2024 Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[Juzh]

Car is good, the best even, in S3 which is a bunch of super fast corners, but just loses massive time in anything below 200 kmh. They need to fix this for next year or it will be more of the same. Mclaren, ferrari and merc have proven outright downforce is not the most important, but rather just a bonus.

Strangely car is also fastest in speed trap, though I doubt it will do them much good.

I think the car looks pretty good onboard, the laps were spotless and there's no visual problems. It's just not quite fast enough in the long medium speed corners. Two identical back to back lap times is also a promising sign for deg. It'll be interesting to see the race pace, that's far more important.

Well, there's a chance that the sprint can go like Brazil where Max seemed to have better deg but I'm not sure about anything. They are so slow and it's not like the laps had mistakes or wide moments. As you said, he set identical laps on the first and 2nd runs. He was the only driver who went full throttle in T14. There was nothing left in this car.

Leclerc also did it.

There was maybe a tenth left in it with a perfect lap, which would be worth 2 positions, but probably everyone could say the same for their laps.

[Paa]

not accounting for DNFs

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... 6c8ac9bda&

He doesn't steal many points from Verstappen, does he?

[chrisc90]

Tbh, Perez would have finished ahead of Max in Baku if he didn’t collide with Sainz.

Probably the last decent race he had

[JordanMugen]

Why is the Red Bull car so slow in Qatar? The circuit doesn't have bumps/kerbs or slow corners that be often be problematic for the RB20, yet the car is slow anyway?

Verstappen seemed to have a lot of understeer in Sprint Qualifying. Is it a simple tyre temperature issue, or is there a problem with the balance of the aerodynamic package?

How did this car get outdeveloped so badly? Just bad.

Do folks suppose that Wache's ideas (and problem solving at circuit) are as meritorious as a certain departed Chief Technical Officer?

I guess the RB21 will show whether Wache's ideas are superior!

[AR3-GP]

Why is the Red Bull car so slow in Qatar? The circuit doesn't have bumps/kerbs or slow corners that be often be problematic for the RB20, yet the car is slow anyway?

Max was 3 tenths back from pole in the Brazilian sprint qualifying. Then he was probably the fastest in the sprint race. Max is again 3 tenths down in the sprint qualy but perhaps it will go better in race conditions. This was a "feature" of the RB19.

[Curbstone]

I've wachted the replay and agree this one was not on Perez. At the start of the final short straight before the last corner everyting looked fine with a decent gap to Hulkenberg. Then Alonso and Sainz pass Perez shortly before the last corner, and Leclerc decides to claw onto his gearbox and figth him over start-finish.
Perez was scr*wed.

[venkyhere]

I watched the onboards of SQ3 with S tyre. Car isn't looking nervous or unstable, just has more understeer than others.

- Max is on par with Nor and Rus in sector1
- he loses 0.3s in T6-T7 alone (terrible understeer, the car refuses to rotate at low speeds when there isn't much aero load on the front axle - an Achilles heel in the development path of the RB19-->Rb20, perhaps due to too much anti-dive or too stiff front suspension as dictated by floor requirements) .
- car is tremendous (predictably) in the T11-12-13-14-15 high speed stuff in S3, Max is flat out (except at T15 where everyone has to lift) while others have to lift in T13 and/or T14 , and gains back 0.25s
- however, the momentum gain from S3 can't be translated to a great pit-straight launch, as the entire 0.25s is terribly lost (and the effective overall loss staying at 0.3s) at the final corner, T16. It still is a long corner, but I am not sure why he is losing time like he lost in T6-T7. It's not a 'quick rotation' corner, it's still medium-high speed. Perhaps the S tyres are eaten by now.

I am unable to predict what will be scaling of the relative gain/loss with sprint/race amount of fuel in the car - whether it will stay at 0.3 or increase or decrease. But I reckon Redbull/McLaren are running bigger wings than Mercedes/Ferrari, and out of all of them, the Redbull looks to be having the biggest DRS delta on the straight - the only overtaking zone in the entire lap. Whether it will even be enough w.r.t base-top-speed advantage that the Mercedes/Ferrari enjoy, hard to tell.

I have a sneaky feeling that Norris didn't do his best SQ3 on S (as much as he did on the M in SQ1 SQ2) and that the real quali delta w.r.t Max is bigger than 0.3s. In which case the 'scaling with fuel' that I mentioned earlier might be even bigger.

[Vettel165]

Or maybe they setup the car more for the race to protect the tyres, which could explain a lot of understeer in qualy. We had amazing pace on medium tyres back in Las Vegas, better than Mclaren, Ferrari, Max passed Leclerc, Sainz. Only to find himself on the back foot when he switched to the hard tyres.

[Farnborough]

Something FV said and Norris indicated that his tires were finished (I think was his description) that as track grip came up then front struggled more.

Overall suggests that rear grip on these cars is gaining more than front as track evolves, to make absolute choice of balance just that little more of a challenge for each of them.

McL,looks good on 1 lap pace, we'll see a little more of the picture in sprint race, and if each chassis evolves in a positive or negative direction.

That Merc still looks to me to have attributes that can upset the others though

It's good to see such close and involved competing from them all.

Sounds like there will maybe a decent review of the settings for RB after this bit of racing. As of this moment though, this one doesn't immediately look a match for the three directly competing teams cars. MV has certainly got his work cut out here.

[Vettel165]

Something FV said and Norris indicated that his tires were finished (I think was his description) that as track grip came up then front struggled more.

Overall suggests that rear grip on these cars is gaining more than front as track evolves, to make absolute choice of balance just that little more of a challenge for each of them.

McL,looks good on 1 lap pace, we'll see a little more of the picture in sprint race, and if each chassis evolves in a positive or negative direction.

That Merc still looks to me to have attributes that can upset the others though

It's good to see such close and involved competing from them all.

Sounds like there will maybe a decent review of the settings for RB after this bit of racing. As of this moment though, this one doesn't immediately look a match for the three directly competing teams cars. MV has certainly got his work cut out here.

Great analysis. They should just use this two races as a test session for 2025. Who cares if something fails, WDC is done, WCC also for us.

[langedweil]

not accounting for DNFs

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... 6c8ac9bda&

He doesn't steal many points from Verstappen, does he?

More Alb/Alo/Hul etc .. the people that really matter

[AR3-GP]

Perez pitlane start for the sprint with changes to suspension.

[venkyhere]

That Merc still looks to me to have attributes that can upset the others though

I agree. Especially that track temp is in the 20s. However, whilst LasVegas was colder and had fewer tyre slip zones that kept the 'perfect heat' in the merc's tyres (literally no 'deg'), with minP at 28/26 psi ; Qatar, with a less cold but high tyre slip track and lower minP at 26/22.5 psi, it will interesting to see what 'deg' is exhibited by Mercedes. Tyres are at a knife edge in this ultra ride height sensitive ground effect era, that we can see topsy turvy tyre life one track to the next for the same team.

I have a feeling Ferrari are going to surprise everyone in the sprint and if they don't fiddle with the car, in the race as well.

[Juzh]

- however, the momentum gain from S3 can't be translated to a great pit-straight launch, as the entire 0.25s is terribly lost (and the effective overall loss staying at 0.3s) at the final corner, T16. It still is a long corner, but I am not sure why he is losing time like he lost in T6-T7. It's not a 'quick rotation' corner, it's still medium-high speed. Perhaps the S tyres are eaten by now.

As I said, anything below 200 kmh and RB20 becomes slow, T16 absurdly so. It's a trait of the car, for whatever reason, which must be eradicated.
Actually I observed exactly the same behaviour as soon as Jeddah this year. Back then it didn't really matter obviously, but now it does.

[Farnborough]

We touched on it in another thread, tire pressure etc and didn't go much further because of general opinion.

What particularly interests me in analysing this is the reason behind changing it from Pirelli.

Increase of pressure is specifically used to support the tire structure / carcass by reduction of flex under load it is predicted to experience.

To split initially and examine just the structure we must remove the tread area temporarily from considering it's influence.

As they've got a raised front only temperature (against general trend) then they are predicting a harder time from heat build than normal.
Theres other influence definitely, but primarily and major in that heat accumulation is the flexing of the structure by deforming, squashing, sqeezing etc and so by raising start pressure the structure simply flexes less under the projected load it is going to experience.
The risk is taking it over temperature such that it starts to fail in that structure, ultimately to "de-laminate" fall apart in layman's terms.
Also carries risk of tread gauge material literally becoming unbonded from the structure to give initially "blistering" or more substantial tread detachment.

Now the more interesting relationship with the tread. The flex comes from the tread being "located " effectively to the track ... grip in other words. This to cause the structure now to bend between vehicle mass (including aero load) how the tire holds the track.
I'll use the example of soft tire here, if the driver raises the tread temperature very fast, such that the structure temperature doesn't have decent chance to follow that "curve" in accumulation, then the tread can go over temperature and start reducing grip against track from sliding too much. At which point the ability to generate flex in the structure now goes down. The driver starts to feel understeer, the structure doesn't see enough flex to bring it into optimum, the they call that "graining " which makes them slower.
Just as LeClerc did in Las Vegas when Max caught him after roasting his tread but not having built heat in structure sufficient to let the WHOLE tire function within it's IDEAL temperature range.

The alternate approach is to bring them in slowly (notice that in MV&RB, also Ferrari chassis) then as the structure temp comes up to ideal AND the tread coincide, then the full performance can be extracted.

Raised pressure increases that gap POTENTIAL between getting them both to the same place, at the same time.

The car with the absolute greatest load will always have advantages in accumulation of tire structure flex (that MB chassis seems to do this) to switch on tires (also valuable at low temp, but not exclusively) and demonstrates better performance with less risk.
Some circuit and pressure combination clearly favour just this raised pressure, for some chassis.
Conversely, high track heat and ambient temperature may take both the structure and the surface too high and out of range.

The problem the driver faces here, in a sprint, is that there will be precious little room to work their own characteristics of car tire interaction while even holding their position. Its he'll for leather from the start. That also leaves naff all room for any sort a strategy.
Get any graining and you'll be "toasted" by those near you, with little options in practical terms. There's very little in the way of respite to let the fronts recover around the lap , then try to give it absolutely everything in it out of last corner so you don't get caught by DRS down that straight.

It's gonna be hectic for all.