Red Bull RB18

[atanatizante]

For the fact that I am a chemical engineer, I was interested in the reasons behind why both RB18 cars DNF the Bahrain race as they could be potential fuel-related now that they need to use E 10 fuel for the 2022 championship.

But firstly it is worth watching this explanatory video from Autosport.com to figure out what could be the most probable reasons that led to both failures on RB18 cars:



They said the main reasons were temperature related as follows:
1. Low fuel levels which led to heat it up
2. Forbidden devices to cool the fuel down
3. The safety car phase at the end of the race forced the cars to run slowly hence overheating, something that Nico Hulkenberg`s AMR22 car had experienced too even in race conditions

After seeing the video, from my technical point of view, I think they missed the new fuel factor but most of all the chemistry-physics properties it has ...

Using E10 means they need to use fuel comprising 10% ethanol from sustainable sources, compared to last year 5,75% ethanol obtained from non-sustainable sources. That means we have almost double the alcohol concentration in the fuel and that is the important factor! Then, both fuel and alcohol are solvents from the chemical properties POV: https://www.britannica.com/science/solvent-chemistry

So what I`m thinking about the main reason is that when the car is running in a race at the end of it when has low fuel levels there are at least 3 conditions that are occurring:
1. fuel has the highest temperature in the fuel tank during a race
2. fuel and alcohol acts both as a solvent and for this year has twice the solvent/dissolving power
3. time sufficient to dissolve/attack etc. the resin in which lifting pump electronics were incapsulated, hence leading to this failure ...

Above all those factors we have to take into account that every team has a special fuel formulated specifically for that ICE and they should test the pH and solvability of that fuel in order to evoid chemical erosion/distructive action upon encapsulated stuff in the fuel tank...

It`ll be interesting to know what countermeasures will be put in place bearing in mind that there will be hot races over the summer/hot climate in other parts of the world ...

[kalinka]

So they admit it wasn't a spec part that falied >
"Red Bull was secretive about the problem for a long time. First they pointed to the fuel pump that is supplied as standard part to the F1 teams, but Sergio Perez already announced that this was not the cause of the problem. A Red Bull system would have failed, but Red Bull didn't want to make the competition any the wiser and didn't release anything about the cause."

source : https://www.gpblog.com/en/news/107002/r ... -down.html

[Just_a_fan]

So they admit it wasn't a spec part that falied >
"Red Bull was secretive about the problem for a long time. First they pointed to the fuel pump that is supplied as standard part to the F1 teams, but Sergio Perez already announced that this was not the cause of the problem. A Red Bull system would have failed, but Red Bull didn't want to make the competition any the wiser and didn't release anything about the cause."

source : https://www.gpblog.com/en/news/107002/r ... -down.html

It's like the good old Renault PU days...

[Postmoe]

So they admit it wasn't a spec part that falied >
"Red Bull was secretive about the problem for a long time. First they pointed to the fuel pump that is supplied as standard part to the F1 teams, but Sergio Perez already announced that this was not the cause of the problem. A Red Bull system would have failed, but Red Bull didn't want to make the competition any the wiser and didn't release anything about the cause."

source : https://www.gpblog.com/en/news/107002/r ... -down.html

It's like the good old Renault PU days...

Always blame the provider.

[jagunx51]

https://twitter.com/NicolasF1i/status/1 ... 8848543766

[dren]

I read it was vapor lock due to overheating fuel. Sounds like they got it sorted.

The new nose looks like a similar attempt to what they had on the previous few cars.

[restless]

I read it was vapor lock due to overheating fuel. Sounds like they got it sorted.

The new nose looks like a similar attempt to what they had on the previous few cars.

They think they get it sorted... I am surprised they had such problem and hope they solved it for real :S

[yallkok]

What's with the abnormal flashing: https://youtu.be/9RME6YkiVPw?t=126 ?
Really strange.

I've seen it before. I don't think it has any special meaning, probably just the way it works. Sometimes it can blink the lights out of phase. This is from the first tests of the wing lights:

Only the right light:
https://i.imgur.com/DH7xQVf.png

Both lights:
https://i.imgur.com/fK7u8HP.png

See This:

[RZS10]

I kinda doubt that it can only be the camera shutter speed vs. LED frequency? Even though LED lights always look weird in almost any car review on youtube, if you watch those.
In the onboard video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RME6YkiVPw as far as i can tell the only other car which shows that behaviour is the AT (already on lap1, Schumacher onboard 8:20, the car ahead of the Alpine is Gasly) and the main connection between those is the Honda engine - how the PU and/or the ERS/electrical systems could be related to weird flickering on the LEDs? No idea.

[HPD]

In the same way I think that this issue is not suitable for this section of the forum.

[Stu]

A selection of posts that started to drift away from the RB18 and into fuel chemistry (and the effects thereof) has now been moved to the Honda Engine thread.

Very interesting convo, just not quite the right place for it.

[vorticism]

Similar to Ferrari, I think they've placed a flat plane above the inclined floor edge to reduce its ability to provide positive lift. In the previous regulations I don't think we saw such a flat forward section for sidepods, because the floor was already flat beneath them.

[GioKer32]

I'd like to highlight what in my opinion is the worst problem of the RB18 right now: the front pull rod.
Obviously it allowed the engineers to reduce the weight of the suspension arms and lower the CoG of the whole front corner of the car, however, I believe it is not suitable to generate enough heat on the front tires. This shows at turn 1-2 when Max had massive understeer and could barely stay near the apex. On top of that, I remember that back in 2015 Ferrari had similar problems with that same philosophy (just look at Monaco GP after the SC, when Seb lost about 5 seconds because of low temperature on front tires). What do you think of this? Every comment is well accepted.

[BlueCheetah66]

https://www.racefans.net/wp-content/upl ... -29-12.jpg
I'd like to highlight what in my opinion is the worst problem of the RB18 right now: the front pull rod.
Obviously it allowed the engineers to reduce the weight of the suspension arms and lower the CoG of the whole front corner of the car, however, I believe it is not suitable to generate enough heat on the front tires. This shows at turn 1-2 when Max had massive understeer and could barely stay near the apex. On top of that, I remember that back in 2015 Ferrari had similar problems with that same philosophy (just look at Monaco GP after the SC, when Seb lost about 5 seconds because of low temperature on front tires). What do you think of this? Every comment is well accepted.

Why is Pull-rod worse at generating heat on front tires compared to Push-rod?

[godlameroso]

Different beam wing configurations were tested.

Moar outwash, rules be da**ed.