The all new Redbull RB2

[Steven]

Have you checked out the new RedBull yet?
http://www.f1technical.net/news/1485

The nose and front wing don't seem to have changed a lot, but the sidepods have, and not just a little bit! I think with the V8's now that this is a trend to watch for all coming car launches. Since the new engines need less cooling, sidepods can further be reduced in size.
While the RB2 sidepods were still a little bit boxy, the new ones are like tunnels, rather round from start to end.

Just one thing that amazes me is the thickness of the floor (under sidepods) to confirm to regulations. Can't that be better?

[Steven]

I have some further remarks now that we have seen the Renault R26...

The Red Bull seems to have indeed a nicely shaped nose, however it looks rather wide and makes me think of a duck nose.

One other thing are the size of the air inlets. I think that is a huge aerodynamic factor these days and compared to the R26, this Red Bull has rather big inlets, in fact bigger than those on the Williams at the end of 2005.

I don't know what to expect from this car

[Guest]

Big sidepod inlets = sign of the ferrari V8s running hot?

[manchild]

Big sidepod inlets = sign of the ferrari V8s running hot?

burn, baby burn...

[RH1300S]

Big sidepod inlets = sign of the ferrari V8s running hot?

Or inefficient aero design?

[bernard]

Another thing worthy of noting is the new triangular keel introduced by Renault.
Now both of the "new" keel designs, mclaren's no-keel and Renault's triangular have one follower. They both have their pro's and con's. It's interesting to note that the teams with smaller budgets have gone with the triangular design, which keeps the suspension design pretty similar to a single keel, whereas big budgeteers Mclaren and Toyota have adopted the radical design, which no doubt requires lots more man hours to complete.

[joseff]

Does anybody else notice that in the sutton pic above, the radiator seems to be facing the "wrong" way?

Normally the radiators would be angled such that the outer edges are further forward. In that pic the inside edges look to be forward.

Or is that just a grill in front of the actual radiators?

[manchild]

No, those are THE radiators. Look trough the chimney

[Steven]

Does anybody else notice that in the sutton pic above, the radiator seems to be facing the "wrong" way?

Normally the radiators would be angled such that the outer edges are further forward. In that pic the inside edges look to be forward.

Or is that just a grill in front of the actual radiators?

Well indeed I have been staring myself blind on that too, even more because of the pic posted by manchild here.
I guess it must be some grill at it appears to be all black while the radiator itself is aluminium

[Spencifer_Murphy]

http://www.f1racing.net/en/photolarge.p ... catID=1876

I've been thinking about it since I saw it but could tell for certain...but this pic kinda makes it certain for me.

The RB2 has a fatter and Higher nose cone than the RB1

Could this be to facilitate airflow under the nose better (using their V-Keel tunnel more efficiently?)

[joseff]

http://www.f1technical.net/news/1541

So... big sidepod inlets, humongous chimneys, and still overheating.

It'll be interesting to see how Ferrari does with their V8. Looks like Frank got a better deal with his Cossie.

[jezzwa]

Big nose, inefficient aero, perhaps the ferrari designers have had too much of an influence in the design of this car, good thing Newey will be able to fix it.

[DaveKillens]

When a customer is supplied an engine, they receive a lot of tech data on that engine. Maybe... maybe the info on the Ferrari engine was presented in such a manner that Red Bull engineers were led to believe that they needed more cooling requirements than was later found practical. So they build a car with radiators and associated cooling equipment found later to be excessive. Of course, Ferrari could plead that they wanted to make sure the customer got a reliable package, and "oh, by the way, we recently discovered we could run smaller radiators, but when we sent the tech data that's what we knew..."
But it's not impossible to believe Ferrari didn't want someone running the identical engines to be as quick, or quicker than the works cars.........

[manchild]

Well, Coulthard called that car "very sexy thing" so, what is the story behind this, David prefers BBW?

Seriously, I remember that once Dallara-Ferrari (or was it Minardi-Ferrari) had better top speed on straights with old Ferrari engine which pissed off heads in Marranello.

Anyway, I'm not feeling sorry for RBR. They betrayed GPMA bending over for Ferrari engines and I hope that their 4 cars will overtake each other fighting for 18-22 position while Aguri laps them!

Inlets and chimneys on RBR look larger that last year and the only think that can justify that could be if they decided to use chimneys as the only outlet?

[Spencifer_Murphy]

I will be very interested to see just how well (badly?) this car pereforms in the season. Being a Jaguar fan I was a bit bitter sweet about the RB1...after all it was really a Jaguar R6 (obviously developments were all reb bull but at the start of the season what you saw was 90& Jag Rac) And the car was actually quite good that was nice to see...but it left me wondering...what if Ford had kept funding on Jag for one more year? After seeing 2005 would they have pulled the plug on Jag's funding??? Maybe not.

So if this RB2 is a bit of a dog it will be nice to piont out that they achieved success last year by using a Jag! lol.