Monaghan after Friday in Japan: 'Upgrades are working'

Published on 27 March 2026 by Niels Hendrix

Paul Monaghan, chief engineering of Oracle Red Bull Racing, said after the free practice sessions on Friday at Suzuka: “You can see from our pace that the car isn’t performing to the usual standards that we set ourselves and the overall lap time is not good. It has been quite challenging, but we’ve identified some things that are wrong with the car and we particularly need to work to correct the balance and the grip. Now it is a case of confirming all the issues and understanding them enough to be able to make effective changes ahead of tomorrow.”

“Geometrically, the upgrades we brought are quite big so thank you to everyone at the factory for getting them here as that was a mighty effort. These are working but now we have to fix the other aspects of the car. Like always, we will try and figure out what has gone wrong and work to understand the issues, fix them and send the car out tomorrow.”