TECH CORNER: Red Bull continue to suffer from understeer despite upgraded Silverstone floor

On the back of an up-and-down first half to their season, Red Bull are seemingly desperate to find solutions to the balance issues that have hampered their changes so far in 2025.

Having set the quickest time in qualifying at the British Grand Prix, Max Verstappen led off the line, but lost the lead early on to McLaren rival Oscar Piastri.

The Dutchman looked to struggle much in a car that had been set-up to be fast down the straights. That lack of downforce cost him in the wet as he was unable to stay with Piastri after having lost the lead.

At the second safety car restart, Verstappen lost the rear end of his Red Bull, and spun at the exit of Stowe. His mistake saw him drop to P10, and he initially struggled to make any progress. However, he looked more comfortable in his RB21 when the track started to dry, and managed to climb back to fifth at the flag.

His team-mate Yuki Tsunoda started from P12 on the grid, and he never really looked able to make quick progress from there. In fact, the Japanese driver tagged the Haas of Oliver Bearman into a spin for which he was handed a 10-second time penalty, and wound up coming home last of the runners.

Max Verstappen has been complaining about the balance of his car since the second half of last season. Although Red Bull had made a raft of changes to its 2024 F1 car, the team was unable to get rid of the issues, and the reigning champion has seemingly continued to struggle to find a satisfying balance.

Last time out at Silverstone, Red Bull motorsport advisor Dr Helmut Marko explained that the team's RB21 suffers from "massive understeer" which the Milton Keynes-based outfit needs to get rid of.

The Austrian-British squad brought a new floor to the RB21 for Silverstone. It featured “revised surfaces to improve pressure distribution” which should generate more load while maintaining airflow stability.

In addition to the re-profiled surfaces, the new floor featured modified fences as well. The papaya team branded the modification as 'subtle changes."

"Repositioned laterally at the leading edges subtle change to better optimise the pressure distributions, which allows more load to be extracted without harming flow stability downstream," stated McLaren.

Despite the new floor the team continued to struggle from understeer on Friday and Verstappen complained on the radio in FP2 that his car was undrivable.

To cure the balance issues, the team changed the medium-downforce rear wing to a lower-downforce configuration that the team had only wanted to use at Spa-Francorchamps.

The lower-downforce rear wing helped Red Bull lessen the issue and balance out the car between the front and the rear axle, and Verstappen managed to deliver a faultless lap to secure pole position for the race. However, the Dutchman struggled in the race where the "underloaded" car was not suited to the tricky wet conditions that featured Sunday's British Grand Prix.