What is Red Bull's secret?
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Red Bull have really stumped the other teams with the secret to their lightning pace this year. Last year, it was known that the EBD was an huge advantage and so were the flexi-wings. The pull rod suspension seemed to work well on that car as well. While the Ferraris and Mclarens knew what to imitate last year, and hopefully close the performance gap, this year RB seemed to have increased their advantage, and no one knows how they have such a huge advantage. 10 teams on the grid now have the pull rod suspension, and Ferrari and Mclaren have already imitated RB style exhausts. So what is it that still keeps them in front.. and will Ferrari and Mclaren find out in time to catch up with them?
Secretly, without even the drivers knowing, Red Bull have installed electromagnets all the way along the racing line. They have managed to do this by bribing Herman Tilke by allowing him assistance in making pointless chicanes in circuits. When their car passes over the magnets, a signal from the car activates them and pulls the car to the ground because the car contains many metal components. This is the reason KERS has not been working as the electro magnet field causes the system to go wrong.
See, it is quite simple… you just have to be logical about it.
^ Love it!
I disagree that they are “that far” ahead.
In Melbourne Q3 Hamilton’s KERS went, about halfway around the lap I think. Whitmarsh said it cost him half a second, I think closer to 0.3-0.4s personally. So the gap was really 3 or 4 tenths to a car that had very little testing.
In Malaysia the advantage was virtually nothing, 0.104s
The gap was back up to 0.715s on Saturday, but you get the impression from Button that he didn’t try his hardest and they were happy to accept 2nd and 3rd instead of wasting tyres to still be 0.3s behind again.
And this is qualifying pace which always magnifies the performance gap. In all 3 races Mclaren were easily in range of Red Bull’s pace. People said after the first two races that Vettel was holding back, yet if he had been pushing his tyres would have gone earlier and probably made his race pace much the same. What’s more, in those two races he “allowed” Hamilton to close up to him and had he had the dodgy stops instead of Hamilton it would have relegated him to 2nd – that doesn’t sound very smart or plausible to me.
And yesterday, you can say bout the tyres, but he was the only one to lose out to Hamilton and Massa finished where he started which would indicate the strategy was actually pretty decent. If you imagine Webber had not finished the race, the top 7 from qualifying wpuld have been the top 7 in the race, just jumbled up a little.
Red Bull have the luxury all teams do with fairly stable rules: if you’re ahead, you just need to improve a little bit each time and you will keep ahead. the problem is McLaren have their own radical approach that cannot be copied due to homologation rules. If McLaren have found the same speed through a different approach, it could be the end of their dominance and relegate them “merely” to being the fastest.
I think it would be ignoring the facts to say that Red Bull have a ‘secret’ way of generating so much pace. They have a very very good car, but nothing particularly revolutionary. Suspension set up etc is just so that the rear of the car is packaged easier – the whole set up revolves around that very neat, fitted bodywork just in front of the diffuser, which allows very clean, energized air to flow over the diffuser. Their EBD is also more developed than say the McLaren one, and you would imagine is also optimised. Their engine mapping is very clever in maintaining a strong flow of exhaust irrespective of throttle position; all the mercedes-powered customer cars have said that their EBDs are very throttle sensitive, which reduces the advantage of an EBD. Finally, their flexi wing is hugely important. The front wing is responsible for between 60-70% of the overall downforce of the car – it hits the clean air first and is responsible for then directing that air over through and around the rest of the aero devices on the car. Getting it lower to the ground increases its effectiveness.
Ultimately, they have a very fast package. But I fail to see that there are any secret parts on the cars, no f-ducts of double diffusers or the like, they are just more advanced than the rest of the grid. Given time the other teams may well catch them, but with the haul of points Vettel already has this season, it would be a tough call betting against him for the title…
Simple. Adrian Newey is a genius car designer.
Honestly I think RBR’s pace is more down to Ferrari’s lack of and McLarens rather jilted start. It will close up in no time.
Redbull pace this year is more down to mastering the basics. Last 2 years is when they did their innovating although, by innovating it was really more, re-apply old technologies with new ideas.
This year it’s mastering the two go faster stripes of last year, flexi wings and the EBD
Uber tight awesome packaging. Fuel efficient drivable engine, head start.
I find it hard to believe that teams like Mclaren and Ferrari, that have stolen flexi-wings, EBD, pull rod suspension etc. from Red Bull haven’t been able to master all of them as yet. After all, they do have much more resources, both financial and human, at their disposal.
@todfod i dont think that they have such a resource advantage, i remember reading somewhere that redbull spent just as much in the last two years as either mclaren or ferrari, ill try and find the page
Redbull are on a fairly even keel with Ferrari and McLaren but have been rather more innovative in their use of recources recently.
They only seem to have a real advantage in Qualy, the Ferrari and McLaren seem to be able to match them in race pace. The same was true last year. They definitely have some system which enables them to run faster/lower in qualifying trim which I think accounts for the difference.
I think one of the things that is making them faster is the high rake they run (the rear being higher than the front). If you look at their cars they are much higher at the back (in terms of suspension ride height) than at the front. This in effect generates more downforce as the whole car is acting like a wing! This also brings their front wing close to the ground as technically it is still at the same height in reference to the reference plain! The wing is still flexing though!
The effect of have more downforce will be more significant in low fuel trim, which is why they are so fast in qualifying.
Thats my theory in a cake tin.
Their secret is really the RB5, which flattered to deceive on several occasions in 2009. Think Melbourne when Vettel should have been third, when he got held up in the first stint in Bahrain, the bad qualifying in Belgium, etc.
Red Bull built the best single-diffuser car of the new rules through a good understanding of the rules, then when they upgraded to the double diffuser they were on Brawn’s pace, with the balance alternating between the aero and less aero-dependant circuits, often masked by bad performances from Brawn at tracks they should have done well at (Hungary, Singapore, Abu Dhabi).
Then 2010 came along and the RB6 was built with the double-diffuser integrated, plus being first on the ball with the EBD and later the flexi-wings.
Now we fast-forward to this year with the RB7, a perfectly honed machine whose only weakness is straight-line speed (though it has great traction from the Renault engine, which is a key strength in minimising the straight-line deficit and enabling them to be strong in all types of corners) and KERS reliability. I do agree that they seem to be a bit defensive about their car as it’s nearly 100% whereas McLaren are matching them with a different design route. Ferrari are on RB’s design philosophy which is why they are a step behind and will struggle to make up the points difference even when they sort themselves out.
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