jumpingfish wrote: ↑03 Jan 2024, 16:23
But to beat the RB20, the 676 must save its tires and be 1s faster than the SF23 during the race, otherwise there will be no titles fight.
It seems a lot of people stopped watching this season early, which I can't blame them for in all honesty. Ferrari from Belgium onwards had relatively okay tyre deg. They ran into another issue where as the compound got harder they dropped off massively, even more than they did in 2022. Circuits where they were worse off after Belgim were where they just geniunely lacked pace, mainly because the SF-23 lacked downforce. There were some stints where we Ferrari matched Red Bull over a single stint, particularly post Japan, on the softer race tyre.
Red Bull was extremely overweight at the start of this reg cycle. They startd 20kg overweight, whilst keeping up with Ferrari. They ended the season 12kg overweight. Already then were they extremely dominant. I personally feel like the RB19 gained most of its time by losing all of this weight. The gap between them and Ferrari was exacerbated by the raising of the floor edges, which they seemed to have a much better understanding of, Ferrair under estimated the importance of.
I personally feel like people are over estimating RB potential gains over the winter. I honestly don't see any of the top 6 teams gaining anywhere near a second over last season. If a team does, it will be a backmarker that does so. Red Bull are clsoer to the performance ceiling than anyone else, that is not to say they already at the limit but much closer to it than other, otherwise they wouldn't have been so much quicker. Just by that logic do I feel they have less to gain over the winter.
My prediction would be around six-ish tenths in race trim will bring teams on par with Red Bull. I still think over the course of a season they'll be the overwhelming favourites.
It is not only Red Bll trying to improve the RB19 but also other teams looking at ways they can improve it, and employ those learnings onto their 2024 cars.