Is the RB19 Dominant?

[Farnborough]

A monster Merc PU probably shadowed a aero deficit on all of the Merc cars during the hybrid era.

Nothing wrong with Perez at all. He had great moments last year and showing well this year. Remember it was reported that the car is also more in Perez favourite window rather than Max, so be interesting to see if that also shows as the season progresses. At the moment it would indicate that statement made was true.

I see it the same way, regarding merc power levels during dominant period.

Also (mentioned by Ringo? I believe in another thread a couple of weeks back) mercedes team has never seemed to make a naturally balanced suspension/geometry platform, relying instead on things like frics, other expensive damping roll control, das type development to bring correction to balance issues of vehicle and tyre use front vs rear. Clever, maybe, but placed within current cost constraints those technical answers may be out of reach.

The intent to build a balanced chassis vs one that MAY have peak performance, but absolutely needs intervention to control some of those aspect, are essentially contrasting approaches.

An over arching effect of the cost cap is that a poor idea, concept or application will cost exactly the same as a very good one (that's in terms of persons sitting there thinking it through) but once committed to the vehicle the poor performing concept will just suck money to try and make it work.
Even more strange why merc didn't decide this last year, they told everyone they were reconsidering, but made the same car again.
It's those effects and those of Ferrari that are making the dominant position look so big.

The speed difference between the RB and Merc being commented on currently is skewed as RB was running in a massive draft shed by Merc wings they are using to make up for poor floor performance. Most cars sucked along by that sized draft will look faster.

Reports are missing the detail, those Merc couldn't get near that AM with the same power deployment.

[CHT]

This is the reality of modern F1. there is no room for mistakes or second thoughts.
If you get it right you will be rewarded

[napoleon1981]

I think on raw pace difference, its not the most dominant car of all time. We certainly have seen more dominant cars in terms of laptime gaps. That being said, the whole field is compressed and a few tenths gets you from the back of the grid to the 2nd row. So in an era where tenths are making a big difference and are hard to find, it seems to be a very dominant car.

It still isnt clear to me why it is so aero efficient. Is there an underfloor trick, or is it an extremely optimized whole package?

[Farnborough]

It still isnt clear to me why it is so aero efficient. Is there an underfloor trick, or is it an extremely optimized whole package?

A comparison from straight on front view of RB shows how clean aerodynamically it is in comparison. There's very few extras in trying to control flow too.
The suspension links are also minimal in comparison to the mercedes et al, the AM is following the RB in this respect.

Look how clean the top of the sidepod and mirror treatment is too, there's very little additional flow control / conditioning over and above the basic structure design.

[chrisc90]

It still isnt clear to me why it is so aero efficient. Is there an underfloor trick, or is it an extremely optimized whole package?

A comparison from straight on front view of RB shows how clean aerodynamically it is in comparison. There's very few extras in trying to control flow too.
The suspension links are also minimal in comparison to the mercedes et al, the AM is following the RB in this respect.

Look how clean the top of the sidepod and mirror treatment is too, there's very little additional flow control / conditioning over and above the basic structure design.

Backed up by the flo-vis we seen in testing along the full length of the side pod.

[Edax]

The only thing suggesting that the anti-porpoising changes helped RB is that they're very fast now, but I think it's more that Ferrari and Merc have struggled rather than anything else.

Ferrari are probably reeling from TD039.

Mercedes already showed their inexperience in ground effect regulations with the W13. Mercedes intended to run their floor as low as possible and encountered porpoising. RB was doing the opposite. Higher ride heights and no porpoising.

Regs change

Now Mercedes develops for higher rideheight. Red Bull returns with low ride height again, lower than anyone. Mercedes are flabbergasted because they thought they were following RB. It's like RB know exactly what to do and how to react to geometry changes in the floor regulations. The changes weren't going to hurt RB. It was only going to hurt teams who don't know what they were doing, like Mercedes.

Agree. I think one of the hints was when RB came out in juli last season that they expected a big impact from the 2023 regulations. They were the only team to say so and as it shows the only team who came properly prepared.

As for the OP’s question. Yes I think the RB19 is dominant. It is only two tracks, but they are very different in characteristics, so expect the RB19 to do well across quite a few similar tracks.

[AR3-GP]

The only thing that remains to be seen is whether additional developments hours of Aston Martin makes a difference. In theory the second half of the season could be tighter if AMR are able to keep putting good ideas in the windtunnel with all their extra hours.

This first half the season will be one-way traffic however.

[chrisc90]

Pulling back .750 of a second will be strong work for AMR in my opinion. A mountain of work for in season development.

RB could rock up with the Rb18 and still be ahead

[AR3-GP]

Pulling back .750 of a second will be strong work for AMR in my opinion. A mountain of work for in season development.

RB could rock up with the Rb18 and still be ahead

Well AMR said that they surpassed the RB18 with their launch spec.

[chrisc90]

Interesting. 2 races in I think that is a bold claim to make.

A comparison between the. RB18 and the AMR23 would be good to see. I think there could be a comparison made with Bahrain, but Jeddah had a reprofile so not massively representative.

Amazing the pre season talk from rb suggested the AMR car to be a strong contender. I guess teams talk quite a lot

[JordanMugen]

I fear we are witnessing the most dominant car of all time...

Assuming you mean in all the history of Grand Prix racing, that's probably going too far. But I'm not too familiar with seasons before the 80's. The two Government-funded German cars of the 1930's were presumably far more dominant comparatively, except there were two of them so does that count?

In any case, Red Bull Racing and Honda Racing Corporation have a built a superb motor vehicle. Very refined, very honed, very optimised, a car with no obvious weakness -- a great bit of kit, as they say!

[PlatinumZealot]

Dominance might be measured by srpead from dominanr car to the worst car divided by the field spread from the second best car to the worst car?

[organic]

Dominance might be measured by srpead from dominanr car to the worst car divided by the field spread from the second best car to the worst car?

That's a good way to do it. If everyone else is separated by small gaps, a larger gap to the front team represents very large domination.

[chrisc90]

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMYQ8vqbm/

Someone did some figure’s here.

[Postmoe]

There have been mercs and RB's where you could feel they were purposely avoiding going full throttle to avoid formal investigations. I don't have the feeling this RB is in that particular spot. Havin said that, it looks VERY dominant.