Jurgen von Diaz wrote: ↑26 Jul 2025, 07:18
Guarantee wet race and they put a skinny rear wing for Max again. Why? Are we like Ferrari now? Question.
Here is my crude understanding :
1) RB21 lacks the mechanical grip the McLaren and Ferrari have => suffers in slow and medium speed corners with understeer. Massive amount of understeer. Suspension cannot be softened to compensate as it affects dynamic ride height and ruins balance.
2) which leaves only the aero-grip to exploit, which in turn means optimizing the car for high speed corners, where mechanical grip is a minor shareholder in the "total grip" pie.
3) No matter what they do to enhance 1 above, they are not going to match the McLaren, might as well go the full monty on 2. By having skinny wings at high speed, the loss in wing surface can be compensated** by higher load from higher speed. However, I think they have gone for this option not just due to this, but for 'balance' reasons, as the front end simply lacks bite in the medium speed corners, so any 'moderately sized rear wing' is going to further worsen understeer in medium corners. Thus, by biting the bullet of poor tyre life, they have gone for skinny rear wing.
**optimizing wing for high speed corners is a tricky game, as it's difficult to predict where the purchase for more downforce comes from - more wing hence more 'surface' for more downforce OR less wing hence higher speed, which in turn provides higher downforce (note : floor is the same in both cases, for the same yaw angle, just speeds are different).
For example :
medium speed - 170 kph v 175 kph => 28.9 v 30.625 (DF delta = 1.725)
high speed - 300 kph v 305 kph => 90.0 v 93.025 (DF delta = 3.025)
The same 5 kph speed delta counts for more DF delta from the same surface area at 300 kph than at 170 kph.
Redbull have optimized their floor such that it operates most efficiently at 250+ kph speeds.
