2023 Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[organic]

An hour ago, an RBR insider wrote the following:

There is not that much to report. Those gearbox problems in the last race were bigger than people want to let on. Power had to be cut back considerably.
There is now a solution to that. Let's see if that is indeed THE solution under race conditions.

One update in the pipeline is worth 2.5 tenths in the simulator and another even 3 tenths ( and a bit).
Together with the over 4 tenths of reduced power, that does indicate the huge task the competitors have.

Make of this what you will, from Wouterf1 @AS Forum.

Don't know about the updates, but there was a potentially a big issue with both gearboxes at the last race. Electronics issue caused downshifting issues that could have caused severe damage to the gearbox itself. PU had to be dialed back to mitigate potential damage plus drivers forced to lift before downshifts. A software patch should solve the issue.

Thank you very much as always Wazari-san!

It's important to know when the engine was turned down... If it was before qualifying then the deficit of the others is frighteningly large. If it was halfway through the race then that makes sense as we knew they seemed to turn down the engine massively as the race went on

About the developments: that seems to be more information than we normally receive about upgrades ahead of their debut. Given we are hearing about a significant step from the Baku upgrade, I would expect the 2.5 tenth upgrade to come there and the subsequent to come around Silverstone. 5-6 tenths of development may be enough to tie up both championships from where the car is now.

[Wazari]

Thank you very much as always Wazari-san!

It's important to know when the engine was turned down... If it was before qualifying then the deficit of the others is frighteningly large. If it was halfway through the race then that makes sense as we knew they seemed to turn down the engine massively as the race went on

About the developments: that seems to be more information than we normally receive about upgrades ahead of their debut. Given we are hearing about a significant step from the Baku upgrade, I would expect the 2.5 tenth upgrade to come there and the subsequent to come around Silverstone. 5-6 tenths of development may be enough to tie up both championships from where the car is now.

On lap 2-3 of race.

[organic]

Thank you very much as always Wazari-san!

It's important to know when the engine was turned down... If it was before qualifying then the deficit of the others is frighteningly large. If it was halfway through the race then that makes sense as we knew they seemed to turn down the engine massively as the race went on

On lap 2-3 of race.

Thank you once again

[chrisc90]

I thought engine modes couldn't be adjusted once the car rolls out the pits for Q1?

Scary what pace the car could have if it was running 100%.

Fingers crossed the little gremlins are ironed out quickly.

[AR3-GP]

I thought engine modes couldn't be adjusted once the car rolls out the pits for Q1?

Scary what pace the car could have if it was running 100%.

Fingers crossed the little gremlins are ironed out quickly.

They are permitted adjustments for reliability reasons, but they can't go back to a higher mode afterwards.

[organic]

I thought engine modes couldn't be adjusted once the car rolls out the pits for Q1?

Scary what pace the car could have if it was running 100%.

Fingers crossed the little gremlins are ironed out quickly.

You are allowed to lower engine modes for reliability reasons, and it has to be proven and approved by the FIA before it's allowed iirc

[chrisc90]

Ahhh, I see. Makes sense. Cheers you two!

[Cassius]

Thank you very much as always Wazari-san!

It's important to know when the engine was turned down... If it was before qualifying then the deficit of the others is frighteningly large. If it was halfway through the race then that makes sense as we knew they seemed to turn down the engine massively as the race went on

About the developments: that seems to be more information than we normally receive about upgrades ahead of their debut. Given we are hearing about a significant step from the Baku upgrade, I would expect the 2.5 tenth upgrade to come there and the subsequent to come around Silverstone. 5-6 tenths of development may be enough to tie up both championships from where the car is now.

On lap 2-3 of race.

On Max' radio I only hear going back to deployment mode 7 from lap 2 and mode 6 from lap 5. In lap 3 there is display 8 and Max starts complaining of rear locking in lap 9 after switching to strat 3. GP then proposes to go back to strat 7 which helps the situation.

I don't hear of a lower engine mode or something that effects performance. This is also something I think Max would want to have explained during the race if it suddenly came up.

[organic]

Wazari has very good knowledge of these things

[AR3-GP]

Thank you very much as always Wazari-san!

It's important to know when the engine was turned down... If it was before qualifying then the deficit of the others is frighteningly large. If it was halfway through the race then that makes sense as we knew they seemed to turn down the engine massively as the race went on

About the developments: that seems to be more information than we normally receive about upgrades ahead of their debut. Given we are hearing about a significant step from the Baku upgrade, I would expect the 2.5 tenth upgrade to come there and the subsequent to come around Silverstone. 5-6 tenths of development may be enough to tie up both championships from where the car is now.

On lap 2-3 of race.

On Max' radio I only hear going back to deployment mode 7 from lap 2 and mode 6 from lap 5. In lap 3 there is display 8 and Max starts complaining of rear locking in lap 9 after switching to strat 3. GP then proposes to go back to strat 7 which helps the situation.

I don't hear of a lower engine mode or something that effects performance. This is also something I think Max would want to have explained during the race if it suddenly came up.

Perez radio reported the bad downshifting on lap 1. Presumably they worked to mitigate it on Max's car as well from that point.

Also, what was said upthread, the source is quite reliable.

[Sieper]

Yes. He is very reliable imho.

It does sound a bit suspect. Having a mode in qualify and then downtune by lap 3. This can’t happen in many races.

[organic]

Mendis already found a while ago data that suggested RB ran the same engine mode in the race as free practice... So with this additional info it would all add up. So despite running the lower engine mode they did pull away with the 7-8 tenth gap

vanja also saw max was driving abnormally slowly on the straights in the race

Key data:



We can see after the second stint, RB ran verstappen in free practice 2 engine modes.

Compared to other teams so it wasn't just a headwind etc



For the first stint, it was even lower which vanja caught onto in the telemetry thread.

The breadcrumbs were all already here, but none of us followed them back to the gearbox problems. Given that RB never run fp modes for race day, the engine problems are demonstrable in the data, so you don't have to just trust a source (albeit a very reliable one) if you wish not to.

The original analysis of race velocity Vs free practice:

I was always curious to know, what exactly teams do in FP2 long runs and find a correlation from Race data to see what kind of picture comes out that help us understand the FP2 better.

There are two things I see, which are faily obvious ones. They use 2 stints worth of fuel loads (not the full race fuel loads) in FP2. They also use one step lower engine mode.

Here is the FP2 and Race first/second stints from this past week's Bahrain race. I have used the data for those drivers who were in clean air in race to avoid DRS enabled times. Max, Charles, Sainz and Hamilton all ran without DRS first most of their first 2 stints race. There was some slip stream effect though.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FqTuyCsWAA0 ... name=large

https://i.postimg.cc/Jnrx1vC9/bahrain-race.png

Here is the Speed Trap data between FP2 and Race (Click on image).



Only Red Bull appears to use Race mode in FP2. They have another Race Mode that they used on Day 1 in testing and never used after!!! It correlates to Mark Huges said in one of his the-race.com podcast, where he said, RB found themselves quite happy on Day 1 and turned down things from Day 2 onwards. Below is the snapshot of that stint.

https://i.postimg.cc/C5gNKs6f/ver-test-day-1.png

Vanja post about Max's first stint anomaly

Here's something interesting, Max was slower on all straights in the first stint than other two, did not go over 302kmh on the main straight in the first stint from what I saw. Later he was around 306-310, all with DRS off and no slipstream of course.

Perez didn't do this and neither did any other driver in any other car. Was that a setting to be slower on acceleration with full-fuel car to preserve tyres better? I didn't see noticeable difference in throttle % on f1-tempo.

https://i.ibb.co/XWRnJmt/BAH-23-top-speed.jpg

[Cassius]

I was not doubting Wazari and the lower engine mode, just that the lap 2 or 3 is not logical from what we have seen and heard.

I think organic post with input from mendis and Vanja explains it.

In the past 2 weeks I could not explain the big gap in top speeds between RB on the one hand and Ferrari and Mercedes on the other hand during the race and qualy (up to 10kph down vs Merc).
With just an evolution of their car I would think a full reversal is not logical. But this explains it. They never used the normal engine mode after day 1 of testing. They didn’t use it in qualy and in the race either. Hence the compromised car remarks and also the small gap between RB and the Ferraris in qualy.

If this is true and they fixed it through a software update, combined with the aero upgrades coming in Baku and probably Silverstone, they will be very dominant this year.

[AR3-GP]

Fascinating stuff.

Fwiw, they weren't just nursing the gearbox, but there was also some unexplained oil inlet pipe issue.

[chrisc90]

I find it amazing our reliability always starts off a little on the rough side at the start of a season. Thankfully we managed to power through it this time round rather than a double DNF.

Would be interesting to know what changes over winter and can cause problems like this.