Why Honda was shocked by massive upgrades in Red Bull's RB20? Koji Watanabe reveals reasons!

Red Bull finds everyone off guard against their brand new RB20 in the ongoing season. Under the leadership of Adrian Newey Milton Keynes's team made some unbelievable changes in their previous car and it has paid off. They have won four out of the first five races of the season and are looking unstoppable at the moment.

However, it was a bold decision by the franchise to make such huge changes despite winning 21 out of 22 Grand Prix. Their decision had shocked their engine supplier Honda too as they were fumed to see such a huge upgrade. Speaking about it Honda Racing Corporation president Koji Watanabe said that they were surprised by the move.

He said, "For this year's Red Bull car, we were very surprised to see that they changed so much for the RB20. Last year we won 21 out of the 22 races together, but they still changed the concept. It is unbelievable! They made a lot of requests to adapt our engine to the new concept for the RB20. After we saw the RB20 in real life we were so surprised by all the changes that they made."

How does Honda give liberty for design changes to Red Bull?

Further speaking about the design changes and how Honda helped their client to make a great car. Speaking about it Watanabe says that they can’t increase the engine power but can make it more reliable.

"Of course, we cannot increase the power [under the engine freeze], but we can adapt the engine to the new machine," Watanabe said. "Apart from that, we can also improve the reliability of the engine. That is what we have done over the past winter This has given Red Bull more freedom for their design and their aerodynamic concept”, he further added.  

That is why they could change the position of the oil coolers, radiators, etcetera. Sometimes last year we had a risk of damaging the power unit that did not become big trouble in the end, but we always need to minimise the risk. That is why we have made our best effort to improve the reliability of the engine even further for this year."