Formula One car development blog

Red Bull has drawn attention to its flexing front wing again at the recent Abu Dhabi GP. When changing the nose cone of Sebastian Vettel's RB8, it was clear that mechanics could easily bend the nose cone. Footage has also shown that when hitting the kerbs hard, the nose shudders, creating a tilting effect for the front wing.

While this may be new to many, Red Bull's bending nose has been discussed on the f1technical forum since the very first winter tests of this year, and even earl... Read more

Red Bull introduced a considerable number of changes on its car at Singapore, including a new front wing, diffuser and DDRS. Perhaps of a little less importance, but still interesting is their new nose cone. Just like Williams did, the new nose has a slight bulge below the nose, in the middle of the nose but just behind the front wing pillars. Overall the tip of the nose on the Red Bull is also slightly lower, resulting in more airflow over the nose and less under it.

Such change is... Read more

Red Bull Racing debuted a new front wing on the RB8, featuring two changes. The first of which is the addition of an extra slot where the front wing is ahead of the wheels. This means a little bit more air will reach the underside of the flap, filling the low pressure area underneath the front wing. Although this can add downforce at the front, its most important function is likely to be better control of the airflow around the front wheel, hence the front wheel's wake and underneat... Read more

Pictures taken at Silverstone this weekend have uncovered that Red Bull have adopted or are at least testing an exhaust chamber. Also known as a Helmholz exhaust, the regular exhaust pipe features a blind additional branch which can accumulate exhaust gases when pressure is high in the exhaust pipe. It can then release those gases again when the driver gets off the throttle, hence evening out the pressure differences that occur in the exhaust pipe.

Apart from the evening out in an a... Read more

Just two weeks after introducing a major rear end upgrade on the RB8, Red Bull have fitted their car with yet another exhaust tweak at Silverstone. This time around the change is small but may have a big effect nonetheless.

The sides of the exhaust channel have been raised to have two small bulges on each side of the channel, trying to keep the exhaust flow from spilling over the sides. Remember that the actual exhaust exit is point 10° upwards, as defined by the regulations. Ever s... Read more

By introducing yet another new sidepod version, Red Bull is the only team that can compete with Ferrari when you consider the number of changes made to the rear end of the sidepods since the beginning of the season.

The team has now changed the tunnel that goes underneath the exhaust ramp, making the inlet much larger than it was in the previous version. Aerodynamic tests on track had shown that the tunnel was not acting as the team expected because airflow through the tunnel was mu... Read more

Red Bull Racing fitted Vettel's RB8 with an interesting aerodynamic evaluation system. While a grid of pressure sensors is not quite new as many teams have been using that during tests since a few years, it is however interesting to see how Red Bull made a custom grid that perfectly fits the shape of the sidepod, allowing to measure the flow speed in the boundary layer around the sidepod as well as further above the car's body. The grid features 34 individual sensors, each connected... Read more

Red Bull Racing have once again come up with an exhaust and sidepod update after its drastically changed layout only debuted on the penultimate day of winter testing. This time around, the change is far less radical and a clear evolution of what was seen in the final two days at Barcelona.

As Red Bull primarily changed the exhausts to get the exhaust flow down to the car's floor and immediately on top of the diffuser, it is vital for the team that they can do this as smoothly as pos... Read more

At the final day of testing, with cars now approaching they race specifications for Australia, it was time to have a look against what are likely to be two of the strong teams at the beginning of the season.

Hence, we compared them with images from f1zoom, aligning the cars on lines A, B and C. Although we should be careful from drawing too many conclusions from image comparisons due to their slightly different perspectives, there are a few interesting bits we can notice.

First of a... Read more

Apart from the changed exhaust position, the Red Bull RB8 now features something that no other team has thought of yet. Not only did the team create a nice slope on the upper side of the sidepods to get the exhaust down onto the top of the diffuser, it also has a duct underneath.

The duct simple pulls air towards the inside of the car, just like is usually the case with a narrowing sidepod. The airflow in the central part of the diffuser is particularly interesting, as teams are all... Read more