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Red Bull was not more aero efficient than Ferrari in 2022. They were less draggy. Look up their relative pace at Barcelona. That’s your typical aero efficiency track. It was not even close neither over one lap nor on race pace. Of course everything changed after Spa. On some tracks where drag was a bit more important than sheer efficiency which is downforce/drag ratio, Red Bull were closer and could fight. We saw that in Miami and Jeddah. But already at Paul Richard much later in the year, Ferrari was again comfortably faster.AR3-GP wrote: ↑09 Mar 2026, 07:47Everyone is assuming that Ferrari's PU is massively underpowered or missing something, but more downforce means more drag. Drag is penalized heavily in this energy efficiency formula. Teams have to select the correct trade offs.
In 2017-2021, the Mercedes was significantly more efficient with their low rake concept. It meant they could carry less fuel (weight), and won more on the straights than they lost in the corners. Ferrari and Red Bull tended to pursue rake and downforce, at the expense of straight line speed and efficiency. Mercedes practically won all the championships from 2017-2021 with their efficiency.
It was similar in the first half of 2022. Ferrari had more downforce, but Red Bull was more aero efficient. I think efficiency along with good downforce is rewarded more in this hybrid formula.
https://x.com/RosarioGiuliana/status/20 ... 2661555443From the information learned during the development of the W17, the Brackley engineers would have had an intuition similar to that of Ferrari regarding the wing in front of the exhaust (FTM), the idea would then have been discarded due to design issues related to the gearbox and the position of the differential.
https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/for ... -wm-kampf/In the first practice session for the Australian GP, Russell and Antonelli were nowhere. Seventh and eighth place, more than a second behind.
This had nothing to do with voluntary restraint. Both drivers complained of severe understeer. This sounds banal, but in the new hybrid era it is a double handicap: each problem is punished twice. When the car slides, it loses speed, boost pressure and energy. Correcting everything takes energy.
George Russell on the performance of the new cars: "We're sort of just understeering a lot around these corners. So I'm sure the FIA are going to have to improve that a little bit because it was a bit sketchy."
Yeah, I have no idea where the "George can't manage tyres" thing came from, considering some of his most spectacular drives were him being the only one brave enough to pull off a one-stop where no one else could.nitrotech wrote: ↑08 Mar 2026, 08:00The tiring comments in the past that George cannot manage tyres were so tiring to hear, despite knowing he had an inconsistent car for all those ground effects era. Everytime the car was there to hold up, he has gone on to win, just like today where he had a long stint on hards and was the first one to say, we can do 1 stop. I would like to see Mercedes bringing stronger upgrades and George to dominate the season. It was really tiring to see all the hate towards George, as if other drivers are all saints. I don't have personal affiliation to the drivers, but it's annoying when you see such posts here.
Can you please share the data? Let's try to dissect by adding context to it and see how it goes. I think that's the objective of this site and would be fun.avantman wrote: ↑10 Mar 2026, 09:43The idea came from data analysis . Even last year he occasionally was inferior than his rookie teammate in that area. Jeddah, Vegas, Brazil - just the first what came to ind, there probably were other. In 2024 and 2023 he often looked weaker than Hamilton. Even in Spa 2024 he did not look great at all on tire management against Lewis. His pace dropped off significantly in the end of the first stint where Hamilton was lapping faster. In fact the fact he was so slow and had no chance for decent result (where Lewis was on his way to comfy victory)forced him to try to gamble and switch to 1 stopper, where it was clearly never the plan.
