A few details I noticed on some of the recent photos made me want to dissect the limited details we get to see on RB20 for now and I will focus on the sidepod inlet and the rear end of sausage pontoons.
What I want to say again before is that the front wing is not the differentiator of any kind and (as Tifosi have painfully witnessed) last year Ferrari has shown you can instead only get it very wrong if you mess up with the initial design and how it interacts with front suspension arms. So the back-forth nose and wing designs we see are not as important as they used to be. This was one of the intents of 2022 rules, making the front wing less of a performance differentiator and so less susceptible to getting messed up and influencing downstream flow field for the following car. My guess on RB20 difference to RB18/19 is mostly due to different drag requirements, so they cut some drag on the front and found a way to make up for the small amount of downforce they lost elsewhere.
Starting with the horizontal top inlet and the vertical S ducting, it's quite possible there is a vertical component to the cooling inlet. Or maybe it just goes all the way to the tub and underneath it is the S duct. No doubt the S duct is feeding some area under the bodywork to provide both better flow conditioning inside and also clean up the boundary layer for the very important undercut flow.
As for the undercut flow, there is another effect now in play that RB seem to want to fully exploit now and I'm talking about spillage. As the car goes faster, the radiators allow less and less air inside, since that air is going progressively faster. In 2023, this spillage was almost completely generated on the top surface so as the car went faster slightly more air was going down the sides and towards beam wing. I never put much emphasis on this effect with underbite inlets, since I believe there's too many losses along the way and there's always 5-6 rear suspension elements ahead of the beam wing.
In 2024, RB has clearly shifted the narrative towards leaving more spillage go down as the car goes faster. I hope my illustrations are clear enough
In general, teams have become exceptionally good at controlling and predicting spillage, which is clear seeing the inlet leading edges becoming very, very sharp. Just 10 years ago
this was a typical sidepod inlet. The top side strake (it's a
strake, not a mid wing so please let's not misuse these terms) makes sure the local stagnation point is underneath it, so there can be almost no spillage on the top side - a complete reversal from last year's approach.
What can this additional amount of air do downstream? Well, it's first "stop" is conspicuously close the floor edge, I'm talking about a slight outwash bump in the undercut (orange circle) and more air could cause more pressurisation there. From that point, it continues towards undercut throat and floor edge. The undercut throat is almost smaller than RB18 design (let alone RB19), leading me to believe there is also a desire to pressurise this area that bit more. The cost is more drag. Ultimately, both of these effects combined could lead to slightly different levels of pressurisation near the floor edge (wing?) and it could influence different levels of pumping out the air from the floor side and into the floor edge vortex. I tried illustrating this change in pressurisation with coloured question marks ???
This would have a direct influence on the amount of air leaving the floor sideways at higher speeds, ie reducing the air going into floor throat. This would in turn reduce the bouncing tendency at higher speeds by "unloading" the throat. Overall, this could allow them to design slightly lower throat section and thus increase overall floor downforce with reduced risk of bouncing. This is hardly a novel effect, but maybe this inlet solution enhances it slightly. Not sure, would it be a too risky design?
Anyway, in the rear end the bodywork is now shaped in a much more aggressive manner. Bigger angle of the ramp meeting top of the floor means bigger local pressurisation, which in that case would mean local drag reduction and some downforce. I have a strong suspicion that the sausage pontoon "sail" in the back is there to also generate local pressurisation (this time meaning drag increase and local lift) to force more air in the lower zone. Both of these effects combined could lead to working the beam wing a bit harder and also the whole floor as a result. Of this overall effect in the rear end I am quite certain.
In the end, this launch spec RB20 features some innovations, some drag reduction elements and some drag increasing elements. I don't see it not being faster than RB19 at the start of the season and, more importantly for Red Bull team, this new development direction likely leaves a lot more room for further improvement than previous underbite design. This would be important for RB since they need to have something more to add for 2 more full seasons.