Red Bull's 2024 Car Reportedly Failed Its First Crash Tests

Friday, 29 December 2023 at 09:00

Red Bull Racing's 2024 car RB20 apparently failed its first dynamic frontal homologation test at Cranfield.

Every single F1 team has to complete crash tests with their new car ahead of the season in a process that is mandated by FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile).

With the 2024 season approaching Red Bull Racing team moved to the stage of testing its first chassis, but it failed the dynamic frontal homologation.

As reported by it.motorsport.com, RB20's nose didn't absorb the energy in crash properly, which resulted in further damage to the car's body.

Red Bull's team principal Christian Horner recently stated that the 2023 season with RB19 might have been the most dominant season in Fomrula One ever.

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Red Bull engineers built a car that no competitor could match in 2023. The team principal attributed much of the progress in between season 2022 and 2023 to the weight reduction in all parts of the car.

While the team probably tried to pursue the same direction going into the 2024 season, pushing weight reduction to its limits, the first crash test revealed an issue with the current concept.

The test will be repeated again with an additional layer of carbon skin, but the team's progress might have been hindered by the issues with its first chassis test.

Whether or not this will impact RB20's development is yet to be determined. But the team from Milton Keynes went into the 2023-2024 winter break with a healthy headstart over its rivals.

Carlos Sainz told the media what scares him the most is that he believes that Max Verstappen didn't have to use the full 100% potential of his car during the 2023 season as he was managing pace in the front most of the time.

On the other hand, both Verstappen and Christian Horner have been saying multiple times they expect competition to get closer to Red Bull next season.

Will it be another year of domination or an exciting battle for the Championship until the final race of the season like we saw in 2021? We have to wait until March to find out.