2019 Aston Martin Red Bull Racing - Honda F1 Team

[langedweil]

That video has been posted around several topics being used as a highlight for "how good Renault is compared to Honda".. What I find interesting is down the straight, the Renault has a 2kph advantage on a car with less downforce and with a better getaway from last corner, during the mid section of the track, again, with traction issues, the Honda catches up.

If anything this highlights the performance of the Honda as opposed to the Renault pushing around a lower downforce car that had better traction on this weekend. We should consider all variables before claiming false truths..

I also don't need to bring up the whole "2 race weekends, 3 Renault failures" do I? No use being quick if all your components are used up before we even get back to Barcelona.

[etusch]

Max Verstappen: "I think we maximised the result today and it was another good point's score. To finish fourth was not too bad as we struggled with pace and rear grip, especially with the high winds. I was sliding around a lot so it was not easy and I just had to manage it, but I don't think we could have done a lot differently. I drove to the limit of the car, in Australia it was better but here it was pretty difficult. We were almost on the podium today but it would have been down to luck as we didn't have the true pace and really deserve it. Anyway, it was more unfortunate for Charles, but at least he's still on the podium and I'm not too disappointed with fourth. We still have a lot of things to learn about the car so we will go back to the factory, understand what happened here and continue to try and close the gap in China. This just wasn't our weekend."

Pierre Gasly: "It was quite a difficult race and I'm still not completely comfortable with the car. As soon as I try to push, I struggle a lot with the rear and the traction. For sure, I need to see what I can improve to get the maximum out of the car and work with the engineers to see what we can do to make me feel more confident, because at the moment I feel I cannot really push. I need to make an effort and adapt, because each car is different, and I will work with the team to find a set-up which fits my driving style better. Overall, I think there are also some positives today. After the start the car felt better, I managed to finish inside the points, and now we just need to find the areas we can improve on. We will do the work and I'll do anything I can to arrive stronger in China."

Christian Horner: "It was a tough race this evening in Bahrain in extremely windy conditions. We seem to have struggled to get the tyres to work at their optimum all weekend and we experienced the same challenge during the race today. Nonetheless, Max made a good recovery at the first corner and raced very hard, but we just didn't have the pace to go with Mercedes or Ferrari. He was unfortunate to miss out on what would have been an opportunistic podium following Charles Leclerc's bad luck but hopefully there will be more podiums to come soon. Pierre drove a solid race to score his first points for the Team, finishing eighth, and making good progress through the pack. He displayed his race craft with a couple of bold overtaking moves, which will be good for his confidence, but the Safety Car at the end prevented him from progressing further as he was rapidly closing in on the cars ahead."

from pitpass.com

[GhostF1]

That video has been posted around several topics being used as a highlight for "how good Renault is compared to Honda".. What I find interesting is down the straight, the Renault has a 2kph advantage on a car with less downforce and with a better getaway from last corner, during the mid section of the track, again, with traction issues, the Honda catches up.

If anything this highlights the performance of the Honda as opposed to the Renault pushing around a lower downforce car that had better traction on this weekend. We should consider all variables before claiming false truths..

I also don't need to bring up the whole "2 race weekends, 3 Renault failures" do I? No use being quick if all your components are used up before we even get back to Barcelona.

I’m sure no one will deny that Honda’s reliability has been top notch! And that Renault is lagging behind in that department so far in the season... In that regard Honda is doing awesome and surprising many... If Red Bull’s move to Honda was for reliability, so far it could be considered a success.

I believe the other point of the story are the comments (by Red Bull) that Honda was a more powerful engine than Renault and that it had better drivability... The results so far seem to show that might not be the case.

Red Bull beat both Haas and Mclaren by less than a tenth of a second in Qualifying... If the Honda engine is better than Renault’s, does that mean that Mclaren has built a better chassis than Red Bull?

Ultimately is very early in the season, Red Bull will surely improve and bring updates to it’s the car... The question is if they will bring more performance than the rest and if they will recover what was a very hefty gap to the midfield as they have had for the last 4 years... Today they seem uncomfortably closer to the midfield... China will provide another set of data for us to understand the different car’s potential and what their trend is for the rest of the season.


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I see where you're going with that, but again it doesn't tell the whole story. It's not just about who has the better PU or who has the better overall chassis, a lot is dependent on tyre management. This is something they struggled with for the whole weekend on the C3 tyre. Max was only marginally quicker on it than the C2 and Horner said they are having issues finding the right window for it. Regarding quali times.. Max has admitted to a mistake on the final corner, you can hear/see him take two goes at throttle application after correcting his turn in angle, he claims he lost a number of tenths there, so if we want to believe that, he's also rght up Bottas' alley. If we take Melbourne into account as well, Max was half a second clear of the next best (Haas) and a second clear of McLaren. We can see potential, Bahrain just didn't work for them.

On this weekend, I would happily agree with the statement that McLaren did a better job managing their tyres to get them into the correct windows. Much like Mercedes have had tracks where their tyre performance has been sub-par, same for Ferrari. We know they have top tier engines and chassis'. It's down to how the car is setup also, on this occasion I think it's fairly obvious they didn't do a good enough job.
I think its premature to blame Honda, their showing in Melbourne made that abundantly clear and we have an outfit who openly admit their chassis is not optimal at the moment, their claims that Honda have provided an excellent package? At this stage, I see no reason to doubt that claim.

[NL_Fer]

I don’t believe Honda is faster than Renault now. But it looks like they did advance on reliability.

Also we have seen in the past, that Renault has almost no in season development. There has not been any spec B or C that was a big and reliable step forward.

Honda will show their real potential in Canada.

[IvailoStefanovBG]

I think that while guessing how strong and powerful Honda engine is everybody misses the true point. In 2018 season after the first two races, Verstappen had 8 points, and the team combined with Ricciardo had 20. Now, after changing the engine supplier and with Gasly on board, the team has 31 points and Max is third in the rankings in front of the two Ferraries. I think its a perfect start for a new partnership and knowing the "slow" start is nothing new for Redbull I expect a very good season.

[zibby43]

I think that while guessing how strong and powerful Honda engine is everybody misses the true point. In 2018 season after the first two races, Verstappen had 8 points, and the team combined with Ricciardo had 20. Now, after changing the engine supplier and with Gasly on board, the team has 31 points and Max is third in the rankings in front of the two Ferraries. I think its a perfect start for a new partnership and knowing the "slow" start is nothing new for Redbull I expect a very good season.

True but I think Verstappen had a puncture/DNF in Bahrain in '18.

[GhostF1]

I think that while guessing how strong and powerful Honda engine is everybody misses the true point. In 2018 season after the first two races, Verstappen had 8 points, and the team combined with Ricciardo had 20. Now, after changing the engine supplier and with Gasly on board, the team has 31 points and Max is third in the rankings in front of the two Ferraries. I think its a perfect start for a new partnership and knowing the "slow" start is nothing new for Redbull I expect a very good season.

There is something interesting to note here..

Red Bull haven't stood on the podium in Australia since Vettel did in 2013.
Bahrain? Again, 2013 and Vettel won that race. They achieved 4th in 2014 and 2017, the other years has been worse.

This year has not been as bad as we assume, where everyone is after Barcelona this year (Race 5) will really give us a better indication of how everyone started this year.

[NL_Fer]

To finish first, you first need to finish.

[etusch]

I think that while guessing how strong and powerful Honda engine is everybody misses the true point. In 2018 season after the first two races, Verstappen had 8 points, and the team combined with Ricciardo had 20. Now, after changing the engine supplier and with Gasly on board, the team has 31 points and Max is third in the rankings in front of the two Ferraries. I think its a perfect start for a new partnership and knowing the "slow" start is nothing new for Redbull I expect a very good season.

You are right.
Somebodies claim that Renault has more power looking just this race. Honda has same power with Renault in worse casei f not more than them. No body said honda is more powerfull than Ferrari in first race. So stop assesment based on one race

[Marti_EF3]

It's not writing off the season, but until they bring some upgrades and try to understand how to setup the car to manage the tyre window, it will be hard for them. My expectations for China are low right now

[Wouter]

A post from an insider ( @Charles Chornley) of RB on the Autosport forum last night and this morning:

Not to make excuses but over the last few years we've been used to trimming downforce off the car to help the PU perform more effectively. Now we have a more powerful and certainly more drivable engine we have a chance to add aero performance. Which we'll be doing in race 5.
Honestly, we thought we'd be closer at this point and we're not.

@A3, on 31 Mar 2019 - 23:56, said:
Yeah sorry but I call BS. The engine was in there in winter testing. There's either a flaw in the car or the team screwed up winter testing by being arrogant.

Answer: @Charles Chornley:
Do you think you can change the aero ethos of an entire car between winter testing and the start of the season? Yes the engine power/performance was evident in Barcelona but we then had to go racing less than a month from then. Not only is there the logistic side of getting 2 fully built F1 cars plus spares to the other side of the planet but you're actually still manufacturing those parts up to the Friday before the Melbourne race weekend. As soon as we went testing we knew we needed down force on the car and since then CFD and design have been modifying our entire package. That, in turn, will be ready to run at Race 5 and hopefully then we'll be a lot closer to the front and the front won't have galloped away in to the sunset.

[etusch]

For a comparation point, here is chine result;

2018 Driver Standings
POS DRIVER CAR
1 HAM MERCEDES
2 VET FERRARI
3 RAI FERRARİ
4 VER RED BULL RACING
5 BOT MERCEDES
6 RIC RED BULL RACING
7 HUL RENAULT
8 PER FORCE INDIA MERCEDES
9 MAG HAAS FERRARI
10 SAI RENAULT
11 ALO MCLAREN RENAULT
12 OCO FORCE INDIA MERCEDES
13 LEC SAUBER FERRARI
14 GRO HAAS FERRARI
15 GAS S.TORO ROSSO HONDA
16 VAN MCLAREN RENAULT
17 ERI SAUBER FERRARI
18 STR WILLIAMS MERCEDES
19 HAR S.TORO ROSSO HONDA

[Ground Effect]

I have to give a lot of credit and admiration to Honda. They've exceeded most people's expectation. 2 races in, 4 cars and zero engine issues, plus power delivery is close to the top. Red Bull really really messed up big time. They saw the progress of Honda first hand, by spec 3, they were allegedly ahead of Renault. They kept confirming how much Honda has improved in public, but in private, they didn't seem to believe them. Why not follow through and go all out and produce a car to compliment the information and data they were given and which they saw with their own eyes? What was all this talk of Newey being motivated, this is the most expensive car we've ever made, we've recovered the lost downforce, due to 2019 rules.
If you listen to Tanabe, even though he's always modest and reserve, you can tell he's confident in what he says. Red Bull should have talked less and worked more. If you look at Renault, it's obvious they've brought more power too, but at what cost? Less reliability... Honda deserve a lot of praise.

[Quantum]

Well, I’ll take you up on that ...

0.550 seconds deficit, around an 11% shorter track.

Have to admit, close .. but not yet double
In addition .. the track is little over 2% longer (5.303m vs 5.417m), and pole took about a 10.4% longer (1:20.486 vs 1:28.886).

Front limited track up next (only one on the calendar), any bets as to what the difference will be here?
My guess is this track will be a lottery.

And my 11% shorter statement was accurate in relation to time ....you know time differential is more important than distance.
Length of track cedes to time, everytime.

[HPD]

RB goes well and Honda is faster than Renault
Renault is doing well and the renault is faster than the Honda.

Is this really the level of comments we have in a technical forum?

I would not be surprised if they kicked us out of the forum if we kept talking nonsense

When Gasly says: "As soon as I try to push, I have a lot of problems with the back and the traction."
I am not an engineer like many here, but it is logical that this makes you go like a dog. It does not matter if you have the best engine.