2018 Aston Martin Red Bull Racing - Tag Heuer (Renault)

[roon]

If the car carries X degrees of rake & Y degrees of angle of attack on the wing, the total angle of incidence that the freestream air "sees" when it hits the rear wing is X+Y degrees. If your rake is significantly higher to make your aero work, trimming the wings a little will not help your cause a lot.

High rake cars usually not much more than 3*. There is likely enough mounting freedom upon the RW endplates to optimize RW AoA, separate from the other wing parameters.

[FPV GTHO]

I saw the comments by Cristian Horner regarding the Renault power deficit compared to Ferrari and Mercedes but I don't fully agree with him. He said:
"If you look at the rear wings on the cars, we're running Spa levels of downforce [at Silverstone] and everybody else is running that bit more.
"In qualifying I think every single corner we were quicker than Sebastian, but we just hose time down the straights."

Isn't it strange that you have less downforce and still can be faster on the turns? I think it's looking like McLaren last year. They were thinking they had the best car and a --- engine but it was not true in the end.

Ok, the Red Bulls might be using a small rear wing, but the fact they are so fast turning says to me that, somehow they must have more downforce, and consequently more drag.

I would put it to the aggressive rake they use.

RB ran like half the wing level compared to merc and ferrari, which more than makes up for any supposedly draggy elements they might carry. Ferrari is also running tons of rake, yet it also ran massive amounts of wing in silverstone (double whammy in terms of drag), yet was still able to top speed traps.

Silverstone exposed renault and honda for what they trully are, that is nowhere against ferrari and merc. Doubtful they will ever be able to catch them. We've been waiting for years on a meaningful convergence, but in my opinion the difference is as big as it has ever been.

On corners which are not power limited (so not T1 abbey and not T9 copse) they have indeed been faster. Not by much, but they also weren't carrying much DF on the car.

Rake on the Ferrari "looks" less than that of Red Bull. But i will concede that it "looks" more than what Mercedes carries. If the car carries X degrees of rake & Y degrees of angle of attack on the wing, the total angle of incidence that the freestream air "sees" when it hits the rear wing is X+Y degrees. If your rake is significantly higher to make your aero work, trimming the wings a little will not help your cause a lot.
There is no way of knowing how efficient the flow through the radiators and the internals is.
You can also see the way the bargeboards are placed on the Ferrari and the Red Bull, with the latter being a lot more curved compared to the Ferrari's. I am not for a second denying that Renault is underpowered, i am implying that Red bull's aero philosophy is just as draggy. Combine these two and you end up with an unholy compromise on all the power sensitive tracks. Red Bull should start quoting their drag coefficients if they make up power deficit numbers to their competitors.
Ferrari's aero philosophy has changed significantly from last year and you could see from the beginning of the year that their low drag philosophy was paying off even when their engine was clearly #2.
Horner's whining does absolutely nothing other than fill columns on websites.

It is not as simple as saying rake angle plus wing angle equals true wing angle. First of all one degree of rake doesnt equal one degree of wing angle in regards to lift/drag ratio. It will further change car to car. Secondly, Red Bull arent merely trimming their wing angles, theyre bringing completely new wings with shorter chord lengths

[Edax]

Redbull was also slow off low speed corners which indicates bad drivability and hence lesser speed on the straights. It might just be the engine because Mclaren suffer similarly but I'm not counting aero out.

There is something funny going on with the RB aero. Last 5 races or so races Ric was maxed out on FW. So much that he broke the two elements, by putting them against their end stop. So far VES is able to make the low down force configuration work. He is consistently faster than RIC, yet he has had had a few occasions where he lost the car completely.

My guess is that the RB does produce a large amount of downforce from the floor, but the downforce is inconsistent. That Ric remedies this by adding extra downforce as an insurance policy and VES tries to drive around it.

[Manfer]

RB ran like half the wing level compared to merc and ferrari, which more than makes up for any supposedly draggy elements they might carry. Ferrari is also running tons of rake, yet it also ran massive amounts of wing in silverstone (double whammy in terms of drag), yet was still able to top speed traps.

Silverstone exposed renault and honda for what they trully are, that is nowhere against ferrari and merc. Doubtful they will ever be able to catch them. We've been waiting for years on a meaningful convergence, but in my opinion the difference is as big as it has ever been.

On corners which are not power limited (so not T1 abbey and not T9 copse) they have indeed been faster. Not by much, but they also weren't carrying much DF on the car.

Rake on the Ferrari "looks" less than that of Red Bull. But i will concede that it "looks" more than what Mercedes carries. If the car carries X degrees of rake & Y degrees of angle of attack on the wing, the total angle of incidence that the freestream air "sees" when it hits the rear wing is X+Y degrees. If your rake is significantly higher to make your aero work, trimming the wings a little will not help your cause a lot.
There is no way of knowing how efficient the flow through the radiators and the internals is.
You can also see the way the bargeboards are placed on the Ferrari and the Red Bull, with the latter being a lot more curved compared to the Ferrari's. I am not for a second denying that Renault is underpowered, i am implying that Red bull's aero philosophy is just as draggy. Combine these two and you end up with an unholy compromise on all the power sensitive tracks. Red Bull should start quoting their drag coefficients if they make up power deficit numbers to their competitors.
Ferrari's aero philosophy has changed significantly from last year and you could see from the beginning of the year that their low drag philosophy was paying off even when their engine was clearly #2.
Horner's whining does absolutely nothing other than fill columns on websites.

It is not as simple as saying rake angle plus wing angle equals true wing angle. First of all one degree of rake doesnt equal one degree of wing angle in regards to lift/drag ratio. It will further change car to car. Secondly, Red Bull arent merely trimming their wing angles, theyre bringing completely new wings with shorter chord lengths

Well they have not specialized wings for Silverstone alone. It's the same wings they used at Baku and will use at Spa. They were playing around with the front wing to optimize the balance. Again, what I've said above is my opinion of red bulls aero philosophy. I don't believe for a second that red bull would have made up 1 second if Renault had the same power as Ferrari/Mercedes. Silverstone would not work for red bull.
You could make this out by their comments through out the weekend. First they said they were not quick enough for qualifying and were setting up their cars for the race and finally on Sunday when that unravelled they said Ferraris pace made them look slow. They neither had the pace nor tyre deg to match the front runners. I believe they were too proud to admit their philosophy doesn't work at high speed tracks and Silverstone being their home track, they kicked Renault in the sack every chance they got.

[M840TR]

Redbull was also slow off low speed corners which indicates bad drivability and hence lesser speed on the straights. It might just be the engine because Mclaren suffer similarly but I'm not counting aero out.

There is something funny going on with the RB aero. Last 5 races or so races Ric was maxed out on FW. So much that he broke the two elements, by putting them against their end stop. So far VES is able to make the low down force configuration work. He is consistently faster than RIC, yet he has had had a few occasions where he lost the car completely.

My guess is that the RB does produce a large amount of downforce from the floor, but the downforce is inconsistent. That Ric remedies this by adding extra downforce as an insurance policy and VES tries to drive around it.

The downforce isn't inconsistent, it's just too much. Short wheelbase and high rake benefits in circuits like Monaco but aren't drag efficient enough for spa etc. This is the reason why Ferrari went with long wheelbase this year; their car is now optimized for almost every track.
As force for the top speed figures, I still think better drivibility goes a long way to assuage the issue. If you see the Ferrari and Merc they're planted to the road on low speed corners. The Redbull, not so much.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZRwyhXIPM4

[wuzak]

The RB14 has more downforce than either of the two top cars, easily faster in the corners, but you can't do anything about the huge power deficit.

The power deficit has a simple equation (for lap time).

Engine deficit on straights = gap to front + 0.1s

At least according to Horner.

[Brenton]

There's much more to a car's drag than wing and rake. Hasn't Newey tended to make high drag high downforce cars? The RB6 was legendary for this.

At Silverstone, Max said that he could use an extra 70hp. Why would he say 70 if not to say to the public that Renault is an incredible 70hp down?

If Renault is as ambitious as they say they are, while still having a PU as weak as red bull says, then they might as well quit F1 now and save hundreds of millions $$$ because they're not going to come close to their goals.

[marvin78]

RedBull complained about the weak PU in all 4 championchip years.

I don't believe that a more powerful PU necessarily would make them faster. It would be another PU with other needs for packaging and components. They would need other parts. They worked with Renault for a long time and know all about it. Who says that Newey (whereas I believe that his influence is not as big as people think) can build a good car for another PU? I think there are more factors to get in to the equation..

[marmer]

RedBull complained about the weak PU in all 4 championchip years.

I don't believe that a more powerful PU necessarily would make them faster. It would be another PU with other needs for packaging and components. They would need other parts. They worked with Renault for a long time and know all about it. Who says that Newey (whereas I believe that his influence is not as big as people think) can build a good car for another PU? I think there are more factors to get in to the equation..

I think the switch to honda is to allow newey more room to manover

McLaren pushed for size zero engine from honda. The engine never got good enough under McLaren
McLaren switch to Renault and suddenly loose chassis performance

Toro rosso looked to have gained performance in chassis

Red bull will know all about the honda by now and might be able to see even with a power disadvantage the aero improvement will outweigh the loss.

Since the new regs came in red bull on power tracks has always run skinny rear wings to try and get around the power problem so are fairly good at it now and must have a seriously good amount of natural mechanical grip from the car

[Vanja #66]

Red Bull are in a frightening anti-Renault campaign at the moment. Fact manipulation is severe, Max is right on it, must be why Horner and Marko love him so much.

Just as a reference - Silverstone map.



When you compare race speeds from last year and this year:





And qualy speeds as well (disregard Dani Ric 2017 qualy, he had turbo failure in Q1):





You understand that every team went for more downforce this year (where the lap time comes of course) sacrificing top speed a bit. Ferrari made the biggest progress due to great work on aero efficiency and PU, but Max has clearly had more downforce/drag than Dani Ric (who had to use DRS manually in Q). Also, Max lacked DRS in the race, where this speed deficit comes from. Look where Hamilton was with top speed in race last year (without DRS) and this year 20kmh up.

Red Bull chose to go Ferrari 2017 - max downforce, sacrifice efficiency. Just like Ferrari last year - they were top dogs in Monaco (and very likely will be in Hungary and Singapore) and they struggled the most (so far) in Silverstone. It's a ctrl+c, ctrl+v really.

[godlameroso]

I think the RB14 has more chances to win, Germany, Hungary, Singapore, Suzuka, Mexico, and COTA are all tracks they can win on.

[f1316]

I’m surprised you’d say COTA and Suzuka - regardless of what side you come down on (PU or aero philosophy - or, indeed, combination of the two, which is my take) surely those two circuits are largely similar to Silverstone?

[Gustavo. Lirio]

Do you know if it's true that the RBs were able to do T1 with the DRS engaged? If it's really true than I wonder how was the balance without the DRS. Moreover, it's another indication that most of their rear downforce are generated by the under floor. That would also explain the drivers comments about being slower than Ferrari even with the DRS engaged. A smaller wing will have a smaller DRS effect.

[Godius]

Do you know if it's true that the RBs were able to do T1 with the DRS engaged? If it's really true than I wonder how was the balance without the DRS. Moreover, it's another indication that most of their rear downforce are generated by the under floor. That would also explain the drivers comments about being slower than Ferrari even with the DRS engaged. A smaller wing will have a smaller DRS effect.

I don't know for sure if the RBR's did T1 with DRS engaged in Q and R. Verstappen drove with a higher downforce RW in the FP's compared to Ricciardo. I think it was intended to be used in Q and the race as well. But Verstappen had that crash in FP3 that damaged the RW so they fitted the same RW as Ricciardo on his car which had less downforce.

[Juzh]

Do you know if it's true that the RBs were able to do T1 with the DRS engaged?

No, according to F1 app, they weren't able to do T1 with drs open.