Red Bull continues to push development and arrives in Montreal with more updates. What stands out most is the floor, where a decidedly innovative solution appears, already present in Miami, designed to circumvent the regulations while respecting their constraints. The Milton Keynes team has also worked on the front wing in an attempt to deliver Verstappen a car more focused on the front, continuing the trend of recent seasons.
The floor innovation
The most important updates on the RB22 in Canada focus on the floor, evolving the solutions introduced earlier this month in Miami. The team has tweaked the central keel under the chassis, while on its sides it has refined the flow channels in the floor’s inlet section, without drastically changing the initial setup. It is precisely in this area that Red Bull’s creativity stands out, which since the beginning of the year has structured the innermost element as a large curved bulkhead to which the other four channels are attached, achieving a geometry that helps push flows outward.
However, the Milton Keynes team has gone even further, with a decidedly clever interpretation of the regulations, whose geometric constraints limit the number of flow channels at the floor inlet to five, or at least this has been the collective reading. Red Bull, however, has already found a way since Miami to quadruple the number of flaps, creating three more vortex generators from each of the main elements. By doing so, the front part of the floor generates a high number of vortices that help energize the flows running under the car, improving downforce and aerodynamic stability.
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Other updates in Montreal
The floor innovation has been present on the RB22 at least since the Miami Grand Prix, while other developments arrived in Canada. The front wing, for example, is equipped with new movable profiles, apparently with more load to shift the aerodynamic balance forward. This is not new for Red Bull, which in recent years has often worked on the front end to deliver Verstappen a car increasingly focused forward. Also in Montreal, the team modified the exit section of the front brake ducts and the cooling grids on the hood, interventions that are simple adaptations to the characteristics of the Canadian track.
Despite the innovations and the creativity of some solutions, Red Bull’s weekend certainly did not start in the best way. Verstappen mainly complained about the rear, which was quite unstable over the many bumps and curbs of the Gilles Villeneuve circuit. Slow corners are also certainly not the strong point of the RB22, which could still have a say with the start of the European season.
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