Just_a_fan wrote: ↑01 Aug 2024, 17:43
It's not about ultimate braking, it's about rotating the car. And if one were using the brakes for the latter, it might impact the former to a degree. And we know that Red Bull has gone from rotating like a top for Max to him complaining of understeer on several occasions.
Verstappen has been complaining about understeer in this new generation of ground effect cars since 2022. Especially in low speed corners with the Red Bull. It's one of many reasons why they were always weaker at low speed circuits than high speed circuits. This issue didn't suddenly appear this season. I watch a lot of his onboards. This car does not rotate as well as other cars. It never has. A car using this system wouldn't have this problem.
Just_a_fan wrote: ↑01 Aug 2024, 17:43
And everyone else has caught Red Bull but Red Bull have started to struggle. If the rule change affects the other teams and not Red Bull, that means Red Bull must have really messed up somewhere else. Which is, frankly, unlikely.
There are areas where Red Bull have been caught sleeping in these regulations. The first of those would be the flexing front wings. What you find "unlikely" has already been observed. Red Bull do miss things.
To me it doesn't seem like you are using any specific observation or fact to draw your conclusion about Red Bull. A sound argument would point to the fact that a car that was using this kind of system would have been strong in brake zones and slow corners especially, where ground effect cars are known to suffer from understeer. These two things have been Red Bull's main weaknesses since 2022. There strength was always high speed corners where there is no braking at all.
David Coutlhard talked about how a system like this worked in the article that I shared:
“We had to learn how to work with it, because you had to accelerate while you braked, otherwise you just locked the wheel. You could feel it was an advantage, because it yawed the car. So instead of riding over the front tyre, you could rotate the car without having to put steering lock on.
“And steering lock affects the aerodynamics quite a lot, so there was an advantage aerodynamically in having that. We could use it also to control a bit of wheel-spin on the inside wheel, coming out of tight corners. Independently Mika and I both worked that out. The theory had been proven in tanks and things like that, but actually doing it at speed out on the track was always going to be a bit different!”
Mclaren already ran this system in 97/98 which is a reasonable grounds for an unbiased person to suspect them. Furthermore, slow corners used to be the weakness of Mclaren. Now it is their strength. A possible clue? Certainly more reasonable conclusion than all of the evidence that doesn't support Red Bull being the problem. They are much stronger than Red Bull in slow corners which is exactly where braking would be observed and where this system would maximized, not the high speed corners where Red Bull is strongest.
When he said you needed to use the throttle while braking, the antennae on my head perked up because there's only 1 team in particular where I have seen this happening for a long time, and made several comments over the years about it. Ferrari. Both Leclerc and Sainz do this often. In contrast, Verstappen and Perez never blend throttle and brake in telemetry traces.
Of course this is not conclusive proof that it is Ferrari, because they could also do this to change the differential behaviour, but certainly it is more reasonable to suspect a team whose data imitates prior descriptions of the system, than one whose car possesses none of the strengths that such a system would provide.
tldr, You would only suspect a team that was good in slow corners and braking of using this system. Red Bull is not good in any of those types of corners and has not been since 2022. Mclaren/Ferrari/Mercedes are the more likely suspects if you simply look at telemetry and strengths and weaknesses of the various cars. At the current time I can't identify a specific team, although I would like to note that Mclaren's sudden progress in low speed corners is curious. In prior seasons it was their weakness. Now it is their strength.
A lion must kill its prey.
