out of its peak performance range.

Wache stresses difficulties of setting up current-generation F1 cars

Photo by: Mark Thompson / Getty Images

In a race, it’s different; sure, the tyres do need heat at the start of a race to ensure a driver doesn’t enter the first corner several positions behind where they qualified, but the generation of heat must be a lot slower to ensure that the full chain chemical reactions behind thermal degradation don’t occur straight away.

Then there’s the temperature maintenance aspect of that, and airflow through the brake ducts and the wheel hub must sufficiently pull hot air out of the assembly. 

Hence why Red Bull has addressed the rear-wheel duct areas too, to give it a bit more of a chance of capitalising on its added downforce. Otherwise, it can mitigate the abrasion on the tyre through reduced sliding – but it still wanders into the same end-of-stint thermal deg if the temperatures are not controlled.

“I think definitely we’ve managed to put some performance on the car and get the car into a better window; as soon as you take away the sliding, you’re able to manage the temperature a lot better,” says team boss Christian Horner, who was effusive in his praise of the team following Verstappen’s win at Imola.

“I would say that’s probably, since certainly Brazil last year, the first time I can remember in a long time we’ve had the pace to really pull away and out-deg the McLaren.”

Technical director Pierre Wache agreed that the updates allowed Red Bull far more opportunity to manage its tyres through a stint, but also laid bare how difficult it was to dial in the set-ups of the current generation of cars, with just “millimetres” involved in precipitous swings in performance.

Hence the metaphor of a narrow window, one that Luke Skywalker would need Force intervention to hit with even a BB gun.

“The set-up improved a lot,” explains Wache. “And I think the new package gives the opportunity to improve even more. It’s so difficult now with these cars. You put one millimetre there or two millimetres there, it’s such a narrow window.

Key area of focus are revised aero around rear wheels plus more underbody performance from updates to sidepods and floor

Photo by: Filip Cleeren

“Plus on top of the tyre, it’s so narrow now. More or less, you have no travel with this car. It’s so difficult. And the engine mode has a big effect also.”

Is this the point at which Red Bull has genuinely turned the tide on McLaren? In an environment that deals so frequently in cold, hard logic and data, it’s only fair to ask for a much larger sample size before making a real conclusion, with Monaco not much help given it is such an outlier.

“I’m not sure it was a big improvement,” adds Wache. “But it was in the right direction. I think it opened some set-ups and maybe Max being able to use it more as a car. I cannot say more than that at the moment.”

Taking into account the long gestation times for developments like these, it demonstrated that Red Bull has been long aware of where its tyre management issues resided and what needed to be addressed

“I think generally we’re getting a better grip and a better understanding, and the technical team have been working very hard on it,” adds Horner. “We’re building a bit of momentum, which is important at this stage in the championship.”

Taking into account the long gestation times for developments like these, it demonstrated that Red Bull has been long aware of where its tyre management issues resided and what needed to be addressed before knocking on the door.

But it might take a few more races to truly determine whether Red Bull has truly sorted its problems – and whether McLaren is able to successfully respond.

This article is one of many in the new monthly issue of Autosport magazine. For more premium content, take a look at the July 2025 issue and subscribe today.

His team’s efforts paid off handsomely for Verstappen in Italy

Photo by: Jure Makovec / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images