Why is the Red Bull car so good in the rain?

[KJM3]

Why do you guys think the Red Bull car so good in the rain?

I can only assume that it has an insane amount of mechanical grip due to great suspension geometry and a low center of gravity. Perhaps the pullrod suspension is the secret ingredient?

It also proves that some of the teams like Ferrari can only blame themselves for their poor performance and not simply point at the lack of a DDD.

RBR doesn't have a DDD but they owned everyone in Shanghai.

I can't wait to see next week's race in Bahrain!

Hopefully we can finally have a RAIN FREE race on a normal circuit to see where everyone really stands!!!

- KJ

[Jersey Tom]

Seems like this exact thing was posted in another thread.

You make it sound like the RB5 was good in the rain... and not necessarily great otherwise. Red Bull qualified P1 and P3, in the dry... and were super fast in Q2. It's not that they're necessarily good in the rain.. they were very fast this weekend period.

What makes you think the car has an especially low CG? There is really not much or anything to suggest that. Pull-rod suspension sure, but big deal. That is one small set of components to the many on the car. Does it help a little? Sure. Is the RB5 CG lower with the pullrod than it would have been without it? Probably. Is it necessarily significantly lower than any other car in the field? No. There's nothing to really suggest that.

What makes you think it has particularly good suspension geometry either? Nothing revolutionary about it.

I'd say they (a) had a pretty well-designed car to begin with, (b) brought a generally good setup in terms of static cambers and inflations, wing angle etc (c) have a very talented rain driver in S. Vettel.

There's so many things a fast car could be, that we'd have no idea about. As I'm fond of pointing out, a good vs poor set of wheel bearings can be a second a lap difference in some race series.

Some folks like to say that in the wet, with speeds down (and downforce down as well) that mechanical grip takes over. Not necessarily the case. On low-grip surfaces I'd argue that downforce and stability make more difference than on a normal hot grippy stretch of asphalt just because the mechanical grip levels are so low. I've seen FSAE cars run with- and without aero in dry and wet. Dry course may only make a few tenths difference, wet course its a few seconds. Consistently.

I wouldn't be surprised if RBR generally had a very solid aero package to begin with, sans DDD. If they can develop a DDD that integrates with the rest of the aero currently on the car, they will be in very strong form indeed.

[Ciro Pabón]

... and that's why every time JTom posts some of us run to watch what he wrote.

[ISLAMATRON]

Regardless the RBR clearly does have a lower CG then the rest of the cars on the grid.

[url=http://premium.f1-live.com/f1/photos-hi ... po_024.jpg]

Just look at the suspension parts at the level of the step plane or lower even whereas on the Williams for example we can see the suspension components thru the sidepod exhausts situated higher than the entire crash structure.

Not saying that the lower CG is the entire reason they are fast, be it wet or dry... but they clearly do have a lower cg, then the rest of the field. I am fully expecting many cars to incorporate the pull rod suspension next year.

[Jersey Tom]

Regardless the RBR clearly does have a lower CG then the rest of the cars on the grid.

[url=http://premium.f1-live.com/f1/photos-hi ... po_024.jpg]

Just look at the suspension parts at the level of the step plane or lower even whereas on the Williams for example we can see the suspension components thru the sidepod exhausts situated higher than the entire crash structure.

Not saying that the lower CG is the entire reason they are fast, be it wet or dry... but they clearly do have a lower cg, then the rest of the field. I am fully expecting many cars to incorporate the pull rod suspension next year.

I'm sorry, but that picture honestly doesn't mean anything. Having been on the suspension design team for both a pull-rod and push-rod suspension...

Your a-arms don't change. No gain there.

Your push or pull rod doesn't really change either, with regard to mass location. One goes from top to bottom, the other goes from bottom to top.

I'm not sure how the torsion bar springs are aligned on this car, but they are inclined at least somewhat vertically. I'm not convinced there's much gain there.

The biggest thing you get to do is move the rockers, and the dampers down an appreciable difference. So you do get to move around a couple pounds.

We can account for a couple pounds in that picture. ~0.3% of the car mass. What about the other 1415+ lb on a typical race-weight car? How could you conclusively say that all of that is located lower than any other car in the field? It might be, it might not be. There is absolutely no way for us to tell other than pure speculation.

Pull-rods are nothing new in open wheel, nor in F1. I know for sure one of the late 80's Ferraris ran them briefly. No one had forgotten about them, they've always been on the table. For McLaren, Ferrari, Brawn or anyone else... if a pull-rod suspension would have yielded a better racecar, they would have done it.

Copying the arrangement of 1 system of dozens on a racecar, just because they performed very well in a race, is not wise engineering.

[ISLAMATRON]

I'm not sure how the torsion bar springs are aligned on this car, but they are inclined at least somewhat vertically. I'm not convinced there's much gain there.

The biggest thing you get to do is move the rockers, and the dampers down an appreciable difference. So you do get to move around a couple pounds.

We can account for a couple pounds in that picture. ~0.3% of the car mass. What about the other 1415+ lb on a typical race-weight car? How could you conclusively say that all of that is located lower than any other car in the field? It might be, it might not be. There is absolutely no way for us to tell other than pure speculation.

Copying the arrangement of 1 system of dozens on a racecar, just because they performed very well in a race, is not wise engineering.

I absolutely agree on that point but...

The rockers, dampers, torsion bars, inerters & the 3rd spring all of it was moved down at least 1 foot... minimal yes but something nonetheless... but the main reason for the incorporation of the pull rod was to tighten up the rear body work of the car thus allowing much more air to the rear bridge wing and over the diffuser.

Like I said I'm not convinced that the lower Cg of the car is the main reason it is faster than the competition, but It sure doesnt hurt.

[Jersey Tom]

All I'm saying is there's no way we could be remotely confident in saying the RB5 has a lower CG than any other car out there. It is likely lower than it would have been with a pushrod setup on that car but given that its a couple pounds out of 1400+, we just can't ignore the rest of the car and say the pull-rod rear dominates things.

By intuition and by the margin that RBR had over the field at Shanghai, I'd suspect aero has a lot to do with it... also that the Brawn team comments were directed at RBR's pace through high speed corners. I'd certainly be willing to believe the rear packaging helped that.

A lot has yet to be seen, and I think the deck will be slightly reshuffled when teams have major upgrades upon return to Europe. Pre-season development sets the stage for the first couple races, but development pace as the season progresses may overshadow that. Will the gap that BGP and RBR set at the beginning of the season be enough to carry them to the end? Or will the decades of Grand Prix experience of Ferrari and McLaren shove them aside?

Stay tuned..

[sticky667]

Will the gap that BGP and RBR set at the beginning of the season be enough to carry them to the end? Or will the decades of Grand Prix experience of Ferrari and McLaren shove them aside?

interesting question you pose here..

I believe the major difference for these two "lower", if you will, teams is they have the "decades of experience" behind their development now with Ross and Adrian. They are definitely not new to the paddock behind the scenes. Both teams have fewer staff and I believe comparable technological resources to the "Big 3". money is the biggest factor which directly relates to the production of new bits.

I think they've got the ability to keep up the fight, as long as the money is still there to continue the development over the summer. I don't think any team is capable of major development over another with the testing ban in effect. I believe in the coming races we will see more and more teams replicating Renault by introducing new parts on the car in quali and on race day and hoping the wind tunnel and CFD data matches.

[RacingManiac]

As far as the pullrod deal goes, it is likely though the decision was made early on in the design. If you work though someone's potential thought process on the 2009 rule, he would have noted that a) the rear wing being narrower and placed higher, b) the diffuser is lower and smaller, and c) Double Decker Diffuser is NOT on the table, remember this is RBR we are talking about here, and at that point in time that was how they read the rule. So it isn't inconceivable that they designed the car to maximize the available diffuser volume and rear wing efficiency, so they build the lowest rear deck height they can(witness the upsweeping drive shaft, and their driveshaft boot problem, likely related to that angle, and of course, pullrod), run the biggest rear endplate they can to help using the more efficient wing to drive the diffuser, and thus no provision to run a 2nd deck on their diffuser.

About the wet pace, so much depends on the setup of the day that it could just be they have a better setup that day, it also helps that they have someone like Vettel....

[firefly]

Brawn drivers said they couldn't get enought heat in the tyres. And even though fastest laps are useless in the rain, rubens did clock the fastest lap in that race when the track was drying out. But i think red bull made the tyres work beeter in the conditions and they had good setup work, as Jtom pointed out.

[vasia]

The reason Red Bull did so good in the rain during *this* race is due to a number of factors. Red Bull does have a fast car to begin with, in the rain the RB5 is better able to generate heat into the tires than some of the competition. Red Bull also set up the car very well for this particular race. Lastly, the RB5 was very suited particularly to the Shanghai track based on the qualifying lap times. Red Bull also had a bit of luck as Glock did not qualify high enough to threaten them.

Now Bahrain is a different track, with different conditions, and different demands put on the car.

[xpensive]

I find Islam's dead-certain predictions about RBR's vertical CG somewhat out of line. Posting an image as evidence is to my mind on par with some of what those picture-aerodynamicists do.

Think the driver's weight, length and position is far more important than a pull-rod layout in the context.

[ISLAMATRON]

I find Islam's dead-certain predictions about RBR's vertical CG somewhat out of line. Posting an image as evidence is to my mind on par with some of what those picture-aerodynamicists do.

Think the driver's weight, length and position is far more important than a pull-rod layout in the context.

All I am stating is that the the pull rod clearly lowers the CG. I didnt mean to state that they definitely have the lowest CG out there, i may have stated my opinion too strongly... I suspect they do, but i can in no way be certain.

but you cant tell me that putting all those components between the 2 push rods at the base of the transmission without raising it wouldnt lower the CG

[al_kar]

They maybe so fast in the rain because their chassi is not as stif as other teams. The same thing with Honda in 2006.

[lkocev]

When using a pull-rod suspension layout like RBR, then wouldn't they need to position some of the gears higher up to make space for the suspension components underneath?

I doubt that the idea behind the pull-rod was completely vertical center of mass driven, those suspension components are so light weight that its positve effect would probably be marginal at most. I would assume that there is a bigger gain by the way they clear up the area around the rear wing, and getting less disrupted air over and under it, correct me if I'm completely wrong Jersey Tom or Kilcoo...

Certainly I think so that the seating position of an 70-85 kg driver would have a much bigger effect on the center of mass of an F1 car than the super-light suspension components. And I think that alot of the time drivers can be quick in the wet tends to be alot of the time down to confidence and a feeling they can get from their car. Who knows really exactly what it was but I think everyone knows for sure that Jenson was not feeling confident with low tire temperatures, and I don't think that helps...