Oracle Red Bull Racing RB19 Speculation Thread

[Vanja #66]

The ferrari has a good reason for the s-duct. Its side pod has a very flat front that creates a high pressure zone to squeeze air to the side. That action creates some stagnation across the face...

SF-23 is not even close to being flat under the intake, so it's definitely not about that.

It's not boundary layer as people are saying. Boundary layer problems wont occur there at all.

Cleaning up the boundary layer is never a bad idea. If you need to divert some air from place A to place B you'd want to take the boundary layer to clean up flow at place A. Ferrari are using s-duct outlet to energise the air around concave engine cover and keep it attached in adverse flow conditions.

So back to Red Bull.. The redBull side pod doesn't really have as much pressure infront of it unless RedBull purposely does a flat face section just in the corner like Ferrari for this purpose... And RedBull likely doesn't even need that if they have very clean top-of side pod flow. Images aren't sharp enough yet to see down into that corner of the side pod.

Agreed about RB, there doesn't seem to be any need to energise top flow anywhere. And as we see now, no S-duct indeed.

Well, RB wasn't kidding, it's truly an evolution. Lot's of tightening here and there around the cockpit. The magic is hidden under the floor

[organic]

The rool hoop inlet is far, far smaller. Seems like the high nose was a livery illusion caused by the yellow not extending to the tip of the nose.

Can't really see if the front wing really raises in the centre from any of the current angles

[BlueCheetah66]

Really didn't do much different with the sidepods apart from maybe a slightly deeper undercut. Surprised they didn't have them more sculpted as some teams have started to do now

[etusch]

When I think the level of secresy I think there should be something they wanted to hide. But car look pretty similar to previous one.

[Stu]

The ferrari has a good reason for the s-duct. Its side pod has a very flat front that creates a high pressure zone to squeeze air to the side. That action creates some stagnation across the face... It's not boundary layer as people are saying. Boundary layer problems wont occur there at all. We see this every year when teams run flow vis on the side if the chassis. Air flow is well attached. I think what Ferrari are doing is either one of four things I think: 1) bleeding off pressure to creating a certain pressure profile in front of the floor. 2) cheap cooling 3) S-duct to clean up top-of side pod flow 4) A type of F-duct that works automatically like Mercedes W01 rear wing.

So back to Red Bull.. The redBull side pod doesn't really have as much pressure infront of it unless RedBull purposely does a flat face section just in the corner like Ferrari for this purpose... And RedBull likely doesn't even need that if they have very clean top-of side pod flow. Images aren't sharp enough yet to see down into that corner of the side pod.

You really should give credit to Kyle for points 1, 2 & 3…