After a tricky weekend in Monza, where Verstappen and Perez finished P6 and P8 respectively, the two Red Bull cars’ pace seemed to be back on track in FP1 and FP2 in Baku. But where has this improvement come from?

Red Bull’s results have taken a nosedive in recent races thanks to what Christian Horner described as a disconnection between the front and rear of the car, causing major balance issues.

Heading into the Azerbaijan GP weekend the team have brought a floor upgrade which they say is intended to “improve the pressure gradients along the floor to improve the flow locally and downstream in all conditions”, but their chief engineer Paul Monaghan has described the actual change to the floor geometry as “remarkably subtle”.

Red Bull have also introduced a wedge shaped section at the tail of the car, in hopes to simplify some of the geometry – something we saw Ferrari use in 2022 as a solution to their own balance issues with the F1-75.

While the changes made seem to have been effective so far, the team are no doubt testing different specifications on each car, and while they “could” be running the new floor on both, Paul Monaghan wouldn’t confirm whether that is the case.

While these are only small ‘band-aid’ solutions currently, the hope is for these upgrades to be the first of many evolutions over the next few races with the scale of these upgrades increasing and culminating in an all-new floor at the United States GP at the end of October. However, these upgrades do show that Red Bull aren’t meeting their struggles with indifference and are taking rapid steps to address the RB20’s problematic behaviour – but we will have to wait until qualifying and the race to find out if they have done enough for this weekend…