ll 10 Formula 1 teams arrived in Bahrain hoping they had made great strides forward in their development over the winter.Given how dominant Verstappen was in 2023, it was always going to be a tall ask for anyone to close that gap over the past few months.Unfortunately, Red Bull had no plans to slow down and the RB20 appears to be a revolution rather than an evolution of last year’s car.Adrian Newey has introduced several new exciting features in testing to the new Red Bull and one in particular has caught Damon Hill’s eye.The legendary designer has been waHowever, the early signs in Bahrain suggest that the current world champions shouldn’t be too worried about the rest of the grid.Verstappen looked very impressive on Wednesday even if he suffered with a bit of ‘lazy understeer’ at the start of the day.While Sergio Perez had some issues on Thursday morning, he’s got a full day of testing ahead of him to get used to the new car.tching his rivals closely too, with one piece on the new Mercedes creating some intrigue.Posting on Instagram after the first day of testing, Hill was comparing a picture of the RB19 and RB20 and said: “Great compartison [comparison] here. See what they did? So bloody clever.”The picture in question highlighted the difference between Red Bull’s new sidepods.Red Bull have brought a car to testing that appears to take inspiration from an old Mercedes but Hill’s reaction suggests that they’ve nailed the part that Toto Wolff’s team ultimately struggled with.Hill have previously reacted to the idea that they could end up with ‘zeropods’ later in the season, but he seems happy enough with what they’re currently running.It’ll be fascinating to see if any other teams follow suit as the season goes on.
