Ever since the start of the ground-effect regulations era, the underbody of cars has become a lot more important than before. It is a big part of the reason why Red Bull is miles ahead of the competition. That secret, however, got out during the Monaco GP when the underbody of the RB19 got exposed to cameras. Lewis Hamilton admitted to being one of those who took an interest in those pictures. However, Helmut Marko is not too bothered. In fact, he took a dig at Toto Wolff and Mercedes, who found themselves in a similar position just a few hours before the Austrian team.

During the final practice session in Monaco, Hamilton crashed his car, causing the crane to lift his car up in the air in order to recover it. As the W14 hung in the air, gathered photographers took pictures of the underbelly of the car. This did not please the Mercedes boss, whose team had introduced their new set of changes for that weekend. Later on the same day, Sergio Perez crashed into the barriers as well and his RB19 got the same treatment as the W14. F1 presenter Rosanna Tennant, appearing on the Chequered Flag podcast, revealed how Hamilton jokingly told her about saving those pictures of the RB19 on his phone.

Helmut Marko takes a brutal dig at Toto Wolff & Co.

Just like Wolff, Helmut Marko isn’t too pleased about how the RB19’s crucial strengths were put on display in Monaco. On normal circuits, we often see the crane loading the crashed car on the flatbed of a recovery vehicle. However, owing to the limited space available on the street circuits, the crane alone picks the car up from the track. And because it has to get the car above the walls or barricades in order to recover it, the crane ends up lifting it too high up.

“Of course we don’t like it,” Motorsport-total quoted Marko as saying. “The underbody is very important, but if you don’t have the other parts and all the concepts behind it, then it’s not that easy. And the Mercedes car hung in the air longer. But I don’t think anyone was that attached to the Mercedes floor is as interested in our car as people are.” [Translated using Google]

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Team boss Christian Horner wasn’t too pleased with the way the RB19 was recovered. However, he wasn’t too concerned as he believed this wasn’t the first instance their rivals saw the underbody of their car.

Christian Horner opens up about spy photographers in F1

The concept of spy photography is not new in F1. Instances of pictures of a car doing the rounds of the internet before the actual unveiling are common. And that is not the extent of it. This business goes on throughout the year, regardless of whether the season is on or off.

Horner said, “Pictures of floors are taken in and around the paddock. They arrive in vans, you work with the cars, the shutters are up and so on, and each team hires spy photographers to take pictures of the cars when they disassembled into individual parts. This is a common practice.”

“So I didn’t think it was the first time a picture had been taken of the underbody. It was probably the first time it had been suspended from a crane, but all teams always strive for that kind of information.”

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Red Bull is undoubtedly the fastest currently on the grid by a mile. The team is planning to field a major set of upgrades for the Spanish GP this weekend. It will be interesting to see how much improvement they can extract out of the car that is already taking the entire field by storm.