Red Bull RB9 Renault

[raymondu999]

Why does it need to be altered for each track? Perhaps the benefit they have is minor enough to be consistent and effective on any long straight. Hence that's why they blow the beam wing only. It would make more sense to have a smaller gain you know works everywhere, than a huge gain you continually have to fiddle with to make it work.

Altered, because the maximum cornering speed at, say, Monza is different to that of Suzuka. You could allow the blowing to start a lot earlier in a track like Monza, whereas doing that at Suzuka will cause you to have an unbalanced car.

[Cam]

I'm not so sure. Yes, you can get better gains by tuning it, however all that time and effort may not actually get a good result, plus the time taken to fine tune wastes other setup time. You could end up chasing your tail, or step back a notch in performance and nail it every time. I guess everyone has their own thoughts about seeking performance and what is achievable vs cost.

[raymondu999]

Trackside impressions by Gary Anderson, from the latest edition of Autosport:

It’s hard to conclude anything other than Red Bull was running a lot of fuel for much of the test. The car seems to have a lot of grip, the drivers can get back on the throttle and the rear doesn’t step out like it does with the other cars. There is a bit of understeer and with Mark Webber, in particular, if he braked just a metre later the front end would wash out. This didn’t happen with Vettel.

[Cam]

Would that washout he down to webbers setup or driving style?

[raymondu999]

Hard to tell IMO. There are times when Webber is prone to slightly braking too hard in a trail braking phase. IMO he often does this in Hockenheim, thus asking too much of the fronts and overloading them. It could be a driving style thing, it could be upgrades or setup.

[Juzh]

Trackside impressions by Gary Anderson, from the latest edition of Autosport:

It’s hard to conclude anything other than Red Bull was running a lot of fuel for much of the test. The car seems to have a lot of grip, the drivers can get back on the throttle and the rear doesn’t step out like it does with the other cars.

This is actually consistent with red bull/mclaren comparison from late last year. Red bull would have better low speed aero in sector 3 in usa, whereas mclaren was exceling in high speed curves trought sector 1. There is no serious high speed corners in Jerez so I think mclaren will handle itself much better in Barcelona if the car is fairly sorted out. I'm expecting Red bull to be the fastest even trough high speed imo; to much new stuff on mclaren to be working in harmony right off the bat.

[stefan_]

Craig Scarborough ‏@ScarbsF1
Nose Slots: Red Bull copied Saubers idea to duct flow from below to over the nose to improve flow above & below

[amouzouris]

Regarding the S-Duct here is my analysis:

In the past two years Red Bull have been utilising holes around the nose of the monocoque. In 2011, said hole was placed at the bottom of the nose to cool the electronics and reduce the boundary layer development. Something which they also did last year while also adding the so called letter-box hole at the top of the nose. Its purpose, largely, was to overcome the issues of the stepped nose and cool the driver. This year however they have copied an innovation seen on last year’s Sauber. The, so called, S-Duct.







This year both Sauber and Red Bull have adopted this solution. Both teams decided to not to completely cover the stepped noses with a modesty panel and instead use a smaller modesty fairing. A decision which, according to Adrian Newey, saves weight. Keeping the stepped nose though, means that the problem of keeping the airflow on top of the monocoque attached remains. In addition there is high pressure generated at the bottom of the nose because of its height. Red Bull has kept the hole under the nose and by ducting airflow using an s-shaped duct, it exits facing rearwards on top of the nose.



The lower slot relieves some of the high pressure and the boundary layer build-up at the bottom of the nose, bleeding some of the high pressure on top of the nose which in turn keeps the airflow attached behind the step of the nose and prevents the build up of a thick boundary layer on top of the monocoque.

Below the flow trajectories on the top and the bottom of th enose without the s-duct are illustrated. Note the 3rd and last picture where you can see the formation of the thick boundary layer.







http://technicalf1explained.blogspot.co ... -duct.html

[Rikhart]

Im surprised the sauber slot hasn´t been more widely copied, it kills two birds with one stone, and seems very easy to implement.

[ringo]

amouzourous give us a velocity plot.
The a cut plot with velocity as well,

[sidepot]

Trackside impressions by Gary Anderson, from the latest edition of Autosport:

It’s hard to conclude anything other than Red Bull was running a lot of fuel for much of the test. The car seems to have a lot of grip, the drivers can get back on the throttle and the rear doesn’t step out like it does with the other cars. There is a bit of understeer and with Mark Webber, in particular, if he braked just a metre later the front end would wash out. This didn’t happen with Vettel.

I remember reading somewhere that Vettel tends to adopt a 'slow in, fast out' approach to cornering whereas Webber has a more aggressive corner entry but slightly slower exit.

[raymondu999]

While that is a possibility - I'm not too sure. There was a piece a while back where Vettel said he got a lot of his laptime on entries while Mark nailed his laptime on exits. I'll try to look for it if I can.

Also - it doesn't tally with what a lot of people were noticing about Mark in 2010 - before the exhaust overrun stuff was in action, Mark would take extremely late apexes in order to be on the power very early, maximising his on-throttle time and thus gaining more exhaust downforce over the lap then Vettel. Mind you - Vettel sort of one-upped that in the end by using a bit of oversteer to spike the car into the corners before getting on the throttle hard and squashing the slide with his exhaust-driven downforce.

[Yurasyk]

Im surprised the sauber slot hasn´t been more widely copied, it kills two birds with one stone, and seems very easy to implement.

I guess it depend on presence of nose cone step and doesn't give significant advantage without step. So commands prefered straight and high nose cones.

[Diosfenix]

[Forza]

F1 test T02 - Barcelona - Day 1