2024 Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[organic]

[Cassius]

Max was faster at the end of the race than Sainz, despite older tyres and was even able to get the fastest lap. RB also had the best working tyres on the first medium stint compared to the rest of the field.

It was a dominating performance, both over a lap and over the whole race. The car was also much faster to overtake others than any other cars.

Leclerc first stint was much more impressive doing similar lap times to Max but with 10 laps older tyres.

I agree today the compromise between quality and race was good. I don't agree that gaining a few seconds at the end of the stint is not important.

There will be certainly be more races like Australia where Ferrari is closer or even better in qualy, where better deg gives you strategic options.

[Sieper]

Yes. But I think they will still be able to dial the understeer under high fuel out more. In the beginning Perez could sort of keep up (until he missed degner 2) but later on in the race when the understeer turned to oversteer Max was building a gap towards him on every lap. If they can get that dialed in a bit more Max will unlock more pace.

[SirBastianVettel]

I wonder if the sprint weekend will be a challenge for Red Bull. Even this weekend they didn't get their setup right till after FP3.

[marcel171281]

I wonder if the sprint weekend will be a challenge for Red Bull. Even this weekend they didn't get their setup right till after FP3.

This year there is no parc ferme after the Sprint, so they can change setup before the GP.

[SirBastianVettel]

This year there is no parc ferme after the Sprint, so they can change setup before the GP.

I didn't know that, thanks! In that case I think they'll be fine.

[chrisc90]

Everyones in the same boat though. Nobody's raced here for 5? years? It'll be down to the best simulation tools to who comes out running and whos chasing setup after the sprint.

[avantman]

Everyones in the same boat though. Nobody's raced here for 5? years? It'll be down to the best simulation tools to who comes out running and whos chasing setup after the sprint.

It will be more about best drivers I think. Cream will rise to the top, for sure. lesser drivers will struggle.

[SirBastianVettel]

It will be more about best drivers I think. Cream will rise to the top, for sure. lesser drivers will struggle.

Best drivers as in most naturally talented or best at setting up their car?

[avantman]

It will be more about best drivers I think. Cream will rise to the top, for sure. lesser drivers will struggle.

Best drivers as in most naturally talented or best at setting up their car?

There is a reason why Max, Fernando or some others come to a new place and normally (near always) drive faster than others from the get go in FP1 without any preparation. This is natural talent, undoubtedly. You will never see Perez close to Max pace right away, but he might come closer after all the setup work, studying his teammates telemetry, preparation and lots of runs.
Back to your question, I think the correct answer is 'both'. These things are interrelated directly, how they cannot be?

[Vanja #66]

Yup, RB20 is bucket of crap and no way Checco would have won 3 races if Max wasn't there. Oh wait...

[Xyz22]

The real gap is indeed smaller, but that is the difference right now. The RB20 is the complete package, competitive more or less everywhere and in both quali and race.

The SF 24 has a limitation in qualifying currently and even if Sainz did a better job than Leclerc with that, they have been struggling in Q3 so far.
If Ferrari want to compete with RB on a regular basis, they have to be on pole or P2.

[organic]

The real gap is indeed smaller, but that is the difference right now. The RB20 is the complete package, competitive more or less everywhere and in both quali and race.

The SF 24 has a limitation in qualifying currently and even if Sainz did a better job than Leclerc with that, they have been struggling in Q3 so far.
If Ferrari want to compete with RB on a regular basis, they have to be on pole or P2.

To me it seems like the rb20 may even have removed the street circuit weaknesses of the rb18/19. They seem to get the soft tyres working for one lap in most cases and the slow speed corners are very competitive if not the best for RB.

[Xyz22]

The real gap is indeed smaller, but that is the difference right now. The RB20 is the complete package, competitive more or less everywhere and in both quali and race.

The SF 24 has a limitation in qualifying currently and even if Sainz did a better job than Leclerc with that, they have been struggling in Q3 so far.
If Ferrari want to compete with RB on a regular basis, they have to be on pole or P2.

To me it seems like the rb20 may even have removed the street circuit weaknesses of the rb18/19. They seem to get the soft tyres working for one lap in most cases and the slow speed corners are very competitive if not the best for RB.

I expected nothing less, to be honest.
Ferrari is 1.5 years behind on this concept. They are having issues like RB had with the RB18 and early RB19.

I'm quite surprised by the gap today actually, thought it was going to be bigger.

[dialtone]

The stints are almost impossible to compare. 1 driver is doing a two stop which means he can push, where as the other is in tyre preservation mode going for a one stop. As that chart mentions, with a 0.3-0.35 deficit the result would have still been 15+ seconds behind. The reason sainz is comparable is because he was on a 2 stop strategy and was faster this race.

While I think leclerc is a better driver overall, their race performance so far this season have been near matched so I don’t buy that he would have made a massive difference.

You don’t buy that he was going to be better after LEC finished 6s behind his teammate with a suboptimal strategy and starting 8th?

While it may not be fully accurate, that graph highlights the pace while taking into account strategy, tyres etc. the real race pace without anything considered had leclerc 9 tenths slower than max and 4-5 tenths slower than Sainz

It doesn’t take into account strategy and tires. It’s a graph that likely just removed slow laps due to pits or anomalies and then calculated the average.

Since LEC had a pit offset it ultimately resulted in his lap times being slower by that much overall to end up where he did with 23 seconds to his advantage. However that’s obviously dominates by 2 stints in which he had to massively nurse tires.

The only thing you can really look at are his times when it mattered, after PIA pitted and LEC was in clean air, his times were amazing for those old tires.

The 2nd thing you can look at is that he ultimately finished 6s behind his teammate after starting 8th and going on a worse strategy. This is objectively good and better than Sainz as far as race goes.