What Red Bull expects from F1 Miami upgrade that only Verstappen runs

Red Bull has commenced its incremental upgrade push to try and close the gap with the leading McLaren cars, starting with a revised floor design for the Miami sprint weekend, which Verstappen will trial.

Teams are generally reluctant to bring substantial floor changes to a sprint weekend, with just one practice session to calibrate any new parts. But according to chief engineer Paul Monaghan, the new floor – which includes reprofiled fences and edges – retains a similar balance profile, which means it is just a case of adding extra aerodynamic load to the car without risking upsetting the stability of its car.

"It's reasonably stable. We can bring it at relatively low risk at a sprint race because in our judgement the flow stability is unchanged," Monaghan said ahead of FP1, in which Verstappen took third. "We're not fearing it to be aerodynamically unstable or anything of that nature. It can go on and it will give us a few kilos of load, and we shall enjoy the benefits."

The team has stated in its pre-event technical notes that its new floor fences should "extract a small increase in load for the same flow stability". Further optimisation of the floor has extended to its floor edge wing, which now features greater wing curvature to extract more downforce.

Red Bull's spread-out upgrade plan, which will likely also see new parts introduced in Imola and Barcelona later this month, should partly address some of the balance issues that left it completely adrift on a hot and abrasive circuit like Bahrain, where sixth-placed Verstappen shipped over half a minute to McLaren's race winner Oscar Piastri.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Unlocking better through-corner balance should help its drivers stop the RB21 from sliding its rear tyres, which is likely a key to McLaren's much better tyre management.

" If you slide around, your rear tyres are probably going to get a bit too warm. But yes, we've made some steps, and we'll continue to make steps," Monaghan explained. "All the complaints we had out of Bahrain, we've addressed some. Have we done it wholly? Probably not. Will we continue? Yes.

"It won't be a turnkey solution. It's going to be incremental improvements on the car. We understand what's happened, but actually affecting a cure is not that straightforward. It may never disappear from the car.

He added: "It's not Harry Potter time, touch it with the magic wand and all of a sudden we're away and gone. It's diligent, thorough engineering by clever people, and we'll chip away. I didn't see much of a difference in Jeddah, so maybe we're getting better."