The "subtle" Red Bull upgrades that kept it in the Portugal F1 mix

The final Portuguese Grand Prix race result, on paper, doesn’t entirely reflect kindly on Red Bull. Max Verstappen’s late stop to gun for the fastest lap, which proved futile after once again failing to dance with the track limits devil, left him some way behind winner Lewis Hamilton.

In that, it was a weekend of near-misses at Red Bull. Verstappen could have got pole, had he not exceeded track limits on his quickest qualifying time. He could have taken fastest lap, had he not overcooked it on the exit of Turn 14. Feeling that losing the time to track limits was “odd, as they weren’t monitoring [Turn] 14” - despite an FIA directive adding it to the corners under scrutiny – Verstappen also didn’t seem to be abundantly happy with finishing second.

Red Bull had perhaps lost its swagger on the hard compound tyre, which was the key race tyre on which it could make the difference. Mercedes, meanwhile, looked much stronger on the C1 tyre and was able to push the race well out of Verstappen’s reach – although Hamilton’s heroics on the “shot” medium tyre also did its bit to keep him safe from his rival.

Ultimately, Red Bull knew it was heading to the weekend at the Algarve circuit as the underdog compared to Mercedes. Although Verstappen headed FP3, Mercedes was stronger on the Friday and, by association, appeared to have a stronger car for the race.

But it wasn’t for the lack of trying. Red Bull wheeled in a collection of new parts for the Portuguese Grand Prix weekend to keep pace with Mercedes in the championship battle. These focused on extracting more performance from the diffuser, floor and bargeboards and ladle in a few extra points of downforce to give Verstappen some more ammunition.

Red Bull Racing RB16B new bargeboard detail

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

The side of the car now looks even more like a set of Venetian blinds (above), as Red Bull’s aerodynamicists saw fit to increase the quantity of the horizontal components attached to the sidepod-mounted collection of aero devices. Perhaps there was a sale at the local Velux outlet in Milton Keynes.

They’re not there to just look cool - these pick up the airflow from the bargeboards and offer the car a little extra downforce, while also assisting with the two vertical elements sandwiching them with cleaning up the airflow directed at the sidepods. The front vertical part has changed too, and Red Bull has added a lengthy slot down it to break it up. As a result, this reduces any expected separation and means the part can divert airflow coming from the bargeboards around a greater radius. Adding the twist to the bottom half of it also boosts this, taking airflow from the bargeboards and turning it around.

“They were pretty subtle upgrades, but yeah, they all worked pretty well to plan – so, you know, we were happy with the performance of the components that we bought” Christian Horner

The diffuser’s central section is also much reduced in size, opening out the rest of the diffuser to build in a bigger volume to boost the amount of downforce it can create. We’ve gone into Bernoulli’s principle before in these technical diatribes, but the bottom line is that by adding more volume to the diffuser area, the low-pressure zone gets larger. The floor then generates more suction, adhering the car to the road like a recalcitrant limpet, and means you can take the high-speed corners at a, erm, higher speed.

Behind the new bargeboard devices sits a redesigned floor edge (below) ahead of the “Z-shape” cut-out that we definitely need to come up with a better name for. Here, the small winglets that sit along the edge were extended all the way to the outwashing fin sat atop the cut-out corner, helping to further generate an effect akin to a side-mounted diffuser to find a touch more downforce. It also looks to be a way of replicating some of the slots and cuts that the teams lost over the off-season owing to the new rules.

Red Bull Racing RB16B floor comparison

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

Although the updates seemed to maintain the status quo rather than give Red Bull a leg up, team principal Christian Horner was quick to underline that the 2021 season is a “marathon, not a sprint”. After all, it takes a little time to understand the intricacies of each update.

“I mean, we're race three and we're eight points behind in the drivers, it's nothing,” Horner told Sky Sports after the race. “This championship is going to be about being a marathon rather than a sprint. We knew coming here this would be a track that favoured Mercedes. To push them and split them the way we have, I think that's really encouraging. And I think next week will be another litmus test.”

Perhaps Horner’s buoyant words suggest that Red Bull didn’t expect to be as close as it was at Portimao so, if anything, there’s an argument to be made that the fleet of updates may have addressed the expected difference.

“They were pretty subtle upgrades,” Horner added later, “but yeah, they all worked pretty well to plan – so, you know, we were happy with the performance of the components that we bought.”

Whether the Spanish Grand Prix will offer anything different is part of Horner’s suggested “litmus test”, and without a previous Barcelona test to yield any insight, it remains as yet unknown. But there’s every chance of another Hamilton and Verstappen duel at Monaco a few weeks later, especially as the Red Bull appears more planted in the slower-speed corners compared to the Mercedes at this stage.

Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes W12, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB16B, Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W12, and Carlos Sainz Jr., Ferrari SF21

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

The two battled valiantly in 2019’s race, and although Verstappen later copped a time penalty in that race for an unsafe pit release, it hardly stopped him from mounting a challenge on Hamilton at the Nouvelle Chicane – where they made contact and had to escape to the chicane run-off.

So far this year, their wheel-to-wheel battles have been cigarette-paper close without either going over the limit. At Imola, Verstappen tagged Hamilton at the opening Tamburello chicane and scampered off into the lead, while Hamilton’s move on the Dutchman at Portimao left the Red Bull driver with no chance of cutting back into the following corners.

If Red Bull can get its Portugal upgrades to continue to bear fruit, it can keep Mercedes on its toes in the next few races before the two teams call it quits on 2021 development to focus on next year

If Red Bull can get its Portugal upgrades to continue to bear fruit, it can keep Mercedes on its toes in the next few races before the two teams call it quits on 2021 development to focus on next year. But Mercedes will, surely, have something up its own sleeve to try and claim the upper hand over its rival.

And sure, while the Portuguese Grand Prix was hardly the most exciting race – albeit perhaps skewed by the scintillating pair of openers that F1 rewarded us with – it proved that Mercedes had a very real threat at a circuit that it was expected to be strong at. When we start to hit tracks that are more to Red Bull’s taste, it may just turn the heat up even further on an already spicy title battle.

Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W12, passes Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB16B

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images