Lewis Hamilton questions Red Bull upgrades despite their F1 wind tunnel penalty

21 July 2023 , 12:55

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Red Bull's RB19s have received another upgrade package for this weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix (Image: Getty Images)

Lewis Hamilton made a point of stating Red Bull "seem to be continuously bringing upgrades" as he gave his view on the tight Formula 1 development race this season.

Red Bull began the year some way ahead of anyone else in terms of the pace of their RB19 cars. Regardless, the pace of upgrades this season and the close field behind them means they have also had to make improvements.

Christian Horner said last month that the team is mostly focused on developing its 2024 car now. But clearly it still has one eye on this season, despite their huge lead at the top of both championships.

Changes have been made to the sidepods, radiators and cooling system for this weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix. And they have managed to do that despite having much less wind tunnel testing time than the rest of the teams, thanks in part to their penalty for previously breaching F1's budget cap rules.

And Hamilton noted that as he spoke to reporters in Budapest. He said: "I heard that Red Bull might have an upgrade package this weekend, once again. So we'll see how that affects them. They seem to be continuously bringing upgrades on their car."

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But F1 TV's expert analyst Sam Collins believes Red Bull might have used the rules to their advantage. He explained: "A lot of people are going, 'What about the wind tunnel time?' I think they've been very clever because radiator redesigns don't come out of the wind tunnel allocation, so they've actually got a bit of a free upgrade on that, I think.

"That upgrade, I think, is going to be worth more than two-tenths of a second as the season goes on. However, as we saw with Ferrari at the Spanish Grand Prix, when you do a drastic change to a Formula 1 car, it doesn't always work right away. So, perhaps, Red Bull have exposed themselves ever so slightly – at least at first."

Hamilton noted that Red Bull are "continuously" managing to improve their cars (HOCH ZWEI/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images)

Such a boost for the championship leaders would, of course, be bad news for Hamilton's Mercedes team and all the others trying to catch them. The Silver Arrows are making their own development strides, but have also had to be cautious about how much resource they put into that work with cost cap and wind tunnel testing rules to abide by.

He said: "You're very limited with resources as well so you have to be careful of which decisions you make. If you go full-steam ahead in this direction, you could lose weeks of development, it could be tenths of performance.

"So they have to be very methodical in the way they go through that process. I wish it was faster but, unfortunately, it's not. Things are in the pipeline for many races to come. That's always the case because it takes time to build things."

Daniel Moxon