Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has emphasized the significant role played by Sergio Perez in enhancing the performance of the RB20 F1 car. This impact was particularly evident during the Qatar Grand Prix and holds potential for the season finale in Abu Dhabi. The team managed to gather crucial clean air data from Perez's car during the Sprint race, which led to important adjustments and contributed to Max Verstappen's strong qualifying pace.

Data Collection and Its Impact

After qualifying 16th in the Sprint race, Perez started from the pit lane as his team made adjustments to the car during parc ferme. Despite the disappointing qualifying result, Red Bull saw this as an opportunity to collect valuable data in clean air. By pitting Perez for a front-wing change during the race, the team was able to compare the data with information from future sessions and assess the car's performance. This test proved successful as it helped set the RB20 to its best configuration, enabling Verstappen to secure pole position and Perez to finish P9.Although the Dutchman was dropped to P2 due to a one-spot grid penalty for impeding George Russell in qualifying, Horner revealed that the team managed to boost the car's performance. Speaking to Sky Sports F1, as reported by Motorsportweek, he said:"It's a great turnaround. I think the engineers and the team back in Milton Keynes have worked very hard. They've got a good set-up on the car, Max has immediately felt [more confident] – his first comment was that it feels better. And then he's just gone out and delivered in the most spectacular way. We pretty much threw the kitchen sink at it; pretty much everything you could change, we did change. You never know if it's all going to come together in the balance. And it did, and he was able to really nail it. We really struggled yesterday, Turn 1, Turn 2, and particularly the last turn; a little bit at seven as well. And those corners suddenly came alive for us. That last lap, it was neck and neck with George going into that last turn and he nailed the last corner, and it was just good enough."

The Role of Perez's Test

Horner acknowledged the importance of Perez's test in the Sprint race for the enhanced performance. He added:"We made a few changes to Checo's car, taking him out of parc ferme. That's definitely played a part in what we've done here for qualifying. Obviously looking at the data, there were three corners that we were really bad at yesterday: Turn 1, Turn 2 and the last corner. We managed to address that today."He continued:"We're certainly hoping that the changes we made today apply for tomorrow as well. It's very cold here. Getting these tyres to work is crucial. They lasted well in the race earlier, the degradation was very low and I expect to see that again tomorrow."The Red Bull team's efforts and the contributions of Sergio Perez have clearly had a positive impact on the performance of the RB20 F1 car, and they will be looking to build on this success in the upcoming races.