2024 Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[AR3-GP]

So it seems Red Bull will need that aggressive in-season development, in which they are traditionally good at. But they haven't been forced to do that during past 1-2 years, so they might be a bit unprepared/surprised?

Any info on their next planned packages?

It will take miracle work to out develop Mclaren. They have more windtunnel and cfd hours. The ATR system was not thought out fully. What does Mclaren still need extra allocation for?

https://i.postimg.cc/zXpdKHhf/image.png

An "ATR" period is roughly 8-9 weeks (~2 months each). There are 6 of them in a year. That is 144 additional windtunnel runs and ~1000 additional CFD items in a 6-month period. It's absurd to keep such an advantage now that there is hardly any margin between the two teams. The sliding scale should push teams to close up (even if it is artificial and BOP at heart) and then cease to exist as soon as they have caught up. The cost cap was put in place to balance resources. The current situation is paradoxical.

In any case, I would expect the next upgrade of any significance near the British GP. That is based on historical precedent.

The sliding scale would be a continous sorting process. No point in fiddling it because a team has closed the gap. The intent was to keep the teams bunched closer in competition. Only because Red Bull had such a massive advantage these past couple of years, that process seemed like it wasn't working. The success of that process would inevitably dethrone one team from the top, only to be dethroned by another or by the one that got dethroned. Unfortunately, Red Bull has a big gap to McLaren which shows the duration for which Red Bull enjoyed their advantage. So until Red Bull stays on top of the constructors' ranking, they would have to feel the pain of others getting larger ATR time.

More than the 2024 situation, I think start of 2025 would be a much bigger hit to Red Bull as McLaren would have had larger chunk of development time for the second half of 2024 too, that should in theory, make their car faster than Red Bull in 2025, who would still be getting lesser ATR time due to remaining ahead in 2024 WCC. But that's the objective of sliding scale! Rotating the teams at the top. Unless RBR has much better ideas than McLaren to develop their car with lesser ATR, they would start 2nd of 3rd best car in 2025. I have a feeling that 2025, the last year of the regulations, might just be another 2021. If Mercedes can sort themselves out through this year, they would have the largest ATR time of anyone and if miraculously come with a car that can fight amongst the top, we have a 4 way battle.

The idea that the championship winner should rotate like chickens in a rotisserie oven makes a mockery of the sport. There doesn't have to be 7 different teams winning the championship in the next 7 seasons.

Mclaren's current upgrades were completed months ago. The benefit of that extra time in this first 6 months of the year hasn't even shown itself yet. This is a frightening thought considering that they are already matching Red Bull. F1 never could have predicted Mclaren's wayward trajectory so it's possibly going to prove to be an unintended outcome of the ATR that slipped through the cracks.  No one would want Red bull at it's current pace to have that additional time even if they hadn't won the championships last year. It follows logically that it should be frightening that Mclaren has those extra hours with their current pace. I don't understand why so many people underestimate or otherwise downplay Mclaren.

[PlatinumZealot]

Max is not out of reach for the other young guns that's for sure. The McLaren is coming from behind remember. It's not like it leapfrogged the RedBull. It never did. There is data showing the RB is able to pull highest peak G-force in the corners. With the Mclaren having better traction out of corners. So McLaren is not better in the corners and it's also slower on the straights... And yet still Lando is showing quite well against Max.

what a load of bull
Mclaren was faster or at the very least equal-fast than RB on straights in quali and race - fact. Saying it wasnt is ignorant. f1tempo and mini-sectors from the race confirm this.
Mclaren was a better car on hard tyres and worse on meds - fact. Hard tyre was used for 2/3 the race.
As I already said in race thread, just because a car can pull a few kmh on another car in one corner doesnt make it automatically better. Leclerc had even higher mid-speed in T9, yet i dont see anyone saying ferrari was the best car in imola.

I'm sure you'll comfortably ignore these arguments and manufacture some bonkers theory how Verstappen barely won in a car seconds faster than opposition.

Please dont let let tame out the Marko quotes!

RedBull faster on the medium compund by far.
They simply got the setup window wrong on the hards. Max did well to keep things in shape. But my point is that Lando is arguably on the same level. Lets just see how the cars and the season develops.

[Emag]

Yeah, Max was really fast on the mediums. Not a "devastating" gap like it has been at some races this year, but still it was somewhat significant. At the end of the stint Ferrari was better, but they arguably have the best tire management on the grid this year. Combined with the slightly more loaded DF levels, it is not that surprising. At the middle of that medium stint though, Max's gap was relatively big to both Lando and Charles.

[Mcl_G10]

But surely if redbull had made adjustments to the car to suit the hards better they would have sacrificed pace on the mediums? Altering how much the car generates heat into 1 tyre will affect the other?

[ringo]

So now Mclaren is the fastest car because Lando looks faster than Max?
How do people know what is car snd what is driver?
Anyhow its just RB20 having an off weekend on setup. Proof is Perez. He was so fsr behind because of heavy fuel and the same jard tyre problem. Max was on low fuel when he bad the tyre temp window issue. Naturally Perez would suffer more with more fuel in the car.
Dominant cars are allowed to have off days and tyre temp issues. We have seen it many times in the past with the mercedes cars having bogey tracks or bad setup direction weekends. It doesnt make the next closest team who benefited the fastest car of the season.
The status quo will resume as soon as next next two races. Max and Perez one two coming up! Redbull will understand the issues and correct. Norris will be asking for more 20 more laps instead of 1.

[Vanja #66]

But surely if redbull had made adjustments to the car to suit the hards better they would have sacrificed pace on the mediums? Altering how much the car generates heat into 1 tyre will affect the other?

Not really if the team does the job well, as Norris demonstrated. First he also felt poor balance on Hards, but after making a lot of changes from cockpit to "kill the fronts" he found better balance and managed to catch up

[Sieper]

So now Mclaren is the fastest car because Lando looks faster than Max?
How do people know what is car snd what is driver?
Anyhow its just RB20 having an off weekend on setup. Proof is Perez. He was so fsr behind because of heavy fuel and the same jard tyre problem. Max was on low fuel when he bad the tyre temp window issue. Naturally Perez would suffer more with more fuel in the car.
Dominant cars are allowed to have off days and tyre temp issues. We have seen it many times in the past with the mercedes cars having bogey tracks or bad setup direction weekends. It doesnt make the next closest team who benefited the fastest car of the season.
The status quo will resume as soon as next next two races. Max and Perez one two coming up! Redbull will understand the issues and correct. Norris will be asking for more 20 more laps instead of 1.

Max took pole and win. That looks quite fast to me. Even in a weekend where they didn’t get it all right as you say and I agree. McLaren is now very close, perhaps had the faster car at Imola. Perez not getting in to Q3 is a clear sign that the car wasn’t quite there. I too think that Redbull still has the best car overall, but we will see. Not the next race,mand Canada wasn’t a strong track last year, but after that.

[marcel171281]

Come on guys, If the RB has setup issues and the McLaren is at its peak, the RB is under pressure. If the RB is setup right, has the tyres in the correct window, the McLaren is no where near the RB. Look at China. And that was also after the McLaren update.

So if the RB has a bad weekend they win. If they have a good weekend they swipe the floor with the opposition.

[FittingMechanics]

Come on guys, If the RB has setup issues and the McLaren is at its peak, the RB is under pressure. If the RB is setup right, has the tyres in the correct window, the McLaren is no where near the RB. Look at China. And that was also after the McLaren update.

So if the RB has a bad weekend they win. If they have a good weekend they swipe the floor with the opposition.

McLaren had no update in China. It was brought in Miami, Lando got the full update, Oscar got about half of it.

[SirBastianVettel]

Come on guys, If the RB has setup issues and the McLaren is at its peak, the RB is under pressure. If the RB is setup right, has the tyres in the correct window, the McLaren is no where near the RB. Look at China. And that was also after the McLaren update.

So if the RB has a bad weekend they win. If they have a good weekend they swipe the floor with the opposition.

This is probably the most realistic take, but nobody wants to hear it.

[Curbstone]

But still, more CFD and WT is an advantage, an advantage Mclaren has over Red Bull which should not be trivalized.

And yes, there is a problem for Red Bull. Either their car has become more difficult to setup, or the competition is starting to catch up at a fast pace. EIther way, it's a bit early in the season to not be concerned about that. It should be resolved, if not the championships for this and next year are at risk.

Pinning everything on ATR and saying it has a small, but non-critical effect are two different things :) Every weekend teams are chasing 5-6 tenths with optimal setup, while biggest upgrades alone bring 3-4 tenths at best (among best teams). At the top right now, in my view, teams are chasing such fine margins that being on a slightly off setup path can mean losing half a second compared to competition.

Just as I have no doubt RB20 could have been set up a bit better in Australia and won (without Max' brake issue, of course) I have no doubt a bigger margin was there to find for Red Bull in Q and on Hards in Imola. Norris was better than Max on Hards because Max' car dropped those tyres bellow the window and started understeering, according to the team. Let's not forget how big of a margin they had in China, where Max also wasn't quite happy with the car, that was just 2 races ago

I'm lost in what point you're trying to make in your first paragraph, I'm not even sure you're replying to my post. But i'll just leave at that.

[Curbstone]

Come on guys, If the RB has setup issues and the McLaren is at its peak, the RB is under pressure. If the RB is setup right, has the tyres in the correct window, the McLaren is no where near the RB. Look at China. And that was also after the McLaren update.

So if the RB has a bad weekend they win. If they have a good weekend they swipe the floor with the opposition.

This is probably the most realistic take, but nobody wants to hear it.

That because in it's not a realistic take since Mclaren didn't have the upgrade in China, but Miami.
Also, Red Bull had quite some 'bad' weekends already, 3 out of 7 races. So the 'If the RB is setup right' seems to be a big IF. And you know what Max says about IFs
And since the upgrades of Mclaren, every bad weekend resulted in a loss or a narrow win. Looking at what we came from, that not a really positive development.

[Sergej]

I am led to think too that it's more a problem of not nailing the correct setup rather than other having closed the gap completely (although they surely got closer to RB),

BUT, a part from the fact that we need to confirm this in next races (and the next two can prove to be outlier as well), problem is that out of seven races so far RB had problems in finding the right setup in at least three of them (AUS, USA, ITA), so it can well be that RB20 is inherently a difficult car to setup, and this of course affects the evaluation of the car strength. I think we need more races to have a clear idea.

[Cs98]

Come on guys, If the RB has setup issues and the McLaren is at its peak, the RB is under pressure. If the RB is setup right, has the tyres in the correct window, the McLaren is no where near the RB. Look at China. And that was also after the McLaren update.

So if the RB has a bad weekend they win. If they have a good weekend they swipe the floor with the opposition.

China was before the update. Two weekends in a row is a bit coincidental for it to be just a fluke. I suspect Monaco and Canada will be highly competitive too. Maybe the RB will retain an advantage on more traditional tracks that work the tyres harder, but that is merely speculation at this point.

[FittingMechanics]

It is easy to balance the car if you are dominant. You just drop some performance and balance it out. When you are challenged, that is where you have to take compromises and drive a car that prioritizes performance over balance.

I wouldn't be surprised that this is happening. The gap is smaller so they can't just dial the problems out.