Translated:Drift4794 wrote: ↑25 Aug 2022, 15:58https://www.formulapassion.it/opinioni/ ... 30222.html
Very interesting technical article about Max and the team working together to achieve a very particular driving style that covers the faults of the RB18 . Don't know about its accuracy, but interesting nonetheless. Would love to hear everybody's thoughts.
It's in Italian, so please use DeepL/Google to translate
The resumption of the 2022 Formula 1 World Championship is approaching, but before looking forward we asked ourselves about some performances of the RB18, initially difficult to understand at a technical level. Some intrinsic characteristics of Newey's project, in fact, seemed difficult to combine with the results of the track, especially as regards the management of the tires combined with the level of aerodynamic load of the car. We tried to investigate the data thoroughly and met with the engineers of some teams to find answers, and what we have reconstructed seems of particular interest.
Let's start from the basis of the project and its evolution. The RB18 took to the track at the start of the championship with a car that generated a lower vertical load level than its direct rival, Ferrari. This was evidenced both by the straight-line performances, clearly superior for the Austrian team, but also by those in the “load” corners, ie the long and fast ones, where the car of Verstappen and Perez often seemed to lack travel speed. If the top speeds are the result of a combination of factors, including a particular aerodynamics that produces the stall of some components to bring down the drag (a team engineer told us "difficult to evaluate the Red Bull on the straight because Newey manages to stall everything ”), cornering is a clear and unequivocal symptom of a lower level of downforce. Beyond Helmut Marko's swaggering about the car's top speed, Milton Keynes's team tried to correct this load shortage for much of the first half of the season, also struggling with the car's weight, with repeat updates. The culmination of this process came at Silverstone, a track made up of fast corners where load and balance are key. In this phase we have also seen a convergence process between Ferrari and RedBull on the performance of the straights, with the F1-75 adopting the new rear wing specification for both drivers right in the British race, and the RB18 which gradually went increasing the load.
The rain in qualifying and the debris hit by Verstappen in the race on the English track deprived us of a genuine comparison from the point of view of performance, but on that occasion we had seen a particular aerodynamic set-up with an unprecedented combination of incidence of the wings and beam wing (the lower rear wing, placed above the diffuser) brought to the track by Newey's team, as if to indicate an anomalous behavior of the car and the relative attempt to correct it. The next race, the Austrian Grand Prix, showed what the problems were with the updates brought to the RB18. Indeed, it emerged during the race that the car had indeed found load, but had at the same time lost aerodynamic stability and balance. With a full tank of fuel and great longitudinal acceleration Verstappen found a car with a different behavior at every corner, which became particularly difficult to drive, so much so as to result in an anomalous tire wear that left the race in the hands of Ferrari. For this reason in France the RedBull team carried out a long series of comparative tests during free practice, ending up choosing only some of the updates brought to the car and, above all, giving up the high level of load achieved, effectively making a step back. The gap in top speeds between Ferrari and Red Bull also reopened in the French race, with Verstappen again much faster than the reds on the straight, but significantly slower in the corners. The lack of load is generally the cause of a marked degradation of tires because it generates slipping and therefore deterioration of the tread. We have seen that there are two ways to bring the tires up to temperature, the first is the correct one, through the aerodynamic load which produces a deformation of the tire carcass both in straight and in curves, which in turn generates heat from the heart of the tire. it radiates to the upper layers. This technical situation is the best, most thermally stable, and which guarantees the permanence of the tire in its ideal window of use, the maximum level of grip, and the minimum degradation.
On the contrary, sliding causes only superficial overheating of the rubber, with a heat that does not reach the heart of the tire, leading to a thermally much less stable situation and therefore more difficult to control. In this case, the rubber undergoes many more thermal cycles, in addition to the obvious greater wear of the tread due to slipping on the asphalt and all this produces significantly greater degradation.
In all this, however, during the season we have never seen Verstappen really go into crisis with the tires due to the lack of load, indeed the only race where he suffered collapses was the Austrian Grand Prix where the RB18 carried on the track one of the highest levels of vertical load. We therefore asked ourselves how this was possible and the answer we found lies in a measured and meticulously prepared driving technique by the driver and team. Observing the telemetry data, the onboards and listening to the radio teams, we understood that there is a great deal of preparation on the driving style by the reigning World Champion. First of all, an engineer assured us that even from the telemetry data available to the teams, it emerges that Verstappen has a sensitivity above the norm in “slippery” conditions and this gives him a remarkable innate ability to manage the limit of the car. This allows him first of all to bring the exact speed that allows the tire to generate energy but not to slip. In practice, Verstappen manages to slow down when cornering exactly as required by the lower aerodynamic load of his car, remaining fast but without exceeding in the least and causing slippage. It may seem like a "trivial" thing but being able to drive so perfectly at the limit requires an absolutely first level level of sensitivity and concentration, which only the Dutchman can guarantee with continuity to the team. Not only this, however, it has emerged from our research that if we consider the three phases of the curve, entry, distance and exit, looking at the data it is possible to find who is able to correctly energize the tires, that is, in the entry and travel phase, and who, on the other hand, has to manage the temperatures as best he can, ending up sliding the car out of corners, perhaps opening the throttle but maintaining a still pronounced steering angle and thus causing the front tires to slip. Also in this we noticed a maniacal attention by Verstappen and the RedBull: the Dutchman's curve setting, in fact, is constantly trying to charge the front axle with energy when entering and driving, while from the middle of the curve in then the attitude changes completely, with the rider opening the steering angle in traction by controlling it millimetrically precisely to keep the sliding of the front axle under control.
It is not just the rider's initiative: this is also constantly monitored by the pit wall, so much so that the Verstappen track engineer often talks on the subject with his rider during the race, referring to the sliding of the front as a parameter below. continuous control. This denotes the level of attention to the thing in the RedBull house.
That's not all: we also noticed an interesting last technical step in Verstappen's driving, which also emerged in the last race in Hungary. Many times we have found a particular driving style in some curves by the World Champion who in the jargon is defined as "V", with the driver extending the braking phase up to the middle of the curve, with a sharp corner trajectory that brings a low speed to the chord point but a high speed in the entry and exit phases. This technique is not just a matter of pure driving style, but it is a huge aid to the transfer of energy to the front axle even in conditions of lack of aerodynamic load. When the driver goes on the brake, in fact, the front is charged with the dynamic mass of the car due to inertia and this generates a load that we can consider "fictitious" on the front axle. Verstappen extends this phase, also imparting significant steering angles, precisely to transfer energy correctly to the tires, using the “dummy” load when braking instead of the aerodynamic one when traveling. All this attention to the front in particular also derives from the fact that the new Pirelli tires, brought to this first season by the new regulations, proved to be weak right at the front, with generalized understeer problems for all the teams. RedBull therefore had to develop an attitude and driving management technique that minimized a problem that, with the lowest level of load, could become exponentially disruptive. How much everything that has been explained above is literally conducted on a razor's edge was seen in the Austrian Grand Prix, when the RB18 lost its dynamic and aerodynamic balance in the first phase of the race and immediately produced wear. abnormal tires.
In conclusion, the findings testify that the pilot element can still make a difference with these new cars, which are so complex to drive. Red Bull, thanks to Verstappen, manages to bring to the track, in addition to the coolness and speed of the reigning World Champion, also a driving technique that manages to maximize the performance of the car even in those areas where it does not excel. A truly meticulously calibrated work that can only generate admiration for both the team and the driver.
