Red Bull RB5

[vasia]

Now with the genie out of the bottle, I think we ain't seen nothing yet in terms of innovative diffusers until engineers such as Willis, Newey, Bell, Oatley and Byrne/Costa have a go.

So are you implying Brawn, Dernie, and the Williams boys haven't been innovative, or are not as innovative as those that you mentioned? I don't see how you can put names like Willis or Costa on the same level as Dernie or Brawn, or Newey.

Brawn, Toyota, and Williams undoubtedly spent many months in the wind tunnels optimising and perfecting their diffuser designs. Likewise, it will take guys like Newey at least a few months to come up with an optimal design. Plus, there is no guarantee the non-DDD teams will be able to make their cars work optimally with a double decker or triple decker design. Williams, Brawn, and Toyota all designed their cars from the ground up to work together with their unique diffusers.

The deeper question that should be asked is why "innovative" guys like Byrne, Bell, and Newey never thought of these diffuser designs in the first place, or never thought to look for loopholes in the rules like the 'Diffuser 3' managed to do.

RBR and Renault claim they had similar diffuser designs last year, but because the FIA at the time declared them illegal while not doing the same for the Toyota and Williams designs, obviously RBR and Renault missed something or got something wrong compared to Toyota and Williams.

[xpensive]

For the record, Ross Brawn is not an Engineer and neither is Charlie Whiting.

Being "innovative" and looking for loopholes through lawyer-like semantics, is not necessarily the same thing.

Believe it or not, most of the finest engineers I ever worked with have posessed a great sense of respect for
directives and design-rules, not starting the day with trying to find a way around given constraints.

[djos]

Webbo and BoyWonder continuing to show very solid pace and leading the other non-DDD cars by a country mile while more than mixing it up with the DDD cars.

Friday Practice Session 2
POS DRIVER NATIONALITY ENTRANT TIME
1. Jenson Button Britain Brawn GP-Mercedes 1:35.679
2. Nico Rosberg Germany Williams-Toyota 1:35.704
3. Rubens Barrichello Brazil Brawn GP-Mercedes 1:35.881
4. Mark Webber Australia Red Bull-Renault 1:36.105
5. Sebastian Vettel Germany Red Bull-Renault 1:36.167
6. Jarno Trulli Italy Toyota 1:36.217
7. Kazuki Nakajima Japan Williams-Toyota 1:36.377
8. Timo Glock Germany Toyota 1:36.548
9. Heikki Kovalainen Finland McLaren-Mercedes 1:36.674
10. Sebastien Bourdais France Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1:36.800
11. Adrian Sutil Germany Force India-Mercedes 1:36.829
12. Felipe Massa Brazil Ferrari 1:36.847
13. Lewis Hamilton Britain McLaren-Mercedes 1:36.941
14. Kimi Raikkonen Finland Ferrari 1:37.054
15. Sebastien Buemi Switzerland Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1:37.219
16. Nelson Piquet Brazil Renault 1:37.273
17. Robert Kubica Poland BMW Sauber 1:37.491
18. Nick Heidfeld Germany BMW Sauber 1:37.544
19. Fernando Alonso Spain Renault 1:37.638
20. Giancarlo Fisichella Italy Force India-Mercedes 1:37.750

[xpensive]

Only that Webber's time or position on the grid rarely counts, when he typically finds a way to throw it away.

[djos]

Only that Webber's time or position on the grid rarely counts, when he typically finds a way to throw it away.

He's only thrown away a Qually once in the last couple of seasons that i can recall (Melbourne) - as for the races, well that is a different story.

Part of the problem is that he has usually dragged his car up to a position in which it didn't belong and then got owned in the race, or had mechanical problems, been hit up the arse by other drivers or been given a bad strategy call.

Rarely has he thrown away a result by himself (although it has happened a few times).

[Tbox]

Anyone got any pictures of the interim adjustable front wing mentioned on the beeb commentary of free practice 1 this morning? I'd love to see what they're on about.

For those who didn't hear it - the pit commentators noticed a new bulge in the front wing, along with a very messy "iPod headphone" style bit of wire coming out the front vent to the actuators.

I didn't realise RB & Fi are the only teams not running with the adjustable front wing yet.

[xpensive]

Sorry about that one djos, couldn't help it. I love the man but he has such a knack for messing up, colliding his mountain-bike with a mini-van just a number of weeks before his first chance of a decent season in F1?

[djos]

Sorry about that one djos, couldn't help it. I love the man but he has such a knack for messing up, colliding his mountain-bike with a mini-van just a number of weeks before his first chance of a decent season in F1?

Yeah so true, I reckon Webbo has to be one of the fastest drivers ever to not have had a car capable of winning Race's/WCC's. *sigh*

[blobslosak]

Anyone got any pictures of the interim adjustable front wing mentioned on the beeb commentary of free practice 1 this morning? I'd love to see what they're on about.

For those who didn't hear it - the pit commentators noticed a new bulge in the front wing, along with a very messy "iPod headphone" style bit of wire coming out the front vent to the actuators.

I didn't realise RB & Fi are the only teams not running with the adjustable front wing yet.

Can see some wires on the toro rosso...

http://en.f1-live.com/f1/en/photos/popu ... po_190.jpg

http://en.f1-live.com/f1/en/photos/popu ... po_196.jpg

[djos]

Can see some wires on the toro rosso...

http://en.f1-live.com/f1/en/photos/popu ... po_190.jpg

http://en.f1-live.com/f1/en/photos/popu ... po_196.jpg

LOL, those pics are classic.

[zgred]

How much of a redesign is this for the RBR car? For the non-RBR cars I guess it's a new floor and diffuser but due to the RBRs suspension will htey have to completely redesign the rear end fo the car?

I honestly dont think it will require a change to the suspension design at all.

Unfortunately no clear answer from Horner for the gearbox question.

Q: A question to you all. The diffuser saga has come to an end in many ways and a decision has been made. How does it affect you now that the decision has been made? How long will it take you to catch up? What sort of effort is required and when do you feel you will be on a parwith everybody else on the same technology? Christian, perhaps you would like to start.
Christian Horner: I think obviously after the appeal hearing the situation is now closed in that the diffuser is obviously allowed. For us it has a significant impact because obviously we designed the car around the regulations how we believed should be interpreted and obviously came up with a very good car. The benefit that diffuser offers is significant and obviously if you haven’t incorporated it into the car design from inception it is something that is difficult just to bolt on, particularly in our case, and as an independent team for us it almost represents a B-spec car, so it is a significant change to the rear end of the chassis in order to try and optimise it and integrate it into our design solutions. The guys, led by Adrian (Newey), have done a fantastic job this winter and the decision to release the car late was the right thing to optimise the time in the wind tunnel but now to be faced with an upgrade with the quantum of this one is going to be a significant challenge and difficult to put an exact date on when we will be able to introduce our own solution but it will be one of the early European races.

Q: Does it include a gearbox redesign?
Christian Horner: It impacts on the whole rear end of the car in our solutions. It is significant and obviously the only hole it has left us is in our budget. It is a significant amount of cost in not a great climate but the performance you can see today, six of the cars in the top eight are running that solution, so we have to do it in order to maintain our competitiveness. On the positive side is looking at the performance of our car so far this year. Without it we have been pretty competitive. The only car in the top eight today with if you like a standard solution, so hopefully what we can look forward to is a further step in competitiveness when we do introduce it.

But Norbert Haug referring to the worst case scenario said - redesign all :]

Q: Does it involve a gearbox redesign?
Norbert Haug: It depends. As Mario pointed out on which car you have and which design you have but let’s say that the worst case scenario is a complete redesign including suspension, gearbox housing, whatever. But it depends. It may be on the one car like that and on the other car a little bit different. It is not like you develop a double diffuser in your wind tunnel, put in on your car and here we go. It takes time. The best ones of them have invested months and months, more than half a year, three quarters of the year, and as stated before what other people who are intelligent and good people achieve in nine months is difficult to achieve in nine weeks. We are in that process but we just need to push and need to work harder.

[yzfr7]

Anyone got any pictures of the interim adjustable front wing mentioned on the beeb commentary of free practice 1 this morning? I'd love to see what they're on about.

For those who didn't hear it - the pit commentators noticed a new bulge in the front wing, along with a very messy "iPod headphone" style bit of wire coming out the front vent to the actuators.

I didn't realise RB & Fi are the only teams not running with the adjustable front wing yet.

Can see some wires on the toro rosso...

http://en.f1-live.com/f1/en/photos/popu ... po_190.jpg

http://en.f1-live.com/f1/en/photos/popu ... po_196.jpg

Even if it is a temporary thing (I hope), wouldn't it be better to place those wires at the trailing edge of the wing, instead of the leading edge? Isn't the leading edge more sensitive to geometrical disturbances? And won't the resulting perturbed pressure distribution be propagated along the whole profile?

[timbo]

So, as we all have seen RB5 is quite good in the rain while Brawn is not.
May it be down to that RB5 makes much use of its rear wing, while BR001 exploits diffuser?
I wonder whether water spray may have detrimental effect on diffuser efficiency.

[xpensive]

I believe that with speeds as slow as today's, some 20% off yesterday's, aerodynamic efficiency becomes far less important, when downforce is squared to the speed. You figure out the rest.

[timbo]

I believe that with speeds as slow as today's, some 20% off yesterday's, aerodynamic efficiency becomes far less important, when downforce is squared to the speed. You figure out the rest.

Of course, but still there were parts of the track where aero could make a difference - like corner next to the back straight.