Red Bull has introduced a revised floor for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix as it seeks to arrest its current slide and defend its Formula 1 championships.
The team has managed just two podium finishes in the last six races, as its form nosedived in recent races. This has put the team's retention of the constructors' title under scrutiny from McLaren and Ferrari, while a fourth drivers' title for Max Verstappen no longer looks guaranteed.
For Baku, the team has arrived with a revised floor geometry in an effort to improve the car's performance, as it seeks to end a six-race streak without a win.
The pre-event technical notes state that the new floor features "changes applied to improve the pressure gradients along the floor to improve the flow locally and downstream in all conditions."
Speaking ahead of FP1, chief engineer Paul Monaghan explained that the physical differences to the car were subtle, but hoped that it would form part of Red Bull's investigation into its current balance issues.
"The lessons are kind of ongoing and the immediate reaction tends to be the later races so it's a testament to everybody that we got it here," Monaghan said. "It's a lot of hard work and that hard work will continue. Singapore's only a week away so it'll be potentially another evolution for us.
"The scale of the update kind of determines the phase lag in there, so if we've managed to do it for this race, it's not the biggest one we'll ever undertake in terms of geometry change.
"It's subtle, could the effect be good? Yes. And I think the proof of the pudding will be on Sunday afternoon."
"We've tried to bring changes to the car and make it better and we don't want to watch Monza again. It wasn't the most pleasant event for us, so we'd like to improve, relative to our opposition.
"As I keep saying, Sunday afternoon, let's see how we go. And then we'll know a bit more about what we're doing. This time around, all of our research says this is the right thing to do. Ultimately, our test is later today."
Monaghan did not confirm whether both drivers would be equipped with the new floor, only going as far as to say that the team "could" choose to do so.
There were just three upgrades declared across the 10 teams ahead of Baku, as Aston Martin introduced a minor update to the deflectors at the rear corner of the car; a revised bottom edge has been produced to draw more performance from the floor.
RB has also added a new front wing to its car for the Baku weekend, having cut the camber of the wing flap to cut drag for the straightline sections of the circuit, and "to efficiently balance the car at circuits which are both low-drag and low-balance."
To resolve some of the issues that the team is currently facing there's now a wedge-shaped section that's been grafted onto the pre-existing floor, which results in a triangular extension that not only extends the tail section on the reference plane, it also removes the ramped incline and reduces the diffuser's volume.
The addition of this wedge-shaped section has also resulted in some of the geometrical detail of the tail section being discarded, which is evidenced where the two sections meet, with the curved ridge lines absorbed into the new tail's shape.
This follows a similar design philosophy as the floor introduced by Ferrari at the Italian Grand Prix, which also features a triangulated lower section for the boat tail, rather than the full ramped incline that had previously been employed (inset, left image).
Interestingly, this is something we've already seen from Ferrari, as they switched to an extended boat tail design in 2022 to help them balance the F1-75's performance (right image).
What's clear is that both Red Bull and Ferrari have been fighting balance issues since making changes to their floors this season, with it abundantly clear how difficult it is to find the performance sweet spot with the current regulations, given the sensitivity this generation of cars have when it comes to ride height.
And, like Ferrari, this latest move by Red Bull sees it taking aspects of its updated floor designs from earlier in the season and combining them with new elements, in order that it hasn't completely wasted its resources and an entire development pathway, whilst being hopeful it improves the floors output.
However, whilst this is more of a short-term band-aid solution, the team are expected to have an all-new floor available for the United States Grand Prix.
