Red Bull’s RB19 floor design was recently exposed to rival teams after Sergio Perez’s crash in Monaco, with Mercedes ace Lewis Hamilton one of the first to form a queue behind photographers to get a better understanding of the car.
While Hamilton was quick to send his Mercedes team all photos of the underbody of the RB19, Ferrari and Aston Martin also got their hands on the images of Red Bull’s car floor.
Red Bull wasn’t the only team that suffered from having its design exposed, with Mercedes’ car also being lifted by a crane following a crash.
However, it wasn’t a big deal for Silver Arrows team principal Toto Wolff, who claimed that no team would be interested in their car anyway.
“Red Bull will certainly have been more annoyed than us because they have more to reveal than we do,” said Mercedes’ Toto Wolff.
“If you want to copy our floor, I say ‘go for it!’”
While rivals may have got hold of images of the Red Bull car that they were craving for, the sheer complexity and intricacy of the floor, a new revelation has been made involving its colour.
The RB19 had a distinct blackened colour on its floor which indicates just how much it was getting grazed by the floor.
While their rivals will be intent to understand the workings of the car better, Red Bull technical advisor Helmut Marko is confident none of them will truly understand their secrets.
“The floor is very important,” Marko said.
“But, if you don’t have an understanding of the other parts, copying is extremely difficult.”
This is a view that Williams’ performance boss Dave Robson agrees with.
“I took a quick look at the floor of the Red Bull,” Robson said.
“It’s so complex and curved that you can hardly draw any conclusions with two-dimensional photos, because it also depends on how the light falls.”