What Perez’s crash revealed about Red Bull’s F1 floor changes

Back in May, the Mexican’s Monaco Grand Prix qualifying accident resulted in his car being lifted high above the track to offer photographers a clear view of the underside of the RB19.

Rival teams were left rubbing their hands about finally getting a chance to better understand what F1’s benchmark squad has done with its floor.

So when Perez’s RB19 had to be retrieved in Hungary following his smash early on in the opening practice session, there is likely to have been an equal sense of glee about the floor being shown off again – especially since his Red Bull team had introduced some updates.

Ahead of the Hungarian GP, Red Bull has revealed in the official submission documents that have to be sent to the FIA that there were some specific tweaks to the floor edge detail as a consequence of revisions made to its sidepods.

Sergio Perez, Red Bull Racing RB19 crash

Photo by: Ronald Vording

The team stated: “The reshaped sidepod has led to subtle floor edges changes to work with the upstream surfaces, which has extracted some more local load.”

Close examination of the photos that emerged after Perez’s crash show that whilst there’s little to be seen on the top surface, aside from some accommodating geometrical alterations to suit the new sidepod layout, there’s an interesting development to be found on the underside.

It’s a design feature we have seen elsewhere – perhaps ironically when it was spotted on Lewis Hamilton’s W14 being lifted up after his Monaco practice crash.

In both cases a row of strakes have been added to the rear portion of the edge wing, in order to help direct the airflow as it passes around the surface.

The question will be, did seeing the Mercedes design in Monaco spark interest in this direction for Red Bull, or was something already in the works as part of this update package?

Either way it’s always fascinating to see how there’s convergence on similar design pathways, even if they are not a 1:1 facsimile of one another, given they have to fit in with their given surroundings.