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Why did Red Bull come to Las Vegas with the 'wrong' wing
- Ludo van Denderen
With seventeenth place for Max Verstappen and 19th place for Sergio Perez in FP2 in Las Vegas, Red Bull Racing won't be satisfied with their early performance. There is work to be done ahead of Saturday's sessions. A major flaw for the RB20 is its lack of speed on the straights, which there are plenty of on the street circuit in Sin City. A choice Red Bull Racing has made in the past is to blame for their rear wing choice.
It was at Monza, where Verstappen was grumbling to the Dutch media. To what was the lack of speed in Italy due, the question had been? "The team made a different choice and they would rather spend the money on something else," Verstappen told the media last summer, including GPblog. "It doesn't help that we don't have a special wing, in terms of top speed. We didn't have that in previous years either, but then the car was good enough to compensate. But when you already have problems with the car, this makes it a bit worse."
Budget cap plays tricks on Red Bull
In a nutshell, this explains why Verstappen and his Red Bull team fell some seven kilometres per hour short of McLaren and Ferrari in Las Vegas. In the days of the budget cap, there's a maximum amount you can spend per year. That is something the Austrian team ran into in Italy as well as now in Las Vegas. When developing the RB20, it was assumed - with the RB19 in mind - that Red Bull did not need a special rear wing to be the fastest.
In hindsight, it turns out that it did need one. So, whereas the competition at Monza and Las Vegas fitted circuit-specific rear wings on their cars, Red Bull simply cannot. No doubt special wings have been manufactured at the factory in Milton Keynes, but the budget cap has to be taken into account: The special wings may not be used due to the ins and outs of the budget cap. The money can only be spent once, then they cannot do anything else. If they were to, they'd be penalised by the FIA. And so, Red Bull has decided to opt for a different use of the available budget.
So, a misunderstanding is thought to be the reason that Red Bull forgot to take the special wing to Las Vegas. It simply cannot be used, because then other things cannot be paid for.
This article was written in collaboration with Toby Nixon
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