Red Bull crushed the 2023 season by winning 21 of 22 grands prix, its early dominance allowing the team to fail to produce many in-season car upgrades.
Instead, the team focused most of its resources on 2024, producing a significantly different car despite the successes of its predecessor.
The Milton Keynes team’s radical overhaul also involved numerous facility changes to its Honda powerplant.
“For this year’s Red Bull car, we were very surprised to see that they changed so much for the RB20,” Watanabe said.
“Last year we won 21 of 22 races together, but they still changed the concept. It’s incredible!
“They made a lot of requests to adapt our engine to the new RB20 concept. After seeing the RB20 in real life, we were very surprised by all the changes they made.”
Sergio Pérez, Red Bull Racing RB20
Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
In addition to adapting its mounting points to the new chassis, Honda also continued its efforts to make its powertrain more reliable, which Watanabe said gave Red Bull more design freedom to place its cooling solutions.
“Of course we can’t increase the power [under the engine freeze]but we can adapt the engine to the new machine,” Watanabe said.
“Apart from that, we can also improve the reliability of the engine. This is what we did over the last winter.
“This gave Red Bull more freedom for their design and for their aerodynamic concept. That’s why they were able to change the position of the oil coolers, radiators, etc..”
“At times last year we had a risk of damaging the power unit, which ultimately did not cause big problems, but we always have to minimize the risk.
“That’s why we did our best to further improve the reliability of the engine this year.”
