Infiniti Red Bull Racing 2015

[FoxHound]

I think that photo clearly shows Bernie not accepting a bribe form Renault + Red Bull, There goes plan B

Marko's head dropped at the mention of the figure....

[bhall II]

[...]

But Marko, designer Adrian Newey and Horner insist the FIA also needs to step in, for the sake of F1.

"When we were winning," Horner said on Sunday, "double diffusers were banned, exhausts were moved, flexible bodywork was prohibited, engine mapping was changed. Anything."

Newey added: "With Mercedes, nobody says a word."

Horner continued: "I think is it healthy to have a situation where the FIA, within the rules, have an equalisation mechanisation. I think perhaps they need to look at it."

[...]

Horner and Newey have a staggeringly selective memory here. The implication that Red Bull's performance advantage was specifically, and/or unfairly, targeted by previous FIA rule changes is nonsense.

For one thing, Red Bull was among the first teams to challenge the legality of the double diffuser, and you cannot credibly cite the ban of a component as a hindrance to your performance if you yourself led the charge to have the component banned.

The other changes were clarifications made to ensure that the actual text of the rules more closely resemble the longstanding "spirit" of the rules, e.g. flexible bodywork wasn't just recently prohibited; it was never supposed to be allowed in the first place.

There is no direct precedent for the kind of rule changes now advocated by Red Bull, and I think it's highly disingenuous for the team to claim otherwise.

[cossie]

Coswoth folks, they have a PU sitting on the shelf, although is rummored that the engine in the NISMO LMP1 that is the same PU or based on it. Say what you want , they always make bullet proof turbos and last year or so they were up for sale. Would be a nice investment go either RB or Mcleran

[Just_a_fan]

RedBull need to remember that success in F1 is cyclical - just ask Ferrari, McLaren and Williams. They've each had winning times and losing times. RedBull haven't been in the sport long enough to have experienced that cycle in full - until now.

Rather than moaning about the FIA they need to look inwards. I don't remember Horner asking the FIA to slow them down when they were winning race after race. I do remember his smug smile when interviewed. How times have changed.

I clearly remember Vettel saying to the team over the radio that they must enjoy the good times because they may not last (or words to that effect). At least he know it was too good to last...

[FoxHound]

There is no direct precedent for the kind of rule changes now advocated by Red Bull, and I think it's highly disingenuous for the team to claim otherwise.

But they can claim they are slower than before(relatively speaking), Ben....there is the evidence!

[H2H]

I think it is important to keep in mind that RBR was rather often not happy with the Renault engine due to a deficit of power and reliability compared to the Mercedes which was widely regarded as class of the field when Brawn GP, won ahead of RBR. Yes the Renault packaged better then the Ferrari and was at times the most fuel-efficient but still there were often rumours of a switch. In the end they weren't able to get Mercedes as a supplier but the engine was never, even during the EBD-times, a very big performance differentiator which enabled the better team to better the disadvantage. Still the FIA stepped in from time to time to re-equalize the engines and was rather active in curtailing the EBD effect.

Calls for a further parity reemerged after the Italian Grand Prix, when many teams believed that Mercedes-Benz had opened up a clear advantage at the front of the field.

Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner told AUTOSPORT at Monza: "I think it is something that perhaps needs to be carefully looked at.

"The FIA has all the information they can see where the differences are on, I don't think it is a coincidence that you have three Mercedes-powered teams that dominated six out of the top seven places in qualifying and looked dominant again here in the race today.

Now with one of the engine suppliers dominating the sport and the second best PU coming from Ferrari RBR finds itself in very difficult situation, being basically without any hope to fight on merit for wins or even podiums even if the chassis would be top 3. It is no surprise that after a bad year of promises a shocking start results in comments like those...

Dass Mercedes vorneweg fährt, hat man bei Red Bull inzwischen widerwillig akzeptiert. Die Niederlage gegen Sauber mit einem Ferrari-Motor tat dagegen weh. "Die fahren mit Flügeln aus dem Vorjahr. Unser neues Chassis ist eine halbe Sekunde besser. Den Unterschied macht der Motor", bellte Horner.

Red Bull-Berater Helmut Marko legte nach. Worte wie "inakzeptabel" machten die Runde. "Um überhaupt fahren zu können, müssen wir mit 80 bis 100 PS weniger Power antreten. Sauber fährt uns auf der Geraden auf und davon." Den Rückschritt seit den Testfahrten erklärt Marko so: "Die Software-Probleme kamen mit der Verbesserung des Motors."

The whole situation reminds me to some extent to the problems Williams faced in 1998, Mechacrome Engines and Newey no longer (fully) on board. Only that RBR should be in theory the 'worksteam' of a fully committed Renault...

[SectorOne]

It's hardly a secret that Toro Rosso have been on the market for years now without finding a buyer.

Not really, there was a point 5-6 years ago some articles went out about a potential sale of Toro Rosso but that was ages ago.

You Know your arguing with yourself
(I know you got the quotes wrong)

Now that looks hilarious

[Jonnycraig]

Well i know of at least one that decided to go the even more expensive route and buy everything from scratch.

Haas has publicly stated his new team hope merely to survive for 5 years. I somewhat doubt they will be on a budget of €280m per year, nor will the infrastructure set up cost him more than the $300m AMuS reported a few months ago that Mateschitz wanted for Red Bull, so I struggle to see how that's the more expensive option.

Why is the token system acting as a barrier? It's clearly working for Ferrari. And they have more in the pipeline too.

Eh?

At the 2014 Oz GP, they qualified 1.5secs off the pace and finished 35 seconds off the pace
At the 2015 Oz GP, they qualified 1.4secs off the pace and finished 34 seconds off the pace.

Huge jump there

It's a barrier as for cliches sake, an oligarch could buy Red Bull for example, give the team a £1bn a year budget, hire every single member of the Mercedes engine department and with the token system in place, still not catch up to the Merc PU. That is nobody's fault, as everybody signed up to the same rules, but the fact still remains, when you can only upgrade a set percentage of the PU, you aren't going to be able to catch up unless those you are chasing massively drop the ball.

[SectorOne]

Haas has publicly stated his new team hope merely to survive for 5 years. I somewhat doubt they will be on a budget of €280m per year, nor will the infrastructure set up cost him more than the $300m AMuS reported a few months ago that Mateschitz wanted for Red Bull, so I struggle to see how that's the more expensive option.

There´s enormous costs involved in building an F1 team from the ground up.
The budget you speak of is Red Bull´s budget. It´s not the costs of running their infrastructure.

It's a barrier as for cliches sake, an oligarch could buy Red Bull for example, give the team a £1bn a year budget, hire every single member of the Mercedes engine department and with the token system in place, still not catch up to the Merc PU. That is nobody's fault, as everybody signed up to the same rules, but the fact still remains, when you can only upgrade a set percentage of the PU, you aren't going to be able to catch up unless those you are chasing massively drop the ball.

Of course they can. What´s stopping an engine manufacturer from creating an identical engine to Mercedes in theory then fielding that in Formula 1? as you say the regulations are exactly the same.
What´s to say the Mercedes engine is theoretically the best engine you possibly can make?

Ferrari has proven you can make steps even if you start with a little bit of a disaster.
But you need to know what the hell you are doing and not piss away tokens on making the engine worse like Renault.

-

shots fired,
https://twitter.com/TrickyF1/status/577058506819416064

[FoxHound]

Why is the token system acting as a barrier? It's clearly working for Ferrari. And they have more in the pipeline too.

Eh?

At the 2014 Oz GP, they qualified 1.5secs off the pace and finished 35 seconds off the pace
At the 2015 Oz GP, they qualified 1.4secs off the pace and finished 34 seconds off the pace.

Huge jump there

It's a barrier as for cliches sake, an oligarch could buy Red Bull for example, give the team a £1bn a year budget, hire every single member of the Mercedes engine department and with the token system in place, still not catch up to the Merc PU. That is nobody's fault, as everybody signed up to the same rules, but the fact still remains, when you can only upgrade a set percentage of the PU, you aren't going to be able to catch up unless those you are chasing massively drop the ball.

We are speaking specifically regarding engines. Ferrari are hitting better speeds relative to last year, as also demonstrated by Sauber.
Their PU has also improved in terms of power output.

Comparing the times to this and last year then pointing to engines, forgoes the rest of the car.
From what we hear, and see.. the PU is alot better than last year.

[gandharva]

Does anyone know how much 2015 tokens Renault already spent on that crappy ICE?

"The weekend has been very frustrating," Renault's managing director Cyril Abiteboul admitted.

"We know that we made genuine progress over the winter but we could not show it here and in fact we would even seem to have moved backwards.

"Given the pace at which we conducted our development programme towards the last few weeks of the winter, there may not be lots to change to be able to access these improvements. Now, we need to react, but not overreact, and get back to some basic common sense that has always driven our approach in all these years of F1 engine development.

"The season will be long, we have the time and the capacity to react and get this very bad start of the 2015 season behind us."

Remi Taffin, director of operations, added: "From the start of the weekend we've faced a number of technical issues, both at Red Bull and Toro Rosso. Reliability has been below par - we are already investigating a recovery programme to make sure we do not see a repeat.

"The biggest issue has been the driveability, which has made it hard for all the drivers to feel comfortable in the cars. It affects pedal application and confidence in the corners so has cost lap time and points this weekend.

"It's related to the maps, or the way the power unit is configured, so while it's definitely not an easy fix, it does not require a complete redesign. We have got a lot of work to do before Malaysia but equally a lot of motivation to not repeat the same issues we had this weekend."

http://www.formula1.com/content/fom-web ... ards-.html

[FoxHound]

Red Bull have gone for the quit threat option.

http://m.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/118081

My personal favourite quote of the year so far is contained in the news story.

Marko: "We would still say the same if we were in the lead".

This is quickly becoming farcical.

[Juzh]

Even renault themselves are admitting they've gone backwards. Is this the first time renault actually admitted their own faults? It is completely undeniable renault PU is the single largest contributing entity in red bull's lack of performance.

[dans79]

Red Bull have gone for the quit threat option.

http://m.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/118081

My personal favourite quote of the year so far is contained in the news story.

Marko: "We would still say the same if we were in the lead".

This is quickly becoming farcical.

such a sore losers he and Horner are! Someone should explain to them the concept of "cutting of your nose in spite of your face". When you bad mouth everything and everyone, you will eventually be completely ignored.

[FoxHound]

Even renault themselves are admitting they've gone backwards. Is this the first time renault actually admitted their own faults? It is completely undeniable renault PU is the single largest contributing entity in red bull's lack of performance.

Let's go back 5 years. Renault provided championship grade equipment.
Fast forward to today, and Renault are being slaughtered very publicly by Red Bull.
Who is going to want to supply Red Bull now, juzh? Certainly not Honda even when their troubles are sorted.
See where this is leading? Keep hauling Renault over the coals and you end up with no one wanting to supply.

Had Renault been lackadaisical in their efforts I would understand Red Bull's outbursts. But these guys are flat out round the clock trying to sort the issues. And they don't receive a penny for it, from my understanding.

Comes across as sour, don't you agree?