Manoah2u wrote: ↑13 Apr 2017, 09:24
SR71 wrote: ↑13 Apr 2017, 00:21
henry wrote: ↑12 Apr 2017, 23:05
You missed out "mends budgies broken wings"
Seriously SR71 the benchmark for the last 3 years has been Mercedes managing the complexities of aero, chassis and powertrain to achieve complete dominance. Right now Red Bull are behind in the two areas over which they have total control. We will see if they can retrieve the situation.
Of course you can look at the low hanging fruit and say Merc are the benchmark. In performance yes. Are they the Benchmark team?
Well, some will say yes. I say no. That's RB. Holistically RB represent F1 more than Merc does - they bring more to the sport in promotion, doing events on mountians and beaches and everwhere in between. Vettel/Ricciardo/Max/Sainz? Any team can purchase a top driver or provide basic support like merc or ferrari does, but still not on RB's level.
The fact they are throwing money at a B-Spec/New car this soon after winter testing is amazing. The enormous costs and human resource challenge, that's what F1 is about. Trying your absolute hardest and blowing a fortune in doing so. When was the last time we saw this happen? Newey was involved on that one too? That guy's committed.
Let's see how Merc handles the few years after their dominance ends... My money is they throw their toys a lot farther than RB did.
And I didnt mean to start a this team - that team debate.
I only meant to appreciate the shear enormity of a team developing a 2nd car in a single season.
if you think RB is able to pop up a totally new car after the spain tests in just 2 months time, you have no idea how F1 works.
RB has had this car in the pipeline since last year, as a B-option (not b-spec) IF they can't run the idea they had for this car; that is, based upon a suspension philosophy. The suspension (fric-like) has been banned, and it affects them (and arguably mercedes too, as their lead on the competition has almost disappeared) just as well.
This car is probably a compromise, and they use data from this car to put into the 'other spec'. which was possibly put on a sideline until spain/australia.
They have made calculations and did the math that persueing this car's development is a no-go, so they'll go to the other car instead, offcourse that car has been in development before, and if it's ever really put on hold, continued on since spain testing. They already have a competitor that is able to run rather at the top 6 so they can continue development on the RB13 version 2 (not b-spec), perhaps even the RB14, untill they are guaranteed it's good enough to immediately put it in a winning position.
For example, if it's at a level right now where it will be able to battle for p3 and p4, but not on p1 or p2 on it's own, then why do all the hassle when your current RB13 is able to go for P3 and P4 with a little tactical work and some luck? Knowing that all your recourses will make it possible to jump from p5 and p6 to p1 and p2 by just extending the development just a tiny bit more.
I have no clue whether RB's talks are real, but if we look at how close Ferrari has got to Mercedes, and how 'backwards' Mercedes has gotten due to the suspension alone, and RB is still rather close to them - after all just look at their results last 2 races, then i think it's definately possible RB is able to jump Ferrari and battle Mercedes on 'the car alone' - which means, they aren't depending on tactics, changing weather conditions, and bad luck from Mercedes and Ferrari (tactical errors, tire wear, technical issues, driver error) to get atleast on the podium or possibly a P1 finish.
In other words, RB are confident they'll manage to do P1 in Qually and P1 in race when they replace the RB13 for the RB13.2 or RB14.
that's how i read it.
whether that's actually going to happen, is another story since we don't know what Mercedes is cooking up (Nor Ferrari for that matter).
