Usually a little slower out of the
blocks, Red Bull publicly announced their intent to throw weight
behind their 2019 campaign earlier than usual. This was an attempt to
make early headway against Ferrari and Mercedes during a period where
gains are easier to find with new rules.
This early shift in focus also had to
be managed arm-in-arm with a change in powerunit supply, as the team
jumped into bed with McLaren outcast - Honda. It’s a relationship
that had been allowed to brew behind the scenes with their junior
outfit - Toro Rosso, the pair seemingly working well in their first
season with Honda making a sizeable leap forward on both performance
and reliability throughout.
This new relationship has flourished,
in part, due to both parties embracing the challenge of working with
one another and whilst Honda had shunned McLaren’s advances to
assist them in the early phase of the project they’re working
hand-in-hand with Red Bull with ideas, funding and personnel
straddling both projects.
It’s this harmony between different
departments that’s helped Mercedes to profit from their entire
operation since the hybrid era got under way, as working groups
within mesh ideas together that don’t necessarily work in
isolation.
As pre-season got into full-swing it
was apparent that Red Bull were still a few beats off of their rivals
and that adjustments would have to be made in order that they be able
to profit from not only their learning phase of the new aerodynamic
regulations but also how they needed to position the aerodynamic
platform and chassis in order to maximise performance from the Honda
powerunit, given it’s now in a much grander position than it had
been.
As such, Red Bull have been busy back
at Milton Keynes developing an update pathway that would help to
unlock the RB15’s latent potential, a potential that’s started to
surface in the last few Grand Prix.
As we can see from the chart the season
opener had the gap pegged at around 8 tenths during qualifying, a gap
that reduced over the next few races to around 5 tenths, with Spain
and France being the outliers - suited more heavily to the Mercedes
package and their ability to extract performance from the tyres than
their counterparts at Red Bull.
However, that gap has shrunk massively
at the last two rounds, with the performance gap during the race also
lessened significantly, putting them in a position to not only usurp
Ferrari but also take the fight to Mercedes.
So, let’s take a look at their
updates throughout that period to try and glean just where that leap
has occurred.
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This chart is not meant to be entirely accurate but gives a good overview of the key updates introduced by Red Bull this season |
The development glide path of every
team in the opening few rounds is pretty much set in stone, unless of
course the team arrives at the first test and realise they’ve made
a massive error. At that point a decision has to be made about
whether to halt production immediately or continue to plough on, in
the hope that those updates may actually help with the issues at
hand.
It’s the reason why we usually see an
extensive update package arrive at round 5 of the championship, in
Spain, as it’s a venue that the teams know inside out and already
have data from pre-season testing in order to ascertain that the
revamp is working as expected. The smaller alterations that you see
in the chart are indicative of this, as are the sweeping changes made
for Barcelona.
However, whilst substantial, the
package taken to the Spanish GP didn’t ultimately bring swathes of
performance, instead it looked to improve the cars balance and
realign the L/D ratio of the car, inline with the gains made by
Honda. Returning to the qualifying comparison chart it’s actually
an outlier in a steady gap to the silver arrows and perhaps one
created not only by a similarly powerful update introduced by
Mercedes around that time, but also due to the fact that Red Bull and
Honda had to relearn their approach to accommodate the changes.
Tyres also become a huge factor at this
point in the season too, as whilst the team and sometimes more
importantly the driver have learnt how to get the best from them over
one lap and a stint, they must reset and respond to the changes that
the aero has had on the behaviour of the car.
Monaco is always a relatively happy
hunting ground for Monaco, the tight narrow street track playing to
the chassis strengths of Red Bull and whilst they didn’t have what
might be considered huge updates they did have some interesting ones.
The main one was a redesign of the
nose, which would have required a new crash test, so not the making
of a moment. The switch will have undoubtedly resulted in a slightly
lighter structure too, as the design with a through-flow tip requires
bulk in key areas in order to pass the crash test. This also raises
aerodynamic question marks about the behaviour of the nose tip in
relation to the surrounding airflow, especially its interaction with
the front wings neutral section below.
The team also had a new floor, complete
with these four vanes on top of the longitudinal floor slots, guiding
the airflow as it moves away from the bargeboard area, around the
sidepod undercut and through the floor slot. These vanes just pick up
that airflow and prevent it from becoming a turbulent mess that
doesn’t do as it’s being told.
Canada saw a couple more minor
modifications, including the nose horns that flank their ‘S’ duct
and a revision to the outer portion of the diffuser but it was in
France that we saw the team make another bold leap forward, and just
like the last time they did that it came with some pain too, as we
saw them with their furthest outright pace difference to Mercedes.
The updates changed key design parameters on the RB15, with
alterations made at both the front and rear that improve aerodynamic,
chassis and powerunit performance.
In this image from Nicolas Carpentiers
of F1i.com we can see the different approach that the team have taken
to the design of their front wheels and upright, which on the face of
it might seem fairly innocuous, but is far from it, as they work as a
unified system.
The regulation changes for 2019
prohibit the teams from using the open axle design they have used for
years (see above, the mechanic is cooling the brakes and has
inadvertently given us a display of the blown axle in action, albeit
without the turbulent mess created by the wheel and tyre that it
would then help to mitigate, as it follows this jet of air).
This ‘blown axle’ was a concept
used extensively by Red Bull and enabled them to weaken the outwash
requirements of the front wing and allow the designers to concentrate
their efforts in other ways.
The through flow of airflow essentially
lessened the turbulence created by the rotating wheel and tyre and
acted in much the same way as the wheel rim covers that were en vogue
circa 2007-09 and seen here in day-glo yellow on the BrawnGP BGP001.
Knowing how powerful such a design can
be from an aerodynamic perspective they won’t give up on it and Red
Bull already had design features in their pre-existing design, such
as the band on the wheel rim which would guide airflow and the small
holes in the axle which would emit some airflow to the outside.
However, the new design is a much bolder concept and required an
entirely new upright, brake assembly, brake duct, brake disc and
wheel rim to achieve the required result.
It’s a design that actually comes
straight from the ‘follow the leader’ playbook too, as whilst
Mercedes never actively sought to use a blown axle during the
previous era they’ve used a similar design on the W10 since the
start of the season, meaning their front wing has to do a little less
work in terms of creating outwash too.
Again, these changes made by Red Bull
have coincided with changes to the front wing, as they look to
harmoniously harness both aerodynamic structures. This has resulted
in the use of a tapered endplate, that alters how it interacts with
the outboard upper profiles of the flaps and subsequently generates
outwash. Meanwhile, the Y250 region has not gone unchecked either,
with alterations to the leading edge of the mainplane and changes to
the shape of the flap tips.
But, perhaps most interestingly Red
Bull made several changes at the rear of the car too, some of which
have circuit specificity in mind, such as the use of a T-Wing and an
extra vertical slot on the leading edge of the rear wings transition,
whilst others, such as the repositioning of the wastegate pipework
has wide sweeping ramifications. These pipes had previously been
mounted quite low on the RB15 (above) with any evacuating flow likely
having a bearing on the cooling outlet they emerged from.
However, the new position is the
highest and widest positioning we’ve seen from any team so far and
begs the question - "When the wastegate is open are they throwing gas
at the rear wing?" It’s a question and solution that’s been posed
and trialled by many teams in the past, but given their experience
with blowing techniques and their past experience of navigating an
engine manufacturer toward such gains (as they did with Renault), it
would be of no surprise to me that they’re leveraging some
aerodynamic gains from the transitional period when the wastegate is
open and the turbo is being driven by the MGU-H instead.
The performancee gap in France didn't make me think much of it at the time, but the Austrian GP really made me sit up
and take notice, in fact, in a weekly discussion I have with a friend
about Formula One my ‘hot take’ was their performance leap
between France and Austria didn’t quite add up. Even taking into
account the struggles that others encountered with the combination of
heat and altitude at the Red Bull Ring and raised some questions
about not only Red Bull’s improved performance but also how much
Mercedes and Ferrari have been hurt by the supposed 7 technical
directives that were issued ahead of the French GP.
Directives aside it’s clear to me
that this is not a one-off and whilst their performance relative to
Mercedes will clearly yo-yo over the course of the next few races,
they seem to have found the necessary performance that’s pulled
them well into the battle with Ferrari, if not beyond. As such, I
look forward to the German GP and hope they have found what they need
and can once again find themselves in the mix.
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