Even when Max Verstappen and Yuki Tsunoda completed 1-2 in each remaining grand prix and dash spherical of the 2025 System 1 season, with Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris failing to complete, Pink Bull nonetheless couldn’t overhaul McLaren within the constructors’ championship. However Verstappen nonetheless has an opportunity, albeit slim, of seizing the drivers’ title.
To that finish, Pink Bull has continued to carry developments to the RB21, together with a brand new entrance wing geometry in Singapore, earlier than pivoting fully to the all-new automobile required for 2026. Solely Verstappen has the brand new design this weekend.
“The automobile is best,” Pink Bull chief engineer Paul Monaghan instructed chosen media together with Motorsport.com within the FIA’s necessary ‘present and inform’ tech briefing in Singapore.
“Now the query is, can we problem the earlier order from the high-downforce circuits and see if we will win? We’ll have a go, see how we get on. It must be a bit higher. The query is, how a lot?”
Though Verstappen’s back-to-back wins in Monza and Baku may counsel the pattern line for efficiency has shifted dramatically upwards, these have been each low-downforce circuits which masked a few of the RB21’s perceived shortcomings. Circuits requiring increased downforce – akin to Singapore – have ruthlessly uncovered Pink Bull’s issues with drag effectivity, one thing the group skilled with the RB20 and tried to dial out of the RB21 – unsuccessfully at first.
At high-downforce tracks Pink Bull’s automobile has been draggier and fewer secure than its McLaren rival, struggling unpredictable shifts of stability by the completely different phases of cornering at excessive speeds. The group’s focus all through this season has been to attain, as rapidly as doable and with out compromising 2026 growth, the targets it had truly set for the start of the 12 months.
Max Verstappen, Pink Bull Racing
Photograph by: Mohd Rasfan – AFP – Getty Pictures
A brand new flooring launched at Silverstone, adopted by one other bundle added at Belgium which included a brand new entrance wing in addition to revisions to the sidepods, opened up new avenues of growth which might be achieved comparatively cheaply and rushed by manufacturing earlier than the 2026 mission started occupying manufacturing capability.
The brand new flooring for Monza was the final big-ticket merchandise with an extended lead time. What we’re seeing now was possible signed off instantly after the summer time break, when the group revised its high-downforce entrance wing for Zandvoort.
For the reason that entrance wing is a visual space of the automobile, Pink Bull has to elucidate the aim of the change within the FIA technical doc circulated forward of the occasion. It described the brand new geometry as “taking additional analysis to extend the camber of some wing sections to extract extra load while sustaining circulation stability”.
“We hope to extract a bit extra lap time from it,” defined Monaghan. “It is fairly a refined revision. “However because the final one was launched [for Zandvoort], extra proof turned clear: ‘Oh, we might do that and we might do this.’
“Slightly little bit of capability is out there, so we have gone forward and pushed the button and stated, ‘Yeah, we’ll carry that.’ It must be the final one for this 12 months. There is likely to be some flap trims for Vegas or one thing like that, as ordinary. However in any other case, yeah, it is a bit little bit of efficiency, and a few nice work within the manufacturing facility, and we have it right here.
“The manufacturing group is in a little bit of a, not a holding sample, however the 2026 automobile has not but swamped them, so there’s a bit window to say we might do that, and – good work from them – they have on and achieved it.”
Max Verstappen, Pink Bull Racing
Photograph by: Simon Galloway / LAT Pictures through Getty Pictures
Since there can be no extra new parts aside from circuit-specific trims, the onus is now on the trackside group to extract the utmost from the newest bundle. Verstappen’s curiosity within the present season has been reinvigorated by his wins in Monza and Baku however the group should maintain that momentum.
Singapore is the one venue the place Verstappen has by no means received. The query is whether or not the refined enhancements the newest updates have been yielding will add as much as Pink Bull being extra aggressive right here; it should do higher than it did in Zandvoort, the final high-downforce monitor on the calendar, the place Verstappen had no reply to the race tempo of the 2 McLarens.
“I feel it would give us a pleasant confidence increase, maybe a bit little bit of a therapeutic massage, let’s consider, if we go rather well right here,” stated Monaghan. “But when we do not, then we’re not going to only hand over and go to Austin as if we’re not going to do something. We are going to go to Austin as if we will try to win that race as nicely.
“All kinds can occur right here – you may go to Flip 1 and get punted out. Keep in mind the footage of Seb [Vettel] arriving there with a few Ferraris [in 2017] and it is chaos, is not it?
“I feel we are going to do our greatest right here, we are going to extract what we will from the automobile, Max and Yuki will do their bit, and Austin is 2 weeks away and we’ll method it in the identical method. We’ll simply try to win it and see what occurs.”
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