Can Red Bull be copied in 2010?

[marcush.]

reality is Red Bull are mere mortals ,and Vettel did not look very convincing in Montecarlo or was it Monaco with kubica right on his tail for the whole race.There was no
advantantage for Seb .If it were tyre issues ,Red Bull was unable to get the most out of the package for a lot of races now...and one day both drivers will be unable to exploit the potential.
If they did not realise that it was the tub that was damaged it just shows how fragile this advantage is..

[D'Leh]

Adrian is a true genius in one main thing. He chooses that one correct start point and lives the design up from that. His upgrades are simply the logical and pre planned continuation of this process.

Yeah, he is not the only guy to come up with new ideas. But he has a history of creating a working concept. His concepts often keep their general shape for a long time. From March to Williams it looked rather similar.

He made a big change to a high nose during his Williams time and it worked. I think it was the first high-nosed championship in modern F1 to clinch the title.

His McLaren designs were similar for quite some years until the infamous MP4-19. They featured interesting stuff like the steered brakes and the first incarnation of KERS. But Newey also stuck to blown diffusors longer than any other top team if I'm not mistaken.

Then he started a new idea more or less with the MP4-19B which he followed all the way to the RB4. McLaren even kept it after he left. Despite not winning any championships under Newey it was a fast concept still. One could say Hamilton's glory run was based on a Newey design philosophy.

And now he has a new concept which was fast from the start. There is a new effect helping him too. Testing and budgets have been restricted quite heavily. That makes it a lot harder to copy his ideas compared to the past. Those limits put a lot of weight on designers' skills. With good ideas and superior decision making you can now build cars that are hard to catch up.

[segedunum]

No, the Red Bull cannot be copied this season, which is why other teams have started to go into a bit of denial with a flurry of soundbites to the media - "Red Bull will be slower at Monaco", "We're faster in the race", "We hope they make mistakes", "We can catch up".

No, they can't copy the Red Bull rear end. It would mean chopping the back end off their current cars and ditching all of it, and we should all be bright enough around here to know that every component on a F1 car is dependent on others which means a new front-end would have to be designed to make the whole thing work. Yep, that's right, everyone would have to design a completely new car. It's not going to happen.

A pull-rod suspension rear end is completely different to what other teams have currently, and creating exhaust driven diffusers has implications for packaging, cooling and a wide range of other issues. You'd probably have to go through a pain period of unreliability as well. Even if you could introduce a new car you're talking about months or even years of work reverse engineering what you think Red Bull are doing so you can understand your own new car. Simply blowing exhaust gas into a diffuser is not going to be good enough and remember that this is a pet project of Newey's that has been running for a very long time.

To be honest, if I were the other rival teams I'd be concentrating on next year now. A number of them built cars this year based on creating a large amount of downforce from having the largest double diffuser they could fit. The RB6 has shown that philosophy to be nonsense really and I suspect that when the double diffuser is taken away next year they will be even further behind relative to Red Bull without even doing anything. It also means that Red Bull can evolve their proven concepts into next year's car whilst everyone else will have to do something revolutionary to keep pace at all.

I'm afraid we are talking about something that could take teams another couple of years to catch up to. There is absolutely no way it will happen this season.

[mkay]

No, the Red Bull cannot be copied this season, which is why other teams have started to go into a bit of denial with a flurry of soundbites to the media - "Red Bull will be slower at Monaco", "We're faster in the race", "We hope they make mistakes", "We can catch up".

No, they can't copy the Red Bull rear end. It would mean chopping the back end off their current cars and ditching all of it, and we should all be bright enough around here to know that every component on a F1 car is dependent on others which means a new front-end would have to be designed to make the whole thing work. Yep, that's right, everyone would have to design a completely new car. It's not going to happen.

A pull-rod suspension rear end is completely different to what other teams have currently, and creating exhaust driven diffusers has implications for packaging, cooling and a wide range of other issues. You'd probably have to go through a pain period of unreliability as well. Even if you could introduce a new car you're talking about months or even years of work reverse engineering what you think Red Bull are doing so you can understand your own new car. Simply blowing exhaust gas into a diffuser is not going to be good enough and remember that this is a pet project of Newey's that has been running for a very long time.

To be honest, if I were the other rival teams I'd be concentrating on next year now. A number of them built cars this year based on creating a large amount of downforce from having the largest double diffuser they could fit. The RB6 has shown that philosophy to be nonsense really and I suspect that when the double diffuser is taken away next year they will be even further behind relative to Red Bull without even doing anything. It also means that Red Bull can evolve their proven concepts into next year's car whilst everyone else will have to do something revolutionary to keep pace at all.

I'm afraid we are talking about something that could take teams another couple of years to catch up to. There is absolutely no way it will happen this season.

No. I totally disagree. Once teams change their suspension to pullrod, it is going to facilitate the process. It's not like Red Bull's car is revolutionary. Most of Red Bull's advantage is over 1 lap, suggesting that it works its tires better than anyone else. Now, they may have the same advantage over race distance but they can't display it because they either fear that the car will break if they push too much or that they risk excessive tyre wear.

[segedunum]

Once teams change their suspension to pullrod, it is going to facilitate the process.

You say that like it's easy. Teams currently have a plethora if interdependent parts back there.

It's not like Red Bull's car is revolutionary. Most of Red Bull's advantage is over 1 lap, suggesting that it works its tires better than anyone else.

Red Bull still have yet to get a handle on what they can take out of their tyres during a race and get a setup for it. Webber could easily have been half a minute or more down the road in Barcelona and even further in Monaco so all this 'race pace' stuff is nonsense really, and just a bit of straw clutching.

Now, they may have the same advantage over race distance but they can't display it because they either fear that the car will break if they push too much or that they risk excessive tyre wear.

They will go through that pain barrier and be faster in races once they get a handle on it. Other teams will have to go through the pain barrier of gaining performance and doing exactly the same thing.

Whatever way you cut it, this is an advantage that will stay for some time.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Mercedes and McLaren have closed quite markedly over the last 2 weeks.
They appear to be doing "their own thing" rather than just copy Red Bull.

However I think Segedunum is right in saying the race pace argument is quite weak.
Hamilton is 0.150 seconds a lap slower today, so by many peoples reckoning will either be with Webber at the end of the race or even faster than him.

I dont think this to be the case at all, and barring a slip up by Webber in the first 3 laps allowing Hamilton to use the F-duct to its full potential, Then I see Red Bull demonstrating its race pace with the Aussie.

We then also have the question mark on reliabilty and wether the Bull can hold together like it has in the last 2 races.

Perhaps we will see other adopt pullrod this year, only then can we see when these ideas filter to other teams wether this is Red Bulls advantage or not.

[PlatinumZealot]

We have seen time and time again when things get copied they do not always work. One of the biggest problems of trying to reverse engineer an F1 development is that the science is never truly understood. It is not always possible to get to an endpoint without making many wrong turns/failures with each failure contributing to the end-product.

I would say no. It is not possible to copy the RBR car. You may end up with something that looks like the RBR but it won't perform like it.

Looking like something will still get you half way there! It is up to the engineers to test and analyse their imitation part. I don't know why you said no it can't work at the end. It is possible. So many good examples of reverse engineering by copying; the F-duct is one. The Imitations may not work 100% right away but the turnover time is really fast compared to designing from scratch.

If a rival team took a 3D laser scanner and scanned the whole of the RedBull 6's aerodynamics; under the car, everything 98% accuracy, that would be a huge help. You have the all the main dimensions so you don't even have to derive them by your self because all the work was done by Newey already. You just literally copy it, model it and the aerodynamics will work, because you have the same exact dimensions. The mechanical part is another story though.

Here some thing interesting. Hamilton begs his engineers to copy the RB6!

Lewis Hamilton has urged his team to copy the complex aerodynamic tweaks implemented by the Red Bull engineers on their RB6 this year. According to the 2008 F1 champion, and probably the entire field we might add, the car developed by the Milton Keynes based team is clearly the one to beat, so copying the efficient solutions found by Red Bull is a must for the races to come.

“The RB6 has many good, detailed solutions. I have already told my engineers that we must copy them,” said the British champion in an interview with Germany's Sport Bild.

[marcush.]

years is totally out of perspective ,with the development speed in F1 the advantage could be months at best and of course the best design will converge now slower to the optimum ,as performance cannot be grown on trees and be just added on and on,there is a rule of diminishing returns and this is also true for Newey .
To think others would not understand what he is doing is really underestimating those boffins.
the problem is more to make them accept that this RB6 is the best solution and drop their own RBR6 beater concept in favour of developing a Newey based concept..

As we have seen ,the tub front cross sections have already adopted neweys thinking .but obviously this is not the bit that sets the difference in performance,as the second best car is rather conventionallly designed with regrad to crosssection in
the split area to the nosecone.See HRT with the worst car and v shaped tub...

[ringo]

Williams and another team will copy redbull exhaust for canada i think. Can't remember the second team but i think it's ferrari?

[marcush.]

the question now is really should someone copy Red Bull?
To me they really work hard on destroying their championship assault with weird team strategies..even if that was to be only rumours but having someone like Dr.Marko in the team who has more than once shown that he has hm, selective perception it seems they are the ones who want to see Vettel take the title...
History has shown more than once that this sort of no No 1 driver politics officially but a No 1 of hearts is a minefield better to be avoided...

back on topic ,Mclaren clearly has shown in Turkey there was no advantage for RBR come race day.They only need to find something to improve their 1 lap pace in Q3 to make life even harder for RedBull...
Lets see if RBR will get lost in their interpretetion of f-ducts as well....Canada is made for the Mac...isn´t it ..so RBR will concentrate on f instead of B(rakes..)...

[segedunum]

Any Tom, Dick or Harry can redirect exhaust gases in and around the diffuser (Newey's done it for years), but the real trick to the Red Bull is how they're doing it and what effect it has. I think they're using a complex set of pressure differences to really make it work.

However, I don't think that's where the performance difference really is and teams would be wise to think about it before irrationally copying something. We've seen it with the F-duct which isn't going to give a lot of performance over the majority of tracks we have left, we've seen it with this ride height suspension that's gone by the wayside and there has been assumptions this season about having a large diffuser with all kinds of holes in it which now seems to have fallen by the wayside with the Red Bull's performance.

The F-duct on the McLaren has certainly helped them today and will help them in Canada, but all the other teams are still missing a huge amount of downforce and that doesn't go away at one track. People said exactly the same thing about Monaco. The movement under braking of the McLaren compared to the Red Bull was bizarre. The only thing I question with Red Bull is whether they have the drivers, but that's another story...........

[ringo]

Any Tom, Dick or Harry can redirect exhaust gases in and around the diffuser (Newey's done it for years), but the real trick to the Red Bull is how they're doing it and what effect it has. I think they're using a complex set of pressure differences to really make it work.

However, I don't think that's where the performance difference really is and teams would be wise to think about it before irrationally copying something. We've seen it with the F-duct which isn't going to give a lot of performance over the majority of tracks we have left, we've seen it with this ride height suspension that's gone by the wayside and there has been assumptions this season about having a large diffuser with all kinds of holes in it which now seems to have fallen by the wayside with the Red Bull's performance.

The F-duct on the McLaren has certainly helped them today and will help them in Canada, but all the other teams are still missing a huge amount of downforce and that doesn't go away at one track. People said exactly the same thing about Monaco. The movement under braking of the McLaren compared to the Red Bull was bizarre. The only thing I question with Red Bull is whether they have the drivers, but that's another story...........

I agree that the performance difference is not in the exhausts.

What i can say about the pressure differences and the design of the system, is it's not so difficult, given time. Geometry is most important here, seeing as though the engine's exhaust gas characteristics are set in stone.
Setting the distance of muffler to diffuser right, proper diameter of orifice in the diffuser, proper ramp angle in diffuser, other vanes and what not. All these things can be investigated, and probably have been in the pipe line from February.
The copies will definitely work, the question is how well will it, and can it work in sync with the rest of the car.

What i would like to see are copies of smoother, steeper engine covers and mail box holes in the back.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

I think the low exhaust exit is a benefit.

Why do it other wise? And AFAIK they are the only ones in the pitlane with it.
Ferrari are apparently 3 weeks away from having their own, and have used their vast resources to do so above anything else, Fduct included.

So I think this is a performance differentiator, dont know how much of one though.
Any ideas as to why the Bulls where the only team to go flat out round turn 8, a turn that requires huge rear grip?

[Paul]

Isn't front end grip crucial there? I would think their front wing works well at high speed, or their diffuser creates downforce further upfront than other teams'. Considering Renault were also fast through turn 8, I would look for similarities between them. For example, complex front wing.

[ringo]

The redbull body shape is the secret. The body is what 60% of the downforce?
The body wont be easy to copy. Especially the rake relative to the top surface. The only thing on the body that can be copied is engine cover.

On that note, Ferrari should have an advantage in terms of copying red bull the closest.
Their car is very simple looking and can easily take on the shape of the red bull. Their suspension and ride characteristics are already very similar, and ferrari have a strong engine to boot.
Looking down the line, i can see ferrari coming back into the game ahead of Mclaren, ie if mclaren don't get the downforce.