Williams floor catches Adrian Newey’s eye for Red Bull upgrade

Henry Valantine
A view of the Williams FW44 floor. Bahrain February 2023.

A view of the Williams FW44 floor. Bahrain February 2023.

Red Bull design guru Adrian Newey has been looking up and down the grid for solutions that will improve the RB19 even further, and even the team at the back of the pack have helped make their car faster.

Williams have a sole point to their name so far this season through Alex Albon while Red Bull are the runaway leaders in the Constructors’ Championship, having won every race in 2023 through Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez, but that has not stopped them from looking at all their rivals for where to improve their car.

And when Red Bull arrived in Barcelona with changes to their edge wing and diffuser on the floor of the RB19, these were elements that became more reflective of their competitors, with chief engineer Paul Monaghan revealing that a small element of the Williams FW44 was analysed and replicated on their car.

“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.

PlanetF1.com recommends

Adrian Newey reveals what is inside his legendary notebook

Adrian Newey makes worrying prediction about F1 2026 cars

“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.

“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.”

Newey is often spotted with his notebook walking up and down the grid before each race as teams are working on their cars, taking notes where he needs to as he looks for further solutions that may work on the car on which he leads the design process.