Despite its magical underside being laid bare for all the world to see, Red Bull chief engineer, Paul Monaghan insists his team is not losing too much sleep.

When Lewis Hamilton's car was lifted high into the air by the Monaco marshals following his crash in Saturday practice, team boss Toto Wolff opined the "whoever performed the crane has probably worked for Cirque du Soleil", the Austrian clearly frustrated that the secrets of the W14 had been laid bare.

In all honesty however, it is unlikely that too many teams were preparing to pore over the images arriving in their inboxes, especially as a couple of hours later they were given the opportunity to ogle the secret bits of the absolute star of 2023 thus far, the RB19 following Sergio Perez' crash in Q1.

Since then every man and his aerodynamic-expert dog has studied the shots of the RB19 as it swung helplessly above the Principality.

While Mercedes tech boss, James Allison has admitted that his aero team is poring over the images, Paul Monaghan insists that he and his team are not particularly concerned.

"It's not great," he said of the images. "We don't put our car up like that, but it has happened and we'll move on.

"But there's a phase lag between people seeing it, getting it onto their car and actually going faster with it," he said, when asked if there were fears of copycats. "A better description is that an ignorant copy isn't necessarily going to go faster. It has to integrate. And it's not just a bit of floor geometry."

Upgrades are not the work of a moment - just ask Mercedes, which while aware of the issues with its car from the opening race, didn't have the alternative available for several months.

With that in mind, Monaghan is confident that any team that does opt to copy the RB19 will not be in a position to see the fruits of its labour until the final stages of the season.

"If we change someone else's development plan, then we probably increase the phase lag by which they can get it to the car," he said. "So around Japan time we'll see where everybody is.

"But we've got to maintain our discipline and our development path. And it's only our car that we can change. We can't influence what those guys do. So, we'll keep plugging away in our own manner and we'll try to be quickest."

On the teams copying there rivals, he said: "It's happened for many years, and it will carry on. It's a method of levelling the sport. There are no copyrights, are there?"

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by kenji, 12/06/2023 10:51

"Too late...Hamilton already wears 'clown suits' every Sat of a GP week end."

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2. Posted by Spindoctor, 12/06/2023 8:06

"I'm offering my Clown Suit suggestion from when everyone was whingeing about Sir Lewis winning too much. Forget all this expensive development & technology - if a driver wins more than 2 races on the trot he has to enter the pits & don a clown suit during the next race....
Cheap, exciting & effective."

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3. Posted by didaho, 12/06/2023 0:56

"I'll one-up the freeze concept.
Teams have to put their car keys in a bowl every second race."

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4. Posted by Tardis40, 11/06/2023 18:11

"Change the rules.

Whatever you bring to the first race is it. No further development."

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5. Posted by Celtic Tiger, 10/06/2023 21:56

"I can't remember the source but I recall reading or seeing an interview at one time in which the interviewee said that the whole espionage of F1 turned into a big game for the teams. The various teams would show up with their cars, going to great length, trying to hide this and that from rival eyes.
Only to then have the team principle sit at his desk at the end of the day to discover multiple photos of everything they were trying to hide that day that were taken by their rivals sitting on top of their desk.

If there is truth to that anecdote, I don't get the fuss be stirred up about the floor exposures in Monaco. "

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Red Bull unconcerned by "ignorant copies"

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