According to reports, Red Bull may modify their Formula One car to resemble a Mercedes “zeropod” design following the 2024 season’s opening races.As per Autosport, the current world champions are “positioned to further imitate past Mercedes F1 car designs by shifting towards a ‘zeropod’-style concept with its first major upgrade of 2024.”
According to Autosport, Red Bull’s current RB20 design will only be used in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Australia—two countries with hot weather—for preseason testing as well as the race.
At the Japanese Grand Prix in early April, Red Bull is expected to unveil an improvement that will imitate Mercedes’ contentious “zeropod” concept, as cooling is predicted to be less marginal.
After their real-world performance fell short of the numbers being produced in the wind tunnel, Mercedes finally gave up on their “zeropod” design at the Monaco Grand Prix of the previous year and switched to a more traditional sidepod configuration.
Red Bull raised some eyebrows at the unveiling of their RB20 by presenting a design that was compared to Mercedes’ W14, even though the majority of the field had now settled on a concept similar to the one seen on the last two Red Bull cars.
The parts that most resemble the Mercedes from the previous year are the bulge that runs the length of the engine cover and the vertical sidepod inlets.Max Verstappen, the current world champion, stated that he would “still call it a Red Bull style” design after hearing that
