2024 Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[AR3-GP]

Looking at the telemetry on F1-tempo, Max' engine seemed to be tuned down a bit more than Norris'. Their fast laps had similar trace on the straights, while in the race sim, Max lost a few tenths.

Overall Norris seemed faster still, and the Ferraris as well, but the gap so far is less then what I had expected.

FP1 is daylight session. It's not representative.

[ME4ME]

Feel like Red Bull got caught napping in Baku. They should have officially protested the Mclaren and got them DSQ.

[Watto]

i use common sense

Common sense I tend to think they are flouting the rules. But I think almost ever successful team does it. Red Bull back in the days were the masters of flexing wings and making it comply with any test, even if peak loads were well above it.

The changing of blown diffuser rules.Exhaust locations. Then the hold and cold blown diffusers, Merc with DAS. Various teams with variations of holes in the front wing running through the cockpit where the driver was required at times to cover the hold iirc was about stalling the rear wing? There were iirc rules about mechanical methods to make that work they got around it saying it was for driver cooling.


I do think the FIA perhaps picks and chooses when it wants to clamp down on such things.Where they pass every test but maybe not the intent of the test. I am very skeptical of the excuse it would take too long to have teams comply. I think if teams had to they could do it very very quickly - lose the advantage it provided but still pass every test etc.

mclaren have been forced to change the rearwing after redbull lauched a complaint,so i was right

The statement did read what I said too though it passed all tests and was deemed legal. If it was black and white they would’ve been dsq from Baku’s results Mercedes was disqualified for the wing gap when closed bring 1mm too big


The FIA have merely added clarification -and as I said too it feels as though too much at time. The fia picks and chooses when to close loopholes. This one they’ve cleaned up so from now will be illegal if doneagain

[venkyhere]

Lando Norris discussing a team/driver not optimising their results. How ironic.

Someone needs to have a look in their own back garden on that one first rather than looking over the fence first at others

Lando is talking as if he is fighting for the WCC but not the WDC. In Baku, Lando gained three more points than Max and was all smiles after the race. Where is his killer instinct? In my opinion, it was damage control from Max and disappointment on Lando's side. You don't catch Max with that three-point difference in other races.

To be fair to Lando, the damage was done on Saturday and he was quite stressed/disappointed after qualy.
Gaining 3 points after that starting position was not something to be sad about.

In my opinion, that's the wrong way to look at the 3-point gap that resulted.

Going into Qualifying, through Q1, Verstappen(& the team) knew that he had a bad car and that they had goofed up a settings change. The car would anyway be bad in the race, irrespective of Qualifying position.

Norris was out of Q1, purely out of his volition (or the team sending him on used S instead of fresh S - whatever) , but there was nothing wrong with the car. With that 2km straight, and a low drag setup, Norris could almost overtake 1 car every lap in his first stint, and that's exactly what he did.

So , overall, on balance, the 'position gap' between P6 and P15 was nullified in the first stint itself, which is what we all expected. In that case, driving a slower car that was made even worse, losing just 3 points to Norris, was a relief for Verstappen. That's how I look at it.

To lend some perspective,
WDC point gap b/w Verstappen and Norris, after 5 races (before Mclaren became fastest car) : 47 (=102-55)
WDC point gap b/w Verstappen and Norris, after 17 races (before Singapore when Redbull's become much slower) : 59 (=313-254)
That's a nett gain of 12 points in 12 races for Verstappen despite having the slower car.
So the WDC picture isn't as bad as it's made out to be, as far as Redbull/Verstappen are concerned.

WCC, well that's gone from Redbull.

[AR3-GP]

Ver doesn't have any specific complaint about the balance. There's not anything especially wrong. It just lacks downforce.

[Sergej]

still convinced it won't be "as bad as expected" ?

[AR3-GP]

After the session, Marko said that their Austin upgrade should bring them back on winning ways. Based on the numbers, it will add a lot of downforce without losing ground elsewhere.

Today, most of their time lose came from the 90° corners in sector 2, which he expects to be reduced with some setup adjustments.

all the recent failed upgrades were "based on the numbers", so promising words but I'll keep my hopes at bay till Austin sunday evening

Wise

[venkyhere]

still convinced it won't be "as bad as expected" ?

I just looked at FP2 timesheet (didn't watch) and the laptime on S (I guess it would be on S as they have to do quali sims in FP2) look totally bad. 1.2 seconds from P1. Even if half of it is engine mode sandbag it's still a mega gap. What were the two drivers' complaints like ? understeer or kerbs ? or both ?

[Paa]

So Red Bull's best hope is Lando finishing 3rd somehow, to limit the damage. (Ferrari 1-2s or Piastri leading with Leclerc behind).

Norris not winning is actually a bigger gain for Max, than to heroically get a P5 vs a P8.
As evil/funny/strange it sounds they might need to optimize their strategy on helping Piastri/Leclerc, than to gain like 1 position for Max.

[pantherxxx]

Red Bull's race pace on hards looked good.

[Sergej]

still convinced it won't be "as bad as expected" ?

I just looked at FP2 timesheet (didn't watch) and the laptime on S (I guess it would be on S as they have to do quali sims in FP2) look totally bad. 1.2 seconds from P1. Even if half of it is engine mode sandbag it's still a mega gap. What were the two drivers' complaints like ? understeer or kerbs ? or both ?

Max didn't complain about balance, he said he simply lacked grip; I didn't pay much attention to his "fast" lap but I guess he did some mistake/had some trouble, Perez is "only" 8 tenths off; he tried a second attempt and was improving S1 and S2 but then aborted

the positive is that Mercedes seems nowhere so maybe a P5 is doable for Max, then we have to hope Leclerc can block Lando from winning.

[Vettel165]

We need to survive Singapore and then good things might come after Austin. I would go fully on a qualy setup in this race, who cares about race pace. Track position is the key here.

[Juzh]

still convinced it won't be "as bad as expected" ?

I just looked at FP2 timesheet (didn't watch) and the laptime on S (I guess it would be on S as they have to do quali sims in FP2) look totally bad. 1.2 seconds from P1. Even if half of it is engine mode sandbag it's still a mega gap. What were the two drivers' complaints like ? understeer or kerbs ? or both ?

Max didn't complain about balance, he said he simply lacked grip; I didn't pay much attention to his "fast" lap but I guess he did some mistake/had some trouble, Perez is "only" 8 tenths off; he tried a second attempt and was improving S1 and S2 but then aborted

Car's just too slow. At no point in fp2 did it look remotely competitive. Complaints from both drivers about many things. Even P5 will be a struggle. Lec and Nor are clearly 2 steps above everyone else, then Sai and Pia.

[Paa]

Based on FP2 long-runs, Red Bull is again not in sync with other teams regarding tyre allocation?
Or is it balanced out now with FP1 and they will have similar compounds left in the pool?

Not that it matters too much as gap to Ferrari/McLarance seems to big either way. Probably Red Bull will fight with Merc and Williams for P5.

[Jdn1327]

I just looked at FP2 timesheet (didn't watch) and the laptime on S (I guess it would be on S as they have to do quali sims in FP2) look totally bad. 1.2 seconds from P1. Even if half of it is engine mode sandbag it's still a mega gap. What were the two drivers' complaints like ? understeer or kerbs ? or both ?

Max didn't complain about balance, he said he simply lacked grip; I didn't pay much attention to his "fast" lap but I guess he did some mistake/had some trouble, Perez is "only" 8 tenths off; he tried a second attempt and was improving S1 and S2 but then aborted

Car's just too slow. At no point in fp2 did it look remotely competitive. Complaints from both drivers about many things. Even P5 will be a struggle. Lec and Nor are clearly 2 steps above everyone else, then Sai and Pia.

Max is complaining again about front end and also traction out of slow corners. We know that ferrari and mclaren are good at that but they were never so far ahead of the redbull. Seems bleak now. Let's hope they can do some solid sim work tonight and give both their drivers a good setup tomorrow.