Red Bull RB18

[AR3-GP]

This hump is also tapered upwards towards the floor, it's not a complete blockage so it's hard to saw if it will roll off a vortex from it at all. Likely will disrupt the airflow in the area directly behind it though

What if you were using the plank area to generate the majority of your downforce? Then you could get away with allowing more airflow through the tunnels. Could explain why RB doesn't make their throats as narrow as possible, and why the plank area is so wide.

Doesn't the blank sit on the ground more or less at high speed?

[Zynerji]

This hump is also tapered upwards towards the floor, it's not a complete blockage so it's hard to saw if it will roll off a vortex from it at all. Likely will disrupt the airflow in the area directly behind it though

What if you were using the plank area to generate the majority of your downforce? Then you could get away with allowing more airflow through the tunnels. Could explain why RB doesn't make their throats as narrow as possible, and why the plank area is so wide.

Doesn't the blank sit on the ground more or less at high speed?

Only when you see the skid blocks sparking.

[vorticism]

That 'edge wing' striking the ground:

https://www.racefans.net/wp-content/upl ... b_news.jpg

Basically the edge wing strikes the ground in body roll. It's metal. It's a ride height limiter imo.

For comparison, the Ferrari starts porpoising heavily with the body roll in the T8-T9 straight.They do not have such a ride height limiter under the floor.

I'd call it a roll limiter or deflection limiter. The floor parts including these ice skates don't go any lower than the topside of the plank. In straight running the plank and central skid blocks will strike the pavement first. Two options from there:

1. If DF deflects the floor edges, then the skates would stop this deflection. 2. It's limiting the roll angle of the car.

I expect this to be a feature other cars to develop. In fact, if it's a car without a McLaren style edge wing, they might have their own version of the ice skate down there already.

[godlameroso]

This hump is also tapered upwards towards the floor, it's not a complete blockage so it's hard to saw if it will roll off a vortex from it at all. Likely will disrupt the airflow in the area directly behind it though

What if you were using the plank area to generate the majority of your downforce? Then you could get away with allowing more airflow through the tunnels. Could explain why RB doesn't make their throats as narrow as possible, and why the plank area is so wide.

Doesn't the blank sit on the ground more or less at high speed?

Yes it does, but there is still a step plane to the side.

[ringo]

I didnt realize the second vane was so curved at the root.
The metal blade at the rear of the floor... those holes must be for air to pass through so the diffuser isnt starved?

[Vanja #66]

So smooth radii maintain flow vector a bit higher, correct? Hence pressure drop is not so severe and turbulent transition is delayed.

Sorry, I didn't get that, do you mean reagrding these vanes or in general?

[Andi76]

First rumours say Verstappens retirement was a fuel issue. Christian Horner said this.

As its the second retirement out of three races for Verstappen, it seems like Red Bull probably have a reliability problem. It would not be the first time Newey went too far because he did not want to make a compromise for reliability reasons. It reminds me of the early 00s when Newey did not want to make any compromise in relation to the crankshaft of the engine. This resulted in poor reliability of the Mercedes engine because Newey insisted on a engine with an extremely low crankshaft. Fun fact here is that the main opponent is again a very fast and very reliable Ferrari with input from Rory Byrne...

I hope we will get some more information soon. And i hope its not a "built-in"-problem because of the packaging or something like that. At the moment it looks like only Verstappen and Red Bull can challenge Ferrari and make an exciting championship possible.

[vorticism]

First rumours say Verstappens retirement was a fuel issue. Christian Horner said this.

As its the second retirement out of three races for Verstappen, it seems like Red Bull probably have a reliability problem. It would not be the first time Newey went too far because he did not want to make a compromise for reliability reasons. It reminds me of the early 00s when Newey did not want to make any compromise in relation to the crankshaft of the engine. This resulted in poor reliability of the Mercedes engine because Newey insisted on a engine with an extremely low crankshaft. Fun fact here is that the main opponent is again a very fast and very reliable Ferrari with input from Rory Byrne...

I hope we will get some more information soon. And i hope its not a "built-in"-problem because of the packaging or something like that. At the moment it looks like only Verstappen and Red Bull can challenge Ferrari and make an exciting championship possible.

We only have teams word and press articles to go by. They say fuel pumps and fuel lines for these two failures. Packaging doesn't seem unusual (except for the big fuel tank undercut) so I'm not sure what the source would be. As well pumps and lines are supplier items. Is the suggestion overheating due to packaging? For me I have to correlate fuel rules changing, with these supposed fuel system failures.

[subcritical71]

We only have teams word and press articles to go by. They say fuel pumps and fuel lines for these two failures. Packaging doesn't seem unusual (except for the big fuel tank undercut) so I'm not sure what the source would be. As well pumps and lines are supplier items. Is the suggestion overheating due to packaging? For me I have to correlate fuel rules changing, with these supposed fuel system failures.

I find it strange that max mentioned a weird fluid and not fuel then. While I would not expect a driver to be able to identify every fluid by smell, all probably know what fuel smells like.

[Andi76]

First rumours say Verstappens retirement was a fuel issue. Christian Horner said this.

As its the second retirement out of three races for Verstappen, it seems like Red Bull probably have a reliability problem. It would not be the first time Newey went too far because he did not want to make a compromise for reliability reasons. It reminds me of the early 00s when Newey did not want to make any compromise in relation to the crankshaft of the engine. This resulted in poor reliability of the Mercedes engine because Newey insisted on a engine with an extremely low crankshaft. Fun fact here is that the main opponent is again a very fast and very reliable Ferrari with input from Rory Byrne...

I hope we will get some more information soon. And i hope its not a "built-in"-problem because of the packaging or something like that. At the moment it looks like only Verstappen and Red Bull can challenge Ferrari and make an exciting championship possible.

We only have teams word and press articles to go by. They say fuel pumps and fuel lines for these two failures. Packaging doesn't seem unusual (except for the big fuel tank undercut) so I'm not sure what the source would be. As well pumps and lines are supplier items. Is the suggestion overheating due to packaging? For me I have to correlate fuel rules changing, with these supposed fuel system failures.

I think overheating due to packaging is something that seems very reasonable, as only Red Bull seems to have this "fuel"-related problem constantly.

[Alexf1]

Does anyone have a guess how much RB18 weight distribution differs from the RB16b? My guess is it's much more towards the rear which causes the balance issues (amongst understeer) . If they want to get it near RB16b weight balance then they'll have to use ballast on the front so they'll need to shave off much more than the 15kg overweight.

[F1DataAnalysis]

Hi guys, I wrote an analysis on Verstappen's power loss and I thought you could be interested!

Verstappen retired after just starting lap 39 - but were there any symptoms in the previous laps, or was it a sudden failure?

I compared the previous two laps to find out: Yes, VER started to lose power halfway through its last lap.

Until the middle of lap 38 (in white), the pace was identical to the previous lap, both in terms of gap and speed profile; suddenly, however (yellow line), the engine began to lose power. We can see this both from the speed graph (seeing that the increase in speed is much more gradual, ending with a smaller peak) and from the gap graph (which increases considerably during the straight, in an increasingly 'steep' manner as the less powerful engine becomes less and less able to overcome the increasing aerodynamic resistance). The same happens on both subsequent straights.

But how much does this loss of power amount to? On the last lap, VER reaches only 305km/h under equal conditions, compared to 312km/h on the previous lap - a 2.3% loss. As the power required to reach a given speed increases with the cube of the speed, this power loss amounts to around 6.6% or about 65hp - Absolutely noticeable. However, for example, less than Ricciardo's in Monaco 2018, as the electric motor delivers a 160hp peak. The difference, however, is that in Monaco, the power affects the lap time much less, and the electric power is not available over the entire lap, unlike the power lost by VER's endothermic. Towards the end of the lap, there is also a possible braking error (red), not repeated at the next slow corner. Perhaps a distraction while trying to change settings?
Considering that roughly 10hp equates to about 0.15s/lap, this would have meant a loss of about 1.0s/lap if he had been able to continue with the problem - Considering that VER was in second place with 7.6s on PER, that there were 20 laps to go and assuming that VER would maintain the same pace as PER + 1s/lap over the remaining laps, VER would have finished the race in fifth place behind HAM but ahead of Norris, still racking up 10 valuable points.

You can find me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/F1DataAnalysis) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/f1dataanalysis/) for further analyses.

[Andi76]

Does anyone have a guess how much RB18 weight distribution differs from the RB16b? My guess is it's much more towards the rear which causes the balance issues (amongst understeer) . If they want to get it near RB16b weight balance then they'll have to use ballast on the front so they'll need to shave off much more than the 15kg overweight.

Correct me if i am wrong, but if i remember correctly, the weight distribution is fixed in the technical regulary and there is not much room to play with. So if my memory does not trick me here, its not possible that the RB18 has a weight distribution "much more" towards the rear than the RB16B.

Heiko Wasser, a German F1 commentator, just said that Verstappen said there was fluid everywhere in the car...

[AR3-GP]

Does anyone have a guess how much RB18 weight distribution differs from the RB16b? My guess is it's much more towards the rear which causes the balance issues (amongst understeer) . If they want to get it near RB16b weight balance then they'll have to use ballast on the front so they'll need to shave off much more than the 15kg overweight.

Correct me if i am wrong, but if i remember correctly, the weight distribution is fixed in the technical regulary and there is not much room to play with. So if my memory does not trick me here, its not possible that the RB18 has a weight distribution "much more" towards the rear than the RB16B.

Heiko Wasser, a German F1 commentator, just said that Verstappen said there was fluid everywhere in the car...

[Alexf1]

Does anyone have a guess how much RB18 weight distribution differs from the RB16b? My guess is it's much more towards the rear which causes the balance issues (amongst understeer) . If they want to get it near RB16b weight balance then they'll have to use ballast on the front so they'll need to shave off much more than the 15kg overweight.

Correct me if i am wrong, but if i remember correctly, the weight distribution is fixed in the technical regulary and there is not much room to play with. So if my memory does not trick me here, its not possible that the RB18 has a weight distribution "much more" towards the rear than the RB16B.

Heiko Wasser, a German F1 commentator, just said that Verstappen said there was fluid everywhere in the car...

So what do you do if you're overweight and the excessve weight is in the back?