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#Red bull f1 upgrade#
There were no huge upgrade packages for the RB18 until the Spanish GP, just a lot of small changes spread over the course of the opening races.
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Another important focus was on weight reduction, while on the porpoising front Red Bull seemed the only team able to predict this phenomenon well in the winter simulations. Red Bull initially focused on creating a less understeery car in order to increase the load on the rear without unbalancing the car.
![red bull f1 red bull f1](https://cdn-7.motorsport.com/images/mgl/254P7a90/s8/red-bull-racing-rb18-front-sus-1.jpg)
To counter the aerodynamic stall of the floor, Ferrari decided to divert part of the flow in the outermost part through what is effectively a channel, implementing a kind of keel in the lower part of the diffuser that had already been glimpsed in Australia. This led to revisions of the floor with a new outer fence, a new side edge, and also the lower part of the car.Īt the rear, the definitive version was introduced in Spain, where in addition to the floor edge area, the lower part of the diffuser was been profoundly changed. With the new family of post-Barcelona rear wings, Ferrari managed to reduce the speed advantage that Red Bull had in the DRS zones, a gap that was at times more than 15km/h (9mph).įerrari had also managed the porpoising problem more carefully, a problem Red Bull has not suffered from but that has not entirely disappeared on the F1-75. With the DRS closed, the overall load difference does not change, but when the flap is open the gap from the mainplane is wider, with the advantage of less drag. With the new Ferrari wings, the DRS chord has been increased to the detriment of a smaller mainplane. But the Red Bull was a slightly more complicated car to set up, one that Max Verstappen wasn’t perfectly at ease with.įerrari modified its rear wing in Spain for a more efficient DRS when the flap was open. In the case of Ferrari, the F1-75 was at a straightline speed disadvantage compared to Red Bull. In the first phase of the year, the main focus for the teams – aside from upgrades – was troubleshooting the cars to reduce their weaknesses. This was brought in by Ferrari for the first race in Bahrain, then copied by Red Bull at Imola a month later, with almost all of the teams producing their own versions. It’s for this reason that Ferrari and Red Bull have begun to adopt similar aerodynamic solutions.Īn obvious example is the double T-tray, first introduced by Aston Martin. Their development paths have been very broad despite the limitations of the cost cap, but as expected cars have converged towards common design choices and the solutions that bring the biggest performance advantages. What the two cars do have in common is the ability to generate grip induced by the efficiency of the venturi ducts, which are housed in the lower part of the floor.īoth – especially Red Bull – have produced cars that are not sensitive to changes in ride height and that perform well even if the car is not completely sealed to the ground.īy comparison, porpoising has limited other cars, particularly the Mercedes W13 thanks to it being designed for an optimal ride-height window with a low and flat trim.Īs the 2022 season has progressed, the F1-75 and RB18 have evolved rapidly. Ferrari preferred for the air to pass above, with the famous ‘tub’ created by its scalloped bodywork. Red Bull opted for a more conventional design at the rear of the sidepods, but greatly advanced the radiator inlets to create a large air passage channel between the sidepods and the floor. The visually obvious difference was the sidepods. The initial design concepts of Ferrari and Red Bull at the start of the season featured more differences than common solutions, especially when it came to aerodynamics. The two cars have a clear performance advantage over the rest but, despite fears coming into 2022 that the prescriptive regulations would allow for very few differences between cars, Red Bull and Ferrari have produced very different interpretations of the rules – and their cars produce similar laptimes in different ways. Ferrari and Red Bull dominated the first half of the 2022 Formula 1 season, with the Ferrari F1-75 and Red Bull RB18 proving to be the best interpretations of the new ground effect technical regulations.īut despite Red Bull’s big advantage in the championship and the two cars being very different, the technical and performance gap between them is almost nothing, with only the vicissitudes of reliability, accidents and bad strategy distorting the picture.