venkyhere wrote: ↑25 Jun 2024, 06:36
organic wrote: ↑24 Jun 2024, 23:20
I think their solution to low speed performance ended up giving up any gains in curbing performance. But the extent to which the curbing performance has dropped is far more than they expected with the rb20. So the tradeoff that is on the car isn't what was expected.
I think they expected for the curb riding to be similar to the rb19 which wasn't amazing but not terrible
Of course it's a given that they design the car with tradeoffs
(ultimately F1 is an engg design/manufacturing contest, with a plethora of opposing constraints).
But I have a feeling that the initial RB20 was giving up on kerbs, only as far as they expected it to, in exchange for low speed gains. Clue : the ugly kerb in the middle of T22-23-24 in Jeddah => the RB20 was fine through there, in fact, it was one of the strongest cars through the braking for 22, rotation, straightening to go over the 23 kerb, then powering out through 24.
I think the Japan update could be the one that has made it worse. Slowly but surely, what Alisson said about the RB20's Japan upgrade "it's a downgrade" that many of us (including me) pooh-poohed as 'just fighting talk' might actually turn out to be true. I wouldn't be surprised if after Austria (where a podium for VER would be a mega achievement) the media around F1 revisits Alisson's statement and builds a narrative "Newey gone, car gone".
The Japan update happened, then China happened. This is confirmation that it worked to some degree.
I think that the big problem is still the RB20 suspension. The excessive and uncorrelated stiffness was exposed in Imola and Monaco. There have been references to the problem in the races over the radio. After Imola, he said he had back pain. In Monaco, he said it was jumping like a kangaroo. No other car was jumping like a kangaroo in Monaco. In Canada, Max said something interesting on lap 48, as if the ride became suddenly much worse during the race, as the fuel load burned off:
Verstappen The ride is very, very bad. It’s like a locked suspension again.
Lambiase Understood.
"like a locked suspension, again"
Verstappen did a "secret" test in Imola with the RB18 last week. Red Bull installed "camera targets" on the front pullrod to look for deflection. They are trying understand why the suspension behavior does not correlate with the simulations. Verstappen talks about a "locked suspension". They don't know why the "ride" of the car does not match simulation.
This points to the RB20 suspension being flawed. There is now an excessive and uncorrelated stiffness that gives the RB20 high tire degradation and makes the car slip over every bump and curb on every circuit. The Silverstone upgrades are aerodynamic. They will not fix this issue.
A lion must kill its prey.