Red Bull Racing 2012

[Richard]

Thread for Red Bull team talk.

[Gerhard Berger]

There's a possiblity that Webber will be closer to Vettel with the reduction in off throttle blowing.

[Nando]

+1 Gerhard.

I think that is a possibility. And if the RBR is closer to the other teams and not in a different dimension like last year, i think the reign of Vettel has come to a halt for now atleast.

Vettel is still the quicker of the two but not close to half a second.

2010 Q-gap = 0.050 overall over a season.
2011 Q-gap = 0.414 overall over a season.

[raymondu999]

Difficult to say. We'll have to see how the new tyres go with Mark; who couldn't make them work last year

[Nando]

Difficult to say. We'll have to see how the new tyres go with Mark; who couldn't make them work last year

they worked in Silverstone though?

[Websta]

Difficult to say. We'll have to see how the new tyres go with Mark; who couldn't make them work last year

they worked in Silverstone though?

Webber has always been quick at Silverstone/Nurburgring, I think his strength at these circuits offset his inability to fully unlock the tyres. By that stage of the season, he had come to "grips" with them more or less anyway.

[Earnard Beccelstone]

(Disclaimer: I'm a Webber fan and see things through glasses tinted as such)

Amateur armchair expert hat on:

I think Webber's problem is not speed but his consistency, and it has been since he started in F1. His baseline is still very fast – better than much of the field - but he is only occasionally and irregularly superlative.

On his day, Webber can convincingly beat Vettel, or anyone else on the grid. I think Vettel is the quicker driver, both in terms of potential lap time and baseline, day-in, day-out consistency at a range of circuits. But when I see races like Silverstone 2010, Germany 2009, China 2011 or Monaco 2010, I believe that there are occasions when MW is almost unbeatable. Certain tracks and certain situations just seem to bring out the speed in him.

However, I don't believe that MW is ever really 'on it' for more than a handful of race weekends in a season. Unfortunately, these exceptional days/weekends seem to be getting fewer and further between.

Sometimes, Webber will excel on one day of the weekend and then look decidedly mediocre on others. Sepang 04 and Spain 05 are cases in point – great qualifying and an ordinary race. Other times - notably in the early years with Red Bull – he’s just looked, well, average.

The other problem has been Webber’s starts. They were pretty poor in 2009 and 2010 and then outright shocking in 2011. Mark lost an overall 23 places in starts in 2011, the worst performance of any driver last year.

I think MW needs to do three things:

1. Perfect his starts. If he’d maintained his grid positions in 2011, Mark would have scored an extra 30 points (excluding the accident in Monza).

2. Pick and choose his races. Webber can definitely win races at his favoured tracks (Monaco, Catalunya, Silverstone, Interlagos and a few others), so maybe he should choose these to build his season round.

3. Get angry. MW seems to perform best when he’s pissed off. Maybe he should have someone in a Helmut Marko mask smack him in the chops right before quail/race time…

[Mysticf1]

Webber seems to be talking very positively this pre season, I think the changes to tires and exhaust rules have moved in his favor, or rather he believes they have and feels very comfortable in the car. It remains to be seen if this is reality or not, but the tone of his interviews give me hope. He can certainly beat the best on his day.

[mahesh248]

The Team has given the drivers an advantage over the other teams by making the car better in certain way ( Off throttle blowing etc ), retrospectively only one of the two drivers managed to take advantage of the advantage. Probably Redbull will come up with something that suits Mark more than Seb this time around.

Personally I think SEB took full advantage of what he got from the team and became 2 time WDC, which is great achievement.And to this moment , REDBULL owes more to SEB than Mark.

[Gerhardsa]

Seb seems to be pretty unhappy with the way things went down today.
Havent really heard these types of things form him...ever...
I am sure they will be at the sharp point of the field non the less tomorrow afternoon.

http://www.planetf1.com/driver/3213/760 ... ssy-Friday

[raymondu999]

For one thing - stay away from Planet F1. Next Seb has such comments in the past. Such as Hungary 2011.

[Robbobnob]

Seb is a perfectionist, and when the car isnt behaving like he wants or its capable of he says stuff like that.

Heres hoping they had the tanks to the brim during todays running, otherwise Pat Fry was well off on his predictions of 5 tenths clear

[Gerhard Berger]

so blown diffuser is gone, and Red Bull fall back. It is interesting that Newey has only really produced dominant cars with blown diffusers. Without it, he seems at least much closer to the competition.

[bonjon1979]

I think Red Bull are in a spot of bother. The RB8 isn't fast enough to get the pole in front of Mclaren or Mercedes and their car doesn't have the straight line speed to be able to overtake, even in DRS zones. It means that they're kind of screwed as they're not able to lead from the front and just pull away. Last year they were so much faster due to their superior downforce it didn't matter they were slower in a straight line. It's a different story this year.

[myurr]

I think Red Bull are in a spot of bother. The RB8 isn't fast enough to get the pole in front of Mclaren or Mercedes and their car doesn't have the straight line speed to be able to overtake, even in DRS zones. It means that they're kind of screwed as they're not able to lead from the front and just pull away. Last year they were so much faster due to their superior downforce it didn't matter they were slower in a straight line. It's a different story this year.

This I agree with. The warning signs were actually there last year for them with Webber. He was unable to extract as much from the car in qualifying last year for reasons widely written about, and then wasn't always able to make much progress throughout the races despite having a downforce advantage. This year they don't even have that advantage.

In Vettel's hands at least the car is still kind to its tyres and this is helping them to get okay results by choosing good strategies, but they've also been plenty lucky with the results they have had this year in terms of other cars in front of them tripping up or making poor strategic decisions.

I'm going to make a bold prediction that may come back and bite me, but I'm going to say that they're not going to stage a come back this year. I think they're still having to divert too much resource into figuring out an exhaust solution that's only going to give them a couple of tenths in lap time and that they have got the fundamental philosophy of the car wrong through their belief it would run at the front. McLaren have more downforce but are faster in a straight line, and some of the other cars are so much faster in a straight line they can afford to compromise their setup and crank on more downforce to get them at least near Red Bull. As all the teams get better at managing the tyres I think Red Bull may even lose some of that advantage that they currently have with Vettel's side of the garage.

So they're going to face a huge question. Do they concentrate a lot of effort on sorting this car and evolving it for next year; do they throw all their resources into next years car in order to address some of these fundamental issues but then suffer in 2014; or do they effectively concede that they're not going to have an easy time of it this year or next and throw their resources at the 2014 car?

I personally think that Ferrari and McLaren have learnt from 2009 that they will have to compromise their development rate next year in order to spend enough time and effort on the 2014 car. McLaren have the enviable situation of having a solid base for their developments for the next two years, so they can throw everything at just evolving the car and save the complete rebuild for 2014. I think we're going to see Ferrari throw everything at this years car to try and get it sorted enough that next year they too can evolve the car. I believe we'll see them take some huge risks with the car, even sacrificing pace for a few races whilst they experiment if it means they have a solid car by the end of the year.

Red Bull are stuck in a middle ground between the two. They're close enough to the front of the pack that they need to bring a constant stream of updates to the car to keep them in the title hunt, but they're far enough away with fundamental traits of the car to sort out that they're going to need to throw a lot of resources at the car both this year and next in order to fight for the championships.