Constructors’ Championship leaders Red Bull have looked at the bottom of the standings for inspiration it seems, following their updates at last weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix.
Reigning World Champion Max Verstappen cruised to victory at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya to secure his 40th career win, whilst he also extended his lead in the Drivers’ Championship to 53 points.
The Dutchman was sensational in Spain, with the 25-year-old having won by 24 seconds.
It marked his fifth win of the season and Red Bull’s seventh, resulting in the side extending their current advantage to 135 points over Mercedes.
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Despite their superiority, Red Bull are continuing to look for ways to further improve the RB19, with their most recent update having come thanks to inspiration from Williams.
The Austrians arrived in Spain with updates to their edge wing and diffuser on the floor of the car, something which had been a “small advantage” for Williams.
Red Bull chief engineer Paul Monaghan revealed that the Grove-based team’s part had been looked into to see whether it’d give the Milton Keynes-based outfit an advantage, with the results having actually been “bigger” than expected.
“We cannot assume that we have the best solution in all areas of the single-seater when you put a new car on the ground for the first time,” Monaghan said, as per the Italian edition of Motorsport.com.
“We as a parameter have the lap time to evaluate a solution, and if you find that Williams introduced a floor design that others then copied, so it was a sign that it had to give an advantage.
“It wasn’t necessarily going to work on our car, but we looked at it a couple of times and it turned out that it could give a small advantage.
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“And when the solution was fitted, the result was bigger than we had actually thought. It’s certainly not the most influential thing, but it helps a bit.
“It was an area we were working on, so it was also possible to introduce this solution.”
Despite Williams having only score a single point this season, it shows that every team has designed an element which gives them a unique advantage, something Red Bull will likely discover.