Red Bull confirms correlation issues, 'new car' set for Spain
Red Bull Racing's Christian Horner has confirmed the team is steadily developing a "new car" after the team hit wind tunnel correlation problems during the winter that severely hampered development progress of the RB13.
While the team principal repeated before the season they would be well in the mix, the result on track is that the RB13 is no match for Mercedes, and has in fact dropped back to third in the pecking order as Ferrari have also gained an advantage over them.
The surprisingly simple RB13, featuring extremely simple lines already suggested a cautious approach, but the team have now confirmed that correlation issues have forced them to stick with the basic aerodynamic layout until the problems at the factory are resolved.
"For the first time in a long time, the correlation between CFD, the wind tunnel and the race track does not match. We get three different sets of data," Horner said.
The team has meanwhile got on top of the problems, but development of new parts will take a little longer, and are set to be introduced at the Spanish Grand Prix in 1 month.
"The step will be significant.", Horner confirmed.
It is expected that at the same time, if reliability issues do not come into play earlier, Red Bull will switch its cars to their second power unit of the season, which would then include the fitting of an upgraded Renault specification.
