Red Bull RB11 Renault

[Raleigh]

Monaco is more about mechanical grip and traction than aero efficiency.

With Newey stepping back and Prodomou gone Red Bull's aero department seems to have lost their way a bit, at any rate Red Bull has not made as big a year-on-year aero gain as some of their rivals. They are definitely behind Mercedes and Ferrari in this regard now, possibly even Williams.

[Moose]

Monaco is more about mechanical grip and traction than aero efficiency.

With Newey stepping back and Prodomou gone Red Bull's aero department seems to have lost their way a bit, at any rate Red Bull has not made as big a year-on-year aero gain as some of their rivals. They are definitely behind Mercedes and Ferrari in this regard now, possibly even Williams.

Honestly, I think to say that this is all on Newey and Prodomou going is a bit harsh. Mercedes had already caught up (or even overtaken) aerodynamically in 2013. They just hadn't sorted the mechanical grip.

[Juzh]

Honestly, I think to say that this is all on Newey and Prodomou going is a bit harsh. Mercedes had already caught up (or even overtaken) aerodynamically in 2013. They just hadn't sorted the mechanical grip.

In the first half they were better, then RB overtook them completely. Also, if anything, merc had much better mechanical grip than RB (early season, up to spa).

[GPR-A duplicate2]

Honestly, I think to say that this is all on Newey and Prodomou going is a bit harsh. Mercedes had already caught up (or even overtaken) aerodynamically in 2013. They just hadn't sorted the mechanical grip.

In the first half they were better, then RB overtook them completely. Also, if anything, merc had much better mechanical grip than RB (early season, up to spa).

You also need to consider the importance of change of tyres mid season, which enabled RB to move ahead of everyone. They had some trick in the way they had designed their car that suited the change of tires much better than anyone else. They were vocal in opposing the tyres that were brought in 2013 and forced PIRELLI to change them. Change they did and RB dominated from there.

[ringo]

I war reviewing the results of the Canadian qualification times and compared them with last years times. Only 2 teams had slower time this year than last year and one of them is Red Bull by 0.3s. The other one is McLaren by 0.1s.

I think it is safe to say, that it is not only the engine that is the problem... or is it? Toro Rosso was only 0.1s faster than last year, Lotus that made a switch to Mercedes this year was 1.5s faster...

So I went and compared Monaco qualifying where engine is not as important and Red Bull had the least faster time of all the teams exept Marussia that was slower this year.

So what was my conclusion of all this?
The engine is bad, but the chassis is not so good as one would expect from Red Bull either.

Cars are also heavier and tyres are harder remember?

[R_Redding]

Cars are also heavier and tyres are harder remember?

And the aero changes to the nose have had a large impact , both in how the front wing worked and how the changes affect air passing to the rear.
Ferarri and Mercedes may have been least affected as they were already very close to the design the rule change demanded.

Rob

[Juzh]

Honestly, I think to say that this is all on Newey and Prodomou going is a bit harsh. Mercedes had already caught up (or even overtaken) aerodynamically in 2013. They just hadn't sorted the mechanical grip.

In the first half they were better, then RB overtook them completely. Also, if anything, merc had much better mechanical grip than RB (early season, up to spa).

You also need to consider the importance of change of tyres mid season, which enabled RB to move ahead of everyone. They had some trick in the way they had designed their car that suited the change of tires much better than anyone else. They were vocal in opposing the tyres that were brought in 2013 and forced PIRELLI to change them. Change they did and RB dominated from there.

Pirelli forced tyre change upon themselves with the blowout fiasco at the british gp. RB had little to do with it. Lotus, FI and ferrari continuously blocked changes until then.
But yeah, RB did profit significantly with the change.

[turbof1]

The chassis, or rather the aero platform, isn't that great either. A big clue was dropped when they swapped front wing philosophy. The new wing sacrifices downforce producing surface for more airflow control. This is an indication the total aero packaging is not working as cfd and windtunnel simulations suggested.

I don't want to venture to deep into this discussion because it involves staff and employees, essential a discussion belonging in the team thread. However, my opinion is that the absence of Peter Prodromou is at the base. Cfd and windtunnel are only simulations and no matter how advanced those tools are at Red Bull, those are still fairly often not correlating back to real situations. That's where a talented, experienced and outright intelligent engineer comes in, someone to translate the whole steady-state ordeal to unsteady analysis.

So why Peter? Just a hunch and looking to patterns, so I could be wrong. But the aero platform definitely is from Peter since he brought it to mclaren, who more less brought a slimmed down Red Bull! On the other hand Red Bull made changes to the aero platform with different engineers, but who can't get it to properly work.

It took Ferrari several years to get the right person for this. I hope Red Bull does it in less.

I can't point to what's exactly going wrong. The change of front wing suggest it has to with tyre wake. Which is saying as much as "they have issue or issues somewhere at the front. Yeah somewhere. At the front. Probably."

[f1316]

I wrote about this somewhere else on this forum but it really does seem that the nose regulation change has affected teams a lot more than seemed immediately obvious.

As I said elsewhere, Perez said this year's FI was 0.8s slower than last year's in testing and Williams said that it took them a long time to claw back the lost downforce caused by the lower nose.

This from Horner seems to confirm RB are similarly affected:

"We still have a weakness in the slow-speed corners compared to the characteristics of last year's car, and the nose regulation changes are what affected us in that area."

It would lead one to believe that those who had very good airflow to the rear last year have had their aero philosophy most compromised; again, as also mentioned elsewhere, Ferrari's relative improvement may owe much to them already having a low nose philosophy.

[Samraj_official]

all teams must have used the low nose at first place....in order to have avoided this years unwanted low nose regulations that have nothing to do in speeding the car rather slowing it down...like F1's past is its Peak

[Emmcee]

Atleast there not using those horrid noses from last year. Like on the force India and the hidious lotus.

[Samraj_official]

This is a bit of a shock,
RED BULL TO TAKE FERRARI ENGINES FROM 2017 from Tj13

The current agreement for Renault to supply F1 engines to both Red Bull and Toro Rosso concludes at the end of 2016.

What has been astonishing is that despite the recent domination of this chassis/engine partnership, Dietrich Mateschitz has sanctioned repeated brutal public attacks by his lieutenants on their F1 engine partner. This war of words is now in its second year.

Since entering F1 in 1977, Renault have been the more successful than any other engine supplier of their era and of course powered RBR to four consecutive constructor and driver world titles.

Yet despite all this, Red Bull have their eyes on a new lover and it seems the divorce with Renualt is now being finalised.

Rumours are circulating that a number of meetings took place during the Canadian GP weekend where the option for Red Bull and Toro Rosso to become Ferrari engine customers in 2017 was discussed in detail.

Toro Rosso would like Sauber and Manor before them, take a ‘B’ grade engine that is around 25-35 BHP less than that Ferrari would provide for themselves and the Red Bull team.

The price of a Ferrari customer engine is believed to be in the region of 18 million euros per annum.

Helmet Marko has allegedly commented, that using a ‘B’ version of the Ferrari power unit would still be more powerful than the ‘A’ version from Renault.

The cudgel blows continue to rain down on the French F1 engine manufacturer.

If we look at the qualifying gaps between the lead Red Bull and the lead Ferrari, we see that over the first seven races of the 2015 the deficit for Red Bull averages 0.905 seconds. In Canada it was over 1 second.

There has to be a big question over whether this decision is the right one for Red Bull to make. From a pragmatic point of view, yes Red Bull would be qualifying better than their current 7, 8, 9 and 10th. However, could they ever win another championship whilst running another works team’s engine?

McLaren are suffering pain like never before to avoid exactly this situation. They shunned the all-conquering Mercedes V6 Turbo Hybrid to forge a relationship with an independent F1 engine supplier.

And what for Renault?

Well, talks of Toro Rosso being sold to Renault now appear to be history.

Then again, this could be a carrot being dangled in front of Renault, in an attempt to persuade them to move ahead and acquire the team based in Faenza – before its too late.

Lotus have said they are not for sale should Renault wish to buy a team and run it as a ‘works’ outfit.

Realistically this leaves Force India and Manor F1 as target acquisitions for Renault if they are to remain in Formula One.

So TJ13 readers, where’s your money?

Renault to remain in F1 and Vijay taking a half decent offer to sell – then heading ‘toute suite’ for the hills… or an island where the Indian authorities can’t find him?

That said, when Renault last acquired an F1 work’s team – auto manufacturers Peugeot, Ford, Toyota and Honda were all making big plans for F1 and Mercedes and BMW were increasing their investment in the sport.

Who is now left, and who is banging down the door to enter Formula One?

[Samraj_official]

SEE ALSO http://www.gptoday.com/full_story/view/ ... ne_switch/

[Spoutnik]

It's difficult to conceive, this fact : 1 top team will sale engine to his rival.
I think Red Bull is in really difficult position, they can't take a Merc PU or Ferrari, the Honda PU is good as the Renault (at the end of the year I think) and if the Japenese PU improve they keep the exclusive partenership with McLaren and maybe a sister team like Manor. Red Bull need to wait for a big improvement of the Renautl engine, or they need to built their own competitive engine in time in collaboration with a structure like Cosworth ..

[.poz]

Pirelli forced tyre change upon themselves with the blowout fiasco at the british gp. RB had little to do with it. Lotus, FI and ferrari continuously blocked changes until then.
But yeah, RB did profit significantly with the change.

I don't think Pirelli is the only one to blame... teams where swapping tIres, using camber angles and pressures out of specification.....

also RB and Merc exacerbate the problem to force Pirelli to return to the kevlar structure as they were unable to use the tIres with steel structure wit the same efficacy of Ferrari, Lotus and Force India