Max Verstappen jokes about a Red Bull with zero sidepods as rivals switch concepts

MONTMEL – Max Verstappen joked that Red Bull’s next upgrade should be a move to zero sidepods to lead their rivals astray, after a string of copycat moves in recent races.

At Monaco, Mercedes ditched their unique concept for the sidepod intakes, introduced in early 2022, for a more conventional approach such as that used by Red Bull and others, as part of a wider design philosophy change to try and replace the dominant RB19. track down.

Ferrari also moved away from their previous sidepod concept as part of their Barcelona upgrade package for this weekend, with Red Bull’s rivals trying to imitate what they can from the most outstanding car on the grid, while working on their own innovative solutions .

However, the attention is naturally drawn to the fastest car in the field and Red Bull remains comfortably the fastest of all – with Verstappen qualifying fastest for the Spanish Grand Prix by almost half a second and breaking an even faster lap in the process.

Without side pods! So everyone can go back to that!” joked Verstappen when asked about his reaction to others switching to a Red Bull-esque sidepod intake design.

“I don’t know, this is just how we designed the car, but it’s not just the sidepods, it’s a lot of things that have to come together – and I’m not the aero specialist there.

“I think we’ve learned a lot over the years and now with the new regulations we can get straight to work and understand what’s going on. You can move on to other things right away and hopefully we can do that keep momentum, because everyone is obviously pushing hard to overtake us, but we are never satisfied from our side, we always want more.”