James Allison shares his insights after seeing the true Red Bull RB20 design emerge

admin | February 29, 2024 | Other Clubs | No Comments

Mercedes’ James Allison couldn’t help but admire Red Bull’s willingness to take risks with the RB20 design.

Red Bull has revealed a drastically different RB20 design for the 2024 season, moving away from a simple progression of their successful RB19 – an unexpected move given their crushing of the rivals in 2023.

Mercedes, too, has chosen revolution with their new W15, and technical director James Allison has expressed his opinions on seeing their rivals take such a radical approach.

James Allison: Bravo to Red Bull

Allison, who is no stranger to building vehicles to follow up on successful campaigns, was impressed by Red Bull’s choice to take a risk and pursue a new design route with the RB20 once it touched the track in Bahrain.

Allison was queried by the media, including PlanetF1.com, about Red Bull’s new design, and the British engineer said it is a bold decision by the reigning World Champions.

“Mostly, I thought that, when a team is out in front as they have been, it’s quite easy to rest on your laurels,” he went on to say.

“I thought ‘bravo to them’ for being willing to try something different than the previous season.

With Red Bull taking certain design inspirations from Mercedes’ now-defunct ‘zeropod’ concept, does Allison believe Red Bull’s shift in direction vindicates some of Mercedes’ prior design choices?

“No, I don’t think so,” he said.

“I mean, I believe you could go up and down this pit lane, take the engine cover shape of every car on the grid, and put it on every other car on the grid, and it wouldn’t make a difference.

“What happens beneath that engine cover will be fascinating. So they have a purpose for that volume, but the exterior shape is irrelevant.

Last year, we altered the layout of the side pods.

“The pieces you see are probably the ones we end up talking about. We changed away last year, partly so we wouldn’t have to die wondering if that was anything that was hurting us; ultimately, it didn’t make much of a difference.

Regarding the W15, which is the first car Allison has had a full hand in since 2021’s W12, after handing over the technical director role to the now-departed Mike Elliott for 2022 and ’23, Allison stated that the changes introduced last year with the W14 have simply evolved logically from that starting point.

“We just iterated forward from there,” he said.

“And wound up with a car that, predictably enough, has more downforce than the previous year, having put an awful lot of effort into achieving just that.”