2025 Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[Henk_v]

As far as I understand Ford isn't delivering the ICE, that's RBPT ... and RB poached a lot of clever minds for that project (from MB, Fer). Ford at least started off as a electrifying partner, which is gonna be a large part of the power next year.
So as to the ICE I'm not really worried, it's rather the ERS and mapping where they might be on the backfoot to the big OEM's.
But who knows ...

I thought RBR made several poachings from Honda itself, for their RBPT project - both ICE and electrical side. I don't remember the details, but the 'takeaway' from reading news items from a few years ago was that the 'core' of the RBPT is ex-Honda engineers, and the poachings from Mercedes were fill-ins. Subject to correction, of course.

Yeah .. you could be right, as you said it was all a while back and we don't know about movement afterwards the initial startup.
But all in all, it's not a bunch of hobby enthusiasts that's building up the ICE.

Even at the time they signed Ford it was clear Ford was not going to make any fundamental contribution. And Ford might not be too thrilled to develop IP not road relevant. It's likely they will help with some power electronics stuff.

And they might leverage their buying power in their supply chain to get RBPT what they need which is common practice in such cases.

[Bill]

do you guys ever listen or read ,Horner has said ford are also helping with ice because they have so much knowledge an good infrastructure .initially they were supposed to focus on electrical part only.

[venkyhere]

car is awful, what a surprise

Exactly as predicted tbh.

Despite being a lost cause, analyzing :
a. losing 1.5 tenths through T2
b. losing almost nothing through T3-T4
c. losing 3.5 tenths through T5-T6-T7
d. losing only 0.5 tenths through T8-T9-T10-T11
e. losing 5 tenths through T12-T13-T14
f. losing 2 tenth through lower engine mode

The terrible - even without looking at onboards, just looking at track layout, a,c,e show how terrible the understeer in long radius corners is, when high steering angle has to be held for long duration.
The not so terrible - surprised by d, tells me the car isn't suffering when the steering angle has to be lesser.

What is the root cause of all this - whenever the car has to 'grip' for a long duration with reasonable slip angle, the % contribution by mechanical grip is pathetically poor. The car almost entirely relies on aero grip, and that's why it's not so bad in the high speed (>250kph) turns with gentler slip angle requirement.
Even if they manage to magically fix the car overnight, the baked-in-weakness in the fundamental mechanical design cannot get rid of a,c,e - can only reduce the size of the hit taken. In other words, no matter what magic fixes happen, this car won't qualify quicker than 0.7-0.8s off the McLarens, on this track.

Which shouldn't be a surprise. Those of us who have some vague insight into the basic nature of the RB20 & RB21, already know this. This track doesn't have enough high speed corners or straights, to balance out the time deltas a bit and mask the disadvantage, hence 'maximum exposure' of the weakness.