The intrigue sparked by Red Bull's Miami sidepod design

Red Bull's own imagining of the rear 'flip' wing, or "Macarena" wing, had perhaps assumed most of the attention when it came to the Formula 1 team's smorgasbord of updates for Miami.

The RB22's bodywork had also been significantly reworked, with a reintroduction of the 'waterslide' upper surface that was used across multiple teams over the previous ruleset. To fit this, the outer edge of the sidepod sits on the absolute edge of the allotted reference volumes used to enclose the bodywork, widening the recessed channel atop of the bodywork. 

This works with the team's new floor, plus an updated version of the sidepod inlets introduced back in Japan. Internally, the flow around the radiators change - especially as the previous sidepods were narrower in scope, and these are likely pulled further away from the centre of the car. 

The trailing edge of the sidepods, which resolves in a pointed tip that merges with the floor, tucks in towards the centreline of the car only slightly to fit the dimensions allowed.

Red Bull's bodywork updates had caught the eye of a few teams; McLaren's Andrea Stella, for example, hinted that his team might fancy taking a look at a similar design.

"I think for those who are technically interested, we are in a very interesting phase," Stella explained after Miami. "It's a very interesting phase, because if you see the sidepod concept that Red Bull introduced, that's quite different to the sidepod concept that, for instance, Mercedes and Ferrari have adopted. And the McLaren style is further different.

"I think there will be a stabilisation at some stage, a convergence, but we look like we are quite far from this convergence. So I think there will be a process of looking at each other, testing things, certainly each team will be testing, taking a look at the Red Bull concept, see the advantages. 

"They've also been quite smart and innovative in the way they have used some legality concession to introduce such geometry. So I think that the overall design of the car is far from converging. 

"This doesn't mean that some things have already started to look like that's the direction that everyone is taking, but with the 2025 cars, after a few years of the regulation, they started to look very similar to each other. I think we are still far from these conditions."

Stella's comment about "legality concession" appears to relate to the rear section of the waterslide area, which makes use of some interesting topography. Instead of falling under the "sidepod" subsection of the technical regulations, this area actually pertains to the "engine cover" bounding boxes - or Article C3.8.2.

This states that the bodywork has "no convex radius of curvature less than 75mm" and "no concave radius of curvature less than 50mm". When you look at how the convex outer bodywork converges on that rear tip, it looks smaller, and then transitions to a flat-looking edge on the inside of the slide's concave profile.

Perhaps it's found a cunning linguistic workaround to define that, or perhaps there's a smoking gun in a different section of the rules altogether.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Brett Farmer / LAT Images via Getty Images

In any case, the waterslide sidepods have a clear benefit in being able to reduce the travel distance over the top of the sidepods and onto the top of the floor. In that scenario, the airflow passing over the floor does not lose as much energy due to the skin friction supplied by the boundary layer of the bodywork. Depending on the shape of the slide, it should also be possible to create some degree of rotational flow to keep flow attached over the top surface of the diffuser.

By ensuring flow stability, the pressure differential between the top and bottom surfaces can not only remain large (creating downforce) but is also more consistent to retain through-corner balance.

"There is a definite stop forward," said Red Bull chief Laurent Mekies. "We left Japan 1.2 seconds away from pole, China 1.0 seconds away from pole. The competition was not going to wait for us with their updates. 

"Everybody has updated the car. But certainly we knew that on top of the development race, we had to solve some of our issues. And we knew there was lap time in it. So to see us this weekend qualifying six tenths away from pole on Friday and less than two tenths away from pole on Saturday is a big indication of the size of the progress. 

"What number is the correct one, we don't know. But compared to where we were, it's something much better than anything we have been able to show this year.

"After Suzuka on Sunday night, we said to each other, regardless of our performance deficit overall in terms of development compared to where we are, we did not give at that moment a consistent car to our drivers, a car they can push with confidence lap to lap, corner to corner. 

"And that was most of the work that has been done in these five weeks' breaks in addition to the normal development. So yes, there is a split between the two, whatever the number or whatever the split is. 

"But of course, it was tangible. It is lap time. We knew we were losing a serious amount of lap time with that lack of confidence the drivers could have in the car. The steering was an aspect. We had quite a few other aspects as well. And we still have a few to sort out."