One midfield F1 team’s unique ‘double upgrade’ plan explained

Racing Bulls finds itself in the unique position where it will introduce an upgrade at Formula 1’s Miami Grand Prix that will almost immediately be replaced.

The strange approach is a direct consequence of F1's enforced April break following the cancellation of races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia due to the ongoing Iran War.

Racing Bulls planned to bring updates to Bahrain but these will instead be brought to Miami. A further upgrade package will follow at the next round in Canada two weeks later.

“We’ve got a few things in the pipeline,” Racing Bulls team principal Alan Permane explained.

“We had a decent upgrade planned for Bahrain, which we’ll now take to Miami, and another planned for Montreal, so we’ll effectively have a quick double upgrade.

“We’ll introduce one and then replace it straight away, as we can’t bring everything at once or move the Montreal upgrade forward.”

Permane shed light on how Racing Bulls is utilising the unplanned five-week break between Japan and Miami.

“With freight back from Japan, we’ve also taken the opportunity to carry out some unplanned work on the chassis - work that wasn’t scheduled until the end of this flyaway sequence,” he said.

“Some areas of the business have been working harder than expected, so we’ve encouraged the race team to take some time off. We’re using this period to build up the cars so the design office can see them fully assembled.

"The cars are hardly ever here during the season, so it’s a good chance to complete work we couldn’t do before. If one or both of the cancelled races are reinstated, we’re expecting a busy end to the year, so we want to make sure everyone can take rest where possible too.”

Like many teams, Racing Bulls is also looking to better optimise its power unit, which is the first to be produced by Red Bull's in-house engine division.

“The PU works very well, and with every lap we complete, we learn more. Each time we run the car, we gather valuable data,” Permane added.

“One advantage we have is that we have powertrain engineers embedded within our engineering office, which allows us to work closely with them and better understand both them and how they operate.

“This break gives us the opportunity to take a step back and review what we’ve done so far. There will likely be some changes in how we operate the PU for Miami and beyond.

“We’re using this period to work closely together to extract the maximum performance from both the PU and the chassis.”