Red Bull RB6

[djos]

Any damage or cracks around that area are more likely stone damage going by the plowed field on the rear tyre.

Exactly, this is what happens when an F1 exhaust cracks inside the body work:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNM7JDtross[/youtube]

[D'Leh]

What rubbish, if there really was a crack in the exhaust there would be burn damage and the car would have prolly not made it home!

This is how the remainders of a car with a broken exhaust look like.

(Kimi's Ferrari after the French GP 2008)

[i70q7m7ghw]

What rubbish, if there really was a crack in the exhaust there would be burn damage and the car would have prolly not made it home!

This is how the remainders of a car with a broken exhaust look like.

(Kimi's Ferrari after the French GP 2008)

That was very different, that exhaust broke lose and was flapping about doing all sorts of damage until it eventually broke off.

On the RB we are talking about a crack close to the exit...

[Hangaku]

What rubbish, if there really was a crack in the exhaust there would be burn damage and the car would have prolly not made it home!

Quite possibly, but that still leaves this image unexplained. How and why is there a big chunk of the car missing at the yellow arrow, and why does there appear to be a large stress crack where the red arrow is pointing to?

The said, there does appear to be rivet holes around where the slice of carbon fibre is missing, perhaps indicating that a plate or cover of some description is missing.

[raymondu999]

Is it just the perspective of the shot, or does it look like the floor is actually scraping the rear tyres?

[Raptor22]

Spark plug is a red herring imo

from parc ferme:

Sorry but I don't know what you're on about.
The yellow arrow points to a hole where the suspension enters the body work and there does not appear to be any damage there.
the Red arrow points to what looks like an externally applied load that resulted in a crack to body work. This could have occured at a pits stop. it is not indcative of heat damage.

[segedunum]

I have no idea what Ted Kravitz at the BBC was pointing at. I stared long and hard at that exhaust opening and couldn't see any signs of heat damage.

[i70q7m7ghw]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsp ... 567029.stm

Look at the hole, it's got an uneven edge and is definately not how it is supposed to be.

After reviewing the video I am not sure, that particular damage might have been caused by the wishbone clashing with the bodywork under heavy load.

Martin Brundle: "it seemed game on for a grand finale until Vettel suffered what sounded very much like a broken exhaust pipe, but was later described by the team as a failed spark plug."

I think he has enough experience to know what a broken exhaust sounds like. Even he doesn't appear to buy in to the spark plug story.

[Pandamasque]

Erm... I'm confused.

Where IS the exhaust?! These 2 pics show completely different layouts.



The Barcelona-spec exhaust hole is closed in Bahrain. Then there's a wacky flattened pipe sticking out of the hole where the suspension goes (yellow arrow), plus another opening on the right (barely visible behind the wheel).

[autogyro]

Here is a guess that is probably so far from the truth to be laughable.

Adrian Newey has been doing some demon pipe bending to make the powertrain bay of the RB6 more compact and to exit the exhaust in a better place for aero reasons.

This has caused an unpredicted exhaust back pressure or pulse that has put undue load on the combustion chamber during scavenge, resulting in the plugs running to hot. In other words the plugs are to soft for the altered combustion chamber heat.

[segedunum]

That hole, whatever it is, shows no signs of any exhaust breakage.

If there was a broken exhaust then you'd have hot gases burning all and sundry, especially with the layout Red Bull have, but nothing like that happened.

[Giblet]

That hole looks to me like it might be where the suspension mounting would be if it was up higher. As in the beginning of the race. As in maybe we are looking at the results of the suspension being adjusted for ride height.

Big maybe, but maybe?

That would be nifty if I was able to extrapolate that from the picture. It would make me feel kinda smart for a day or so.

[autogyro]

That hole looks to me like it might be where the suspension mounting would be if it was up higher. As in the beginning of the race. As in maybe we are looking at the results of the suspension being adjusted for ride height.

Big maybe, but maybe?

That would be nifty if I was able to extrapolate that from the picture. It would make me feel kinda smart for a day or so.

You could be onto something here Giblet. Perhaps there is a clever piece of geometry under that plate and perhaps having it required moving the exhaust which in turn resulted in the plug problem.
Hmmm feels good hahaha

[Giblet]

If there is a close up pic of the front suspension after the race, we could look for similar openings.

The only problem with my logic is that the hole should be on the lower side of the rod at the end of the race, unless they readjusted it for park ferme

[forty-two]

unless they readjusted it for park ferme

Ooh, you cynical thing!

But now I come to think about it.... it's not beyond the realms of possibilities that the "adjustment" could be wound back during the final in-lap I suppose, but that would surely be illegal if the DRIVER was operating it.

Would there be anything to prevent such a system from having some form of heat-dependent component which when the car has cooled down for a bit would spring the car back up after having wound down throughout the race distance?

From memory, Ted Kravitz went to Park Ferme some time AFTER the end of the race.