Red Bull had to adjust RB20: 'Otherwise we would have been vulnerable'

Red Bull Racing was forced to come up with some drastic changes when designing the RB20. According to Adrian Newey, the changes were necessary because simply developing the RB19 further would not be enough to hold off the competition.

RB20 needed tweaks according to Newey

The RB20 is broadly an evolution of the successful RB19, but there are a number of notable differences. Of particular note are the sidepods, which look a lot like Mercedes' failed zeropod concept.

Newey explains to Auto, Motor und Sport why Red Bull has made some major changes to the RB20 compared to the RB19: "We knew everyone would copy our car from last year. If we had only focused on further developments, we would have been vulnerable."

Using only the first day of testing in Bahrain as a reference point, the changes seem to be working well so far. Max Verstappen led the timesheets by a wide margin throughout the day, although the winter test is usually not always representative of the rest of the season.