2024 Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[Jdn1327]

The understeer and lack of front end bite, is that setup related or has it been designed into this new car?

[PierreW]

Its how Max has always been, I dont see why anyone is surprised. If you win races comfortably with little effort there is no reason to be upset, so nobody saw that side of him for a while.

You are talking with little sense.

Max would not have complained a bit if the strategy set up by the team had not put him at big disadvantage twice. He would have settled third, doing what he can with this car. You don't choose to let Hamilton and Leclerc undercut you again after seeing how hard it was to overtake.

That's was infuriating. Max is doing miracles to try to salvage a team with a diminished car, wrong development path, weakening pit stops and calls, and now just downright terrible strategy.

Max won't accept mediocrity and shouldn't. I am all for him to put pressure on the team to perform better.

[Mansell89]

I thought Max’s stint on the hard tyres was majestic yesterday - he and Hamilton at these twisty circuits are absolutely superb and they really differentiate themselves as two of the best in Budapest.

I’d imagine Max will very much be in the mix at Spa, though perhaps Zandvoort might be more of a challenge this year than previously.

[Paa]

I'm starting to give more credibility for the Miami suspension nerf rumors. The contrast is too big between the two parts of the season. Max comfortably won all poles in early races and RB20 seemed even better than RB19.
Even if other teams improved, that does't explain the change in behaviour and driveability. See Perez performance.
Something must have happened.

They designed the car around certain suspension behaviour, and they are missing that piece now. This could have been RedBull's TD39.

Most probably even current upgrade package was planned months ago, assuming they still have that certain feature.

It is possible that now performance is simply limited by mechanics, so improving aero doesn't add usable gains.

[Emag]

Its how Max has always been, I dont see why anyone is surprised.

If you win races comfortably with little effort there is no reason to be upset, so nobody saw that side of him for a while.

He has proven to be a hypocrite a long time ago, doing the same things he criticizes other drivers for but expects different treatment when he does them himself.

.
You must be a new F1/McLaren fan because all those years Max drove with a Renault PU he had so much trouble with his car
and DNF's and often bad luck and he never was upset about it.
Yesterday was the first time he was really, really upset because there is much going on in the team the last months.
I see you don't like him but don't spread false accustions please.

Hahaha, Max never complained during the Renault era? How can one support a driver so blindly to the point where they discard easily provable facts.

Ncncncnc

Not that it changes anything as I wont comment anything else about the matter here anymore. As I said, pointless to argue with people like you.

But for what its worth, I have been watching since 2006 and I was a Ferrari fan mainly until 2015.

When Alonso left Ferrari I found it hard to root for any team, but I have enjoyed seeing McLaren come back from the ashes I admit.

[Gillian]

I dont understand the fuss about "sudden" loss of performance. Much of the wins, where due to the opposition failing, great RB strategy and Verstappen driving exceptionally. Pace difference between cars has been small since start of season. The RB20 is just not what it should have been and it's unlikely to improve with small changes. It is still a race winning car and in a tight season like this enough to win WCC/WDC.

[Gillian]

Its how Max has always been, I dont see why anyone is surprised.

If you win races comfortably with little effort there is no reason to be upset, so nobody saw that side of him for a while.

He has proven to be a hypocrite a long time ago, doing the same things he criticizes other drivers for but expects different treatment when he does them himself.

.
You must be a new F1/McLaren fan because all those years Max drove with a Renault PU he had so much trouble with his car
and DNF's and often bad luck and he never was upset about it.
Yesterday was the first time he was really, really upset because there is much going on in the team the last months.
I see you don't like him but don't spread false accustions please.

Hahaha, Max never complained during the Renault era? How can one support a driver so blindly to the point where they discard easily provable facts.

Ncncncnc

Not that it changes anything as I wont comment anything else about the matter here anymore. As I said, pointless to argue with people like you.

But for what its worth, I have been watching since 2006 and I was a Ferrari fan mainly until 2015.

When Alonso left Ferrari I found it hard to root for any team, but I have enjoyed seeing McLaren come back from the ashes I admit.

Thats not what Wouter is saying. I don't like his swearing and outbursts, but I also cant remember it being this intense to its team. Even after all the DNFs due to engine troubles, he never let himself go this way. It feels to me like he is driving his last races for RB.

[Dee]

I'm starting to give more credibility for the Miami suspension nerf rumors. The contrast is too big between the two parts of the season. Max comfortably won all poles in early races and RB20 seemed even better than RB19.
Even if other teams improved, that does't explain the change in behaviour and driveability. See Perez performance.
Something must have happened.

They designed the car around certain suspension behaviour, and they are missing that piece now. This could have been RedBull's TD39.

Most probably even current upgrade package was planned months ago, assuming they still have that certain feature.

It is possible that now performance is simply limited by mechanics, so improving aero doesn't add usable gains.

You seemingly have decided to completely throw RB's performance in Australia out of the window...

Perez finished 56 seconds off the lead. Max was not happy at all with the car throughout the weekend.

The characteristics have always been there, but became prominent in circuits with more curbs and then Mclaren caught up.

[Paa]

I'm starting to give more credibility for the Miami suspension nerf rumors. The contrast is too big between the two parts of the season. Max comfortably won all poles in early races and RB20 seemed even better than RB19.
Even if other teams improved, that does't explain the change in behaviour and driveability. See Perez performance.
Something must have happened.

They designed the car around certain suspension behaviour, and they are missing that piece now. This could have been RedBull's TD39.

Most probably even current upgrade package was planned months ago, assuming they still have that certain feature.

It is possible that now performance is simply limited by mechanics, so improving aero doesn't add usable gains.

You seemingly have decided to completely throw RB's performance in Australia out of the window...

Perez finished 56 seconds off the lead. Max was not happy at all with the car throughout the weekend.

The characteristics have always been there, but became prominent in circuits with more curbs and then Mclaren caught up.

I don't think that a bad race from Perez is a strong argument here. I could list a handful of such races by Perez from 2023 when car was considered dominant.

[AR3-GP]

I'm starting to give more credibility for the Miami suspension nerf rumors. The contrast is too big between the two parts of the season. Max comfortably won all poles in early races and RB20 seemed even better than RB19.
Even if other teams improved, that does't explain the change in behaviour and driveability. See Perez performance.
Something must have happened.

They designed the car around certain suspension behaviour, and they are missing that piece now. This could have been RedBull's TD39.

Most probably even current upgrade package was planned months ago, assuming they still have that certain feature.

It is possible that now performance is simply limited by mechanics, so improving aero doesn't add usable gains.

The different car characteristics were there in the beginning of the season.

Bahrain - Stronger in qualifying pace compared to RB19, but more tire degradation.
Australia - Ferrari was as quick as Red Bull here. Perez awful tire deg.
Chinese GP - Undriveable in wet conditions, Max even spun out on a wet curb iirc (related to stiff suspension).
Japanese GP - streamlined shark mouths, and halo inlets, followed by relatively easy wins in Japan and China. These were earmarked as cooling updates which helped the car be more efficient.

Mclaren was around 4-6 tenths behind at that point with no updates. In Miami, Mclaren brought a 6 tenths update according to Stella. They overturned the gap. It's been harder for Red Bull to find as much performance as it is likely that they are hitting diminishing returns as well as being handicapped by less development time and the karting quality suspension.

Perez wasn't bad in Miami, the race where this theory suggest they were "nerfed". He qualified and finished P4.

The first questionable update was the floor edges in Imola. From there, Perez's performances went away and Max was really fighting to earn those poles. Imola, Monaco, and Canada were also bad tracks for the car. Max only got pole in Imola because of a tow. Monaco speaks for itself, jumping. Merc was much faster in Canada. Too many bumps and curbs for the RB20 to do well.

They simply haven't had an answer to the Miami update of the Mclaren which made them as good as Red Bull on Red Bull's best tracks, but without the weaknesses of the Red Bull on tracks with bumps and curbs. Red Bull already said multiple times that the suspension behavior was not predicted in the simulator. This is still a major limitation.

Also, it can't be a suspension nerf because it can't be Newey's fault. Red Bull is falling because Newey left, not because he was there... . On the other hand, maybe Newey quit when they wouldn't let him have his suspension .

Anyway, in case this is still not convinving, you just have to look at the behaviour of the VCARB to know that nothing has changed. That car had some of it's best results in Monaco, Imola, and Canada. Tsunoda did a 1 stop race in Hungary with no deg. If this supposed trick has carried Red Bull all this time, why have they not removed it from the VCARB which drives with the suspension of the RB19?

[Paa]

Ok, let's assume that nothing was nerfed.

Is it still possible that their performance is limited by mechanics? Previous years, their correlation was spot on, they put the upgrades and those worked as intended

Now, they just hope it will work and seemingly struggle to add performance or tune the car's characteristic to how they (Max) would like it. Somewhere the ball was dropped and now they look exactly like Merc in 2022-2023.

[AR3-GP]

Ok, let's assume that nothing was nerfed.

Is it still possible that their performance is limited by mechanics? Previous years, their correlation was spot on, they put the upgrades and those worked as intended

Now, they just hope it will work and seemingly struggle to add performance or tune the car's characteristic to how they (Max) would like it. Somewhere the ball was dropped and now they look exactly like Merc in 2022-2023.

They continued to evolve the RB19 suspension for the RB20, perhaps looking for more stiffness to maintain a smaller range of ground clearances for the aero map of the RB20. They probably traded a wider working window for more peak performance because that's what you do when your alternative is diminishing returns (Merc had this stiffness problem with the W13, but RB at least knew how to prevent porpoising). They tried to make that work. It seems to have backfired because the suspension doesn't behave like the simulations. In practice it is stiffer than expected. This is not a problem in high speed corners where they are often still the fastest, but it's a problem everywhere else (low speed, bumps, curbs).

It's not so easy to just "make it softer" within the season. Some of the forces are not going into the springs/torsion bars because of the high inclination angles of the control arms. They also would have developed the aero map around certain ground clearances so making it softer requires longer term planning for an aero map that supports it.

The car having a bit of understeer is something that they've chased since 2022. On it's own, it's not the end of the world. However, when you combine it with not being able to use curbs as much as others, and the increased tire degradation, there's just too many flaws to compensate for. With all of these problems, they are leading the championships and still close enough to win races. The RB21 will be the first opportunity to address the root causes.

If they lose the WCC, it will give them a better allocation of windtunnel time for 2025 and more importantly, 2026. The development limitations are unfair, but there is a small silver lining...a different team will get screwed the most during the most important time period for 2026 car design.

[Dunlay]

I'm starting to give more credibility for the Miami suspension nerf rumors. The contrast is too big between the two parts of the season. Max comfortably won all poles in early races and RB20 seemed even better than RB19.
Even if other teams improved, that does't explain the change in behaviour and driveability. See Perez performance.
Something must have happened.

They designed the car around certain suspension behaviour, and they are missing that piece now. This could have been RedBull's TD39.

Most probably even current upgrade package was planned months ago, assuming they still have that certain feature.

It is possible that now performance is simply limited by mechanics, so improving aero doesn't add usable gains.

I have started to believe exactly the same. These regulations (floor dependent) are all about stable mechanical platform under all conditions to aid floor performance and then comes the overall performance. Hence so much dependency on suspension. Whatever they change on aero makes near zero difference. That's what Mercedes kept saying about their zero pods. It was not their problem, but due to external pressure they needed to move away from it reluctantly. Miami after, RB20 is a different car and it's hard to believe it was not nerfed. It indeed appears to be Red Bull's TD039.

[FittingMechanics]

Strange that Red Bull got nerfed at the same time that McLaren brought a defacto 2.0 car in Miami.
Similar happened to other teams (Ferrari) who no longer can fight with McLaren.
Also strange that Mercedes gained performance later on (maybe unnerf?).

I am not serious, I am just trying to make a point that a simpler explanation is that McLaren brought a better car in Miami and that exposed Red Bull weaknesses. Without McLaren, you would have had a winning Red Bull in many races after Miami with Mercedes winning in a rain affected Silverstone.

Miami - VER P1
Imola - VER P1
Monaco - VER P4
Canada - VER P1
Spain - VER P1
Austria - VER P1
Silverstone - VER P2
Hungary - VER P1

There was no nerf. McLaren just brought a great car and started to challenge.

[Sergej]

what is strange about this nerfed suspension theory, is that, was it true, after almost 3 months you would hear much more people talking about it, not to mention Zak! I mean he hates Red Bull like hell, I don't think he would be quiet about this knowing that most of the gap Max/Red Bull gained over Lando/McLaren was made with a supposed illegal component

instead there are very few (questionable) sources that spoke about it, last Antonio Lobato (Spanish TV commentator) who is known for make up things; let's see if in the coming weeks this theory gets some more supporters.