McLaren singles out ‘very interesting’ and ‘smart’ Red Bull F1 innovation

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has taken note of the revised sidepod design of Red Bull’s upgraded Formula 1 car, describing it as “very interesting”.

Red Bull was among the teams to bring substantial upgrades to Miami, along with McLaren and Ferrari. The updates to the RB22 helped Red Bull make a big step towards the front of the field and left star driver Max Verstappen much happier with the handling and performance of his car.

One innovation in particular on the improved Red Bull caught McLaren’s eye, and the reigning world champions expect other teams to look into developing their own versions of the solution.

“For those who are technically interested, we are in a very interesting phase,” Stella told media including Crash.net. after Sunday’s Miami Grand Prix.

“It's a very interesting phase because if you see the sidepod concept that Red Bull introduced, that's quite different to the sidepod concept that, for instance, Mercedes and Ferrari have adopted. The McLaren style is further different.

“I think there will be a stabilisation at some stage, a convergence, but we look like we are quite far from this convergence. So I think there will be a process of looking at each other, testing things, certainly each team will be testing, taking a look at the Red Bull concept, see the advantages.”

Stella added: “They have also been quite smart and innovative in the way they have used some legality concession to introduce such geometry. I think that the overall design of the car is far from converging.

“This doesn't mean that some things have already started to look like that's the direction that everyone is taking. But with the 2025 cars, after a few years of the regulation, they started to look very similar to each other. I think we are still far from these conditions.”

Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies branded the upgrades as a “definitive step forward” for his team, following what has been a difficult start to the season. 

"We left Japan 1.2 seconds away from pole, China 1.0 seconds away from pole,” Mekies explained.

"[The] competition was not going to wait for us with their updates, so everybody has updated the car. But certainly, we knew that on top of the development race, we had to solve some of our issues, and we knew there was lap time in it.

"So to see us this weekend qualifying six tenths away from pole on Friday and less than two tenths away from pole on Saturday is a big indication of the size of the progress. What number is the correct one, we don't know.

“But compared to where we were, it's something much better than anything we have been able to show this year."