Max Verstappen in the RB21 in Singapore - Photo: Red Bull Content Pool

Red Bull brings 'last change' to Verstappen's RB21: 'Brilliant work!'

14:06, 03 Oct

Updated: 15:10, 03 Oct

byKada Sarkozi

Red Bull Racing is one of the two teams bringing updates to Singapore. Chief engineer Paul Monaghan revealed how the change made its way to the track.

"The ‘26 car is not yet swamped the [manufacturing side], so there's a little window to say ‘we could do this’ and brilliant work from them, they've got on and done it, and we've got it here."

- Paul Monaghan

Together with Mercedes, Red Bull Racing made changes to the RB21 ahead of the Singapore Grand Prix. The Austrians now have locally increased cambers to extract more load on their front wings.

"We hope to extract a bit more lap time from it," Monaghan began in Singapore.

"As the last one was released, more evidence came [and we thought], ‘oh, we could do this, we could do that.’"

"A little bit of capacity is available, so we've gone ahead and pushed it up and said, 'yes, we'll bring that.' It should be the last one for this year.

"There might be some flat trips for Vegas or something like that. Otherwise, it's a little bit of performance, and some great work in the factory we've got here."

Max Verstappen driving the RB21 in Singapore - Photo: Race Pictures

Red Bull's aim with the change is to get closer to McLaren on high-downforce tracks such as Singapore. For now, Monaghan remained tight-lipped on how much extra performance the changes to the front wing can extract.

"I'll tell you what, I'm sitting here on Sunday and I'll tell you. But clearly our aims are extracting a bit more lap time. And I hope with strenuous efforts, the car is better. Now the question is, can we challenge the previous order for a high-downforce circuit? We'll have a go, see how we get on."

'Little window' appeared to complete update

With the regulation change ahead in 2026, Monaghan was asked how many people focused on carrying out the update. He explained:

"I’m not sure how many people on the manufacturing side were involved. The ‘26 car is not yet swamped them, so there's a little window to say ‘we could do this’ and brilliant work from them, they've got on and done it, and we've got it here.

"So in terms of design side and the aero side both are relatively small compared to the majority is now ‘26. Manufacturing side is what we require to then build and put wings together and the brilliant people have got it here."

Max Verstappen and Yuki Tsunoda finished third and ninth respectively in FP1. Catch the full results for the first session in Singapore here!

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