2024 Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[Sergej]

what about Austria kerbs ? you don't have to cut them like in Montreal last chicane, they are more on "lateral ride", like in Bahrain....will it be disaster anyway ? I want to believe

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what about Austria kerbs ? you don't have to cut them like in Montreal last chicane, they are more on "lateral ride", like in Bahrain....will it be disaster anyway ? I want to believe

curbs certainly won't help but with the low speed corners and high rear tyres degradation, McLaren will muller RB at Austria

At Barcelona RB ran a setup to really protect the tyres, resulting in a ton of low speed understeer and yet still had far worse degradation than McLaren. At Austria they'll have to do the same but could see it being even greater effect with Austria being one of the hardest on the tyres of all

[Sergej]

by what you say it seems like Max will have hard time in finishing on podium, since I think also Ferrari could be strong there

[venkyhere]

what about Austria kerbs ? you don't have to cut them like in Montreal last chicane, they are more on "lateral ride", like in Bahrain....will it be disaster anyway ? I want to believe

curbs certainly won't help but with the low speed corners and high rear tyres degradation, McLaren will muller RB at Austria

At Barcelona RB ran a setup to really protect the tyres, resulting in a ton of low speed understeer and yet still had far worse degradation than McLaren. At Austria they'll have to do the same but could see it being even greater effect with Austria being one of the hardest on the tyres of all

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I also suspect the reason RB20 suffers more tyre wear than MCL38, despite 'more dowforce' (looked more wing in Barcelona. correct me if im wrong) is the same reason why they can't kerb ride well - super stiff front suspension, which in turn is forcing the hand to make the rear stiffer than what they would like. There needs to be some softness to roll, otherwise no matter what downforce they have, the car will slip a bit more than when the suspension is softer.
I think this is the missing link in the chain and once this is solved, RB20 will jump clear of MCL38 - kerbs will be better, tyre wear will be better, mechanical grip in slow turns will be better.

[organic]

what about Austria kerbs ? you don't have to cut them like in Montreal last chicane, they are more on "lateral ride", like in Bahrain....will it be disaster anyway ? I want to believe

curbs certainly won't help but with the low speed corners and high rear tyres degradation, McLaren will muller RB at Austria

At Barcelona RB ran a setup to really protect the tyres, resulting in a ton of low speed understeer and yet still had far worse degradation than McLaren. At Austria they'll have to do the same but could see it being even greater effect with Austria being one of the hardest on the tyres of all

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I also suspect the reason RB20 suffers more tyre wear than MCL38, despite 'more dowforce' (looked more wing in Barcelona. correct me if im wrong) is the same reason why they can't kerb ride well - super stiff front suspension, which in turn is forcing the hand to make the rear stiffer than what they would like. There needs to be some softness to roll, otherwise no matter what downforce they have, the car will slip a bit more than when the suspension is softer.
I think this is the missing link in the chain and once this is solved, RB20 will jump clear of MCL38 - kerbs will be better, tyre wear will be better, mechanical grip in slow turns will be better.

I think the only issue/unexpected behaviour with the front suspension is the curbing. They had no qualms with the suspension until Miami when they started needing to ride higher curbs

There will be no magic bullet

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Andrew Benson/BBC who aren't very pro-verstappen (at all) with statement about what F1 team bosses believe about Verstappen's performance level

[Talking about perez's performance]

Benson: I think actually, Jenny, excuse me, there's not a fix for this, because basically, as [Checo] is two to three tenths of a second slower than Max Verstappen, and the field is close enough now that there's a number of cars that are within that performance margin of Verstappen and Red Bull. You know that combination? So if you've got both McLaren drivers, both Ferrari drivers and both Mercedes drivers within two or three tenths of Verstappen, they're going to be ahead of Perez. That's just the natural order of things. And I think it also raises a really interesting question. It can't be answered this question until we've had the next run of races.

Is the Red Bull still the best car?

Because if you walk around the paddock and talk to the team bosses, I've had a couple of very senior people in Formula One this year say to me, I think Verstappen's got two or three tenths on everybody as a driver. Now I'm not saying I agree with that. I'm saying that's the view that very senior bosses in Formula One have expressed. If that's the case, and it's a big if, the Red Bull's not the best car anymore. Interesting question, I think at least.

Palmer: I always find it fascinating when the second Red Bull driver, which has happened in the last five years or so, has been out qualified by an Alpha Tauri, Toro Rosso, an RB, whatever you call them. And Tsunoda's punching in eighth place qualifyings, Ricciardo was fifth on the grid in Canada. If you Verstappen in that car, is Verstappen taking pole with this machine?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0j5jj1n

[Sergej]

very senior bosses = Toto, he will be pushing like a mad for signing Max

imagine a Mercedes kinda closing the gap with RB in next months, Horner will be thrembling

[Dunlay]

Andrew Benson/BBC who aren't very pro-verstappen (at all) with statement about what F1 team bosses believe about Verstappen's performance level

[Talking about perez's performance]

Benson: I think actually, Jenny, excuse me, there's not a fix for this, because basically, as [Checo] is two to three tenths of a second slower than Max Verstappen, and the field is close enough now that there's a number of cars that are within that performance margin of Verstappen and Red Bull. You know that combination? So if you've got both McLaren drivers, both Ferrari drivers and both Mercedes drivers within two or three tenths of Verstappen, they're going to be ahead of Perez. That's just the natural order of things. And I think it also raises a really interesting question. It can't be answered this question until we've had the next run of races.

Is the Red Bull still the best car?

Because if you walk around the paddock and talk to the team bosses, I've had a couple of very senior people in Formula One this year say to me, I think Verstappen's got two or three tenths on everybody as a driver. Now I'm not saying I agree with that. I'm saying that's the view that very senior bosses in Formula One have expressed. If that's the case, and it's a big if, the Red Bull's not the best car anymore. Interesting question, I think at least.

Palmer: I always find it fascinating when the second Red Bull driver, which has happened in the last five years or so, has been out qualified by an Alpha Tauri, Toro Rosso, an RB, whatever you call them. And Tsunoda's punching in eighth place qualifyings, Ricciardo was fifth on the grid in Canada. If you Verstappen in that car, is Verstappen taking pole with this machine?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0j5jj1n

There is a reason why Lando didn't want to go to Red Bull. It's that the car is exclusively built around Max's preferences. The good part of the Red Bull cars in this Pirelli era, is that they take good care of the tyres. I am not sure if other teams can provide that combination of a super pointy front end and with good overall tyre life. That's the reason why other drivers have struggled in the team and drivers like Lando don't want to go, so long as the cars aren't serving to different preferences. It seems to me that the Max and Red Bull cannot be mutually exclusive.

I am really curious to find out Max's career outside of Red Bull. So I really want him to move out of the team. It also would tell us if other drivers can then go to Red Bull and succeed. But I am 100% certain he won't leave.

[AR3-GP]

There is a reason why Lando didn't want to go to Red Bull. It's that the car is exclusively built around Max's preferences. The good part of the Red Bull cars in this Pirelli era, is that they take good care of the tyres. I am not sure if other teams can provide that combination of a super pointy front end and with good overall tyre life. That's the reason why other drivers have struggled in the team and drivers like Lando don't want to go, so long as the cars aren't serving to different preferences. It seems to me that the Max and Red Bull cannot be mutually exclusive.

Ferrari and Mclaren have had better tire degradation this year. The Red Bull front end is not as pointy as the Mclaren front end either. All of this was visible in Barcelona and previous races.

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This year Mercedes and McLaren both have much better front end than RB.

RB have had a weak front for the last 3 years compared to other frontrunners but still the narrative persists. W13 and F1-75 had better front end than rb18. W14 had better front end than rb19.

Red bull aren't the only ones who have good tyre life anymore. In fact max's degradation across the stint on both meds and softs at Barcelona was almost double that of Norris'. Already McLaren had good tyre life at the end of last year - see Qatar where they closed down a lot on Max at the end of race (seems familiar...)

And on driver preference, ultimately the team build the fastest car they can. The drivers feed back but they're not leading development as much as people think

[AR3-GP]

Is there any advantage for RB20 over MCL38? I mean under what circumstances we can expect the RB20 to be clearly ahead?
Like hot/cold? Rain? Or top speed? Front/back limited tracks? Is there anything?

Possibly the DRS top speed at Spa, Vegas, and Monza but we haven't had races at these tracks since the Miami upgrades of Mclaren. Otherwise, no, I don't see anything that the RB20 does better than the MCL38.

I think the suspension and it's stiffness is still a big part of the problem this year even on the better tracks for Red Bull.

Horner mentioned they were losing time in T1 in the race and you can see why. Norris could shorten the corner (And also open up T2) by using the inside curb:



Norris was using inside curb in T6:


Norris was also using the inside curb in T9 (this is remarkable/unprecedented).




It's a completely different (and faster) track when you can use curbs like this. Verstappen was avoiding all of these curbs during the race.

[Juzh]

I've seen the same pattern in regards to kerb riding in canada. Mclaren can straight-line the corner much more than the competition.

[organic]

This is something that can't change during the season for RB

The soft front suspension + high downforce front wing with high degree of flex is a great combination for McLaren. Even if RB manage to come up with their own wing with the new 2024 guidance for flexibility from the FIA, it won't be a package optimized around it like McLaren have.

Given at the moment RB achieve their excellent aero balance without a trick wing, I'm imagining incorporation of this new tool would free up some design choices in the floor to extract more raw performance

I think with this development path, there is a lot of performance that RB can unlock in the car for 2025. For this season, the high speed performance is still there we know that, and a Flexi front wing will bring RB closer in low speed whilst maintaining efficiency edge even if it doesn't help the curbing issue

[Sieper]

But how is it possible that cars with softer suspension can now ride as low as redbull? And what has changed then that this now is possible?

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But how is it possible that cars with softer suspension can now ride as low as redbull? And what has changed then that this now is possible?

I'm not sure if this is nuanced enough but my basic understanding with these cars would be that

Run softer, you need more travel

If you have more travel, the floor will not be running at optimal ground clearance at low speed and Cp doesn't move as far forward as optimal and you'd simply lack low speed performance. However there is the front wing. With a powerful tool in the flexible front wing that also can be tuned to produce a lot of downforce at lower speed when suspension isn't compressed, Then the long travel causing thr floor not to work as effectively doesn't matter as much. It's compensated for and you can thereby run softer. This probably also helps with their tyres , as venky suggests

If this is incorrect or incomplete please feel free to add to or correct me please