Red Bull RB8 Renault

[WhiteBlue]

after the race do you think it is confirmed the superiority of B-spec exhaust layout?

The McLaren style exhaust on the Red Bull probably suffers from the lack of additional elements that catch the flow and convert it to downforce. McLaren have dedicated winglets on the rear wheel brake ducts to generate that downforce. I reckon that the shape of the coke bottle also has something to do with the stability that McLaren gain from the wide flow patter. The Red Bull rear was designed to bring the flow inside.

I expect Red Bull to make very quick changes and switch to the McLaren style exhaust solution with additional measures to generate more stability of the flow pattern. I expect both Red Bulls to run the same exhaust config next weekend and perhaps some updates already. In addition they must be working on a DDRS system like everybody else. But I don't expect that to come before Monaco.

[Richard]

Please respect the efforts of those who are making really good technical contributions about the RB8.

Team talk thread has been moved to the team talk page viewtopic.php?f=1&t=12213&view=unread#unread

Generic discussion about the effectiveness of the stalled front wing (something that does not exist on this car anyway) is in the stalled wing thread viewtopic.php?f=1&t=12199&view=unread#unread

If your comment is not about a feature on the car then it does not belong in this thread. Simple!

[Crucial_Xtreme]

Red Bull heating the brakes is new no? Right click>view image



RW slots similar to Ferrari's

[FrukostScones]

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/98910

[marcush.]

To me it is very telling that Webber and Vettel crossed the line very close to each other in this race.It tells a story of putting development recources into an area were there is nothing much to be found anymore.
Ferrari and RedBull are continuously rewrking their exhausts but it does not seem to help their performance ,the more iterations the more confusion.
Sauber havinga similar concept suddenly jumpin g to the fore may have triggered the perception there is a lot of performance in this layout ,but maybe that´s just not the case ...or it is just too critical in detail working on one car but not the other because of minute differences.. who knows.
Fact is ,Lotus and Mercedes are quick without it so it does not look like you need this exhaust solution to be quick.

[WhiteBlue]

Horner about the exhaust solutions to SpeedTV:

There were some characteristics about the upgraded car which weren’t particularly suited to Seb’s style of driving, which is to carry a lot of speed into the corner. The decision to come here [with two specs] was very much Adrian and a technical decision, because we want to make sure we get a direction and a clear comparison.

We’ve had that, it’s been a really useful exercise this weekend. The drivers were happy to go the routes that they did. Now we’ve got an awful lot of information from three days of running to settle on a direction moving forward.

Ideally you want the characteristics from both solutions, so that’s now the challenge. We’ll make a decision [about the Bahrain solution] over the next couple of days. With a race worth of data to go through there’s a good sample there in low fuel/high fuel configurations.

I sounds like they will have another evolution of the outside blowing exhaust but with more changes to the supporting body work. Hopefully the job can be done for all the parts in a short time.

Mark Webber on Yahoo.com

We have an understanding of where we need to go, which is why we are developing what is on my car.

This confirms that the outside blowing solution will be the basis of development.

[GrizzleBoy]

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/98910

Horner explained that Vettel's preference for the older specification of exhaust was related to his driving style.

"There are some characteristics about the upgraded car that weren't particularly suited to his style of driving, which is to carry a lot of speed into the corner," he said.

That was only his style because the EBD was sucking his car into the track so hard.

Besides, nobody who watched the qualifying session and saw how Vettel was carrying too much speed into corners, overshooting and missing apex's all over the place could ever come to the conclusion that the A-spec car suited his style the best.

[WhiteBlue]

To me it is very telling that Webber and Vettel crossed the line very close to each other in this race.It tells a story of putting development recources into an area were there is nothing much to be found anymore.
Ferrari and RedBull are continuously rewrking their exhausts but it does not seem to help their performance ,the more iterations the more confusion.
Sauber havinga similar concept suddenly jumpin g to the fore may have triggered the perception there is a lot of performance in this layout ,but maybe that´s just not the case ...or it is just too critical in detail working on one car but not the other because of minute differences.. who knows.
Fact is ,Lotus and Mercedes are quick without it so it does not look like you need this exhaust solution to be quick.

You have to make a fundamental decision if you want to take the exhaust gasses inside or outside. Red Bull initially went for inside and then took a look at McLaren which has been perceived to gain the most downforce from an outside solution.

But the channel in the bodywork is not isolated from the rest of the aerodynamic solution. Have a look at the RB8 thread where Red Bulls plans are discussed in more detail. A third outside looking solution is likely for Bahrain which will probably see changes to the side pots and perhaps the brake ducts as well. Red Bull are being systematic about this but not innovative. The innovation clearly comes from McLaren and Red Bull is struggling a bit to adapt their car. I reckon by Monaco this issue will be pretty much sorted.

[ajdavison2]

@ Crucial, they were heating the brakes last year as well with small iron disks I believe which were removed before qually or the race?

[hardingfv32]

@ Crucial, they were heating the brakes last year as well with small iron disks I believe which were removed before qually or the race?

Why do they need to heat the discs? The discs will heat up long before the tires are up to temp. once they are on track.

Brian

[beelsebob]

@ Crucial, they were heating the brakes last year as well with small iron disks I believe which were removed before qually or the race?

Why do they need to heat the discs? The discs will heat up long before the tires are up to temp. once they are on track.

Because it means that the tyres will lose less temperature while sat on the car on the grid.

[ajdavison2]

+1 beelsebob.

[Crucial_Xtreme]

Very good analysis of the current Red Bull exhaust situation:

Explaining the Red Bull dilemma
Sky Sports F1's Commentary Expert Mark Hughes on why the RB8 currently suits Mark Webber more than Sebastian Vettel - and what the turnaround reveals about both drivers' styles...

Mark Webber's qualifying advantage over Sebastian Vettel in the opening two races played a significant part in Vettel's decision to revert to the original-spec RB8 for China. Webber's qualifying advantage continued regardless.

Although we've already got used to a Red Bull that is considerably less competitive than last year, it was still a shock to see the World Champion fail to make the Q3 top-10 run-off in qualifying. Webber fared a little better, seventh fastest in the run-off, the third time in three events that Mark has out-qualified Seb, totally against the play of last year.

Ever since the RB8 first hit the track, both drivers have been struggling to get a balance between the car's low speed and high speed behaviour. In low-fuel, qualifying trim the rear tends to be a little unstable upon corner entry at low speed, yet the car is understeery through high-speed bends. Improving one aspect of those two limitations by changing the set-up makes the other worse, leaving the drivers in a qualifying limbo. In race conditions, as the more highly stressed rear tyres lose their new rubber grip faster than the fronts, the high-speed balance improves and the car becomes very competitive in race trim.

Because it's the degrading rears that bring the balance in the race, and the set up cannot be changed between qualifying and race, the compromise for Saturday - for this particular car in its current state of development - has to err towards slow corner instability, because any set up that would cure that aspect for Saturday would make the car an oversteering handful through fast corners on Sunday.

What Vettel was exceptionally good at last year was using a little bit of oversteer in the initial part of a slow turn to help get the car pointed at the apex sooner - but the rear of the car needs to recover its grip quickly for that initial oversteer not to have too much momentum, building into a slide that costs time. The blown diffuser car was perfect for that, and as the car had that initial twitch of oversteer Seb would then stand on the throttle - giving the rear end even more exhaust-enhanced grip than when off-throttle - and the oversteer would vanish. In this way Seb could get pointed early at the apex and be early on the power. It demanded a lot of sensitivity for the balancing point of the rear tyre.

Furthermore, in the way you had to use the engine revs to get the correct balance between on-throttle and off-throttle grip at the appropriate part of the corner it was counter-intuitive. It was certainly something that Webber could never get his head properly around. It also felt very unnatural to be considering applying more throttle to reduce oversteer.

This year's car, although currently less competitive, is much more conventional in how it needs to be driven in the slow corners - and suddenly Webber can drive it better. There can occasionally be a disconnect between how a car feels to a driver and how quick it is - and last year's RB7 was that car for Webber. He didn't care for its feel - that slow corner pat head/rub tummy combination really didn't suit him - but it was fantastically fast, something that Vettel could show more convincingly than him. There is an echo of that disconnect this year in how Webber and Vettel respectively have reacted to the development of the RB8.

When first introduced, the RB8 had an exhaust system as far rearwards as the 2012 regulations allow, blowing over the aero-profiled brake ducts, over the top of the diffuser and over the beam wing. This would produce only a small fraction of the exhaust-derived downforce of the 2011 blown diffuser cars, but it was at least worth having. An alternative bodywork configuration Adrian Newey had devised based around this exhaust layout that would have worked more powerfully was ruled illegal by the FIA in November, before testing even started.

In response to that ban, Red Bull devised a more McLaren-like exhaust arrangement and this made its debut in the last two days of winter testing. The exhausts were as far towards the front of the car as the regulations allow and used the airflow over the downwards slope of the rear of the sidepods to pull the exhaust flow downwards with it (even though the exhausts must point upwards by at least 10-deg). This flow made its way between the rear wheel and the sides of the diffuser - reducing the leakage of the under-floor airflow being pulled through there. Again, it gives only a small proportion of the effect of the full-fat blown diffuser of last year, but Red Bull's simulations said it created more downforce than the RB8's previous arrangement.

From the moment Webber first tried this revised car in testing, he agreed it was better. Still not great, but better. Vettel, however, said he preferred the original. With the car in its revised trim, Webber could find a better compromise between low and high speed set-up than Vettel. Now that Seb could no longer rely on the blown-diffuser acrobatics of technique that Webber could never do, they were much the same in dealing with the slow corner instability but Webber could deal slightly better with the high-speed understeer. The revised car, with slightly more rear grip, is not quite as unstable in slow speed but a little more understeery in the high. It therefore suits Webber better than Vettel.

This seems to have tripped Vettel into believing the old car must be better. For China therefore the team agreed to let him try it throughout the weekend. Webber in the newer car was again faster. You may have seen Anthony Davidson's excellent Sky Sports F1 HD analysis from the cockpit of Seb's car, showing just how tentative he was having to be on turn-in as he felt that rear instability. The revised car of Webber, whilst not great, did look better than that.

"I think it's pretty clear what direction we should be going in," said Webber - perhaps not disingenuously - after qualifying. What was also perhaps significant was that Newey seemed to be spending most of his time on Webber's side of the garage rather than Vettel's. Adrian is not someone interested in looking backwards. His focus will be on unlocking the greater potential of the revised car and as such he will have been far more interested in Webber's progress in China than Vettel's.

Vettel is way too good not to come back from this - but it's a situation that has cast further illumination on how he achieved his dominance of last year of why Webber struggled. That wasn't representative of the talents of each - and nor is the current situation. It's just that each of the situations have favoured a different driver. When the car is finally sorted to have a decently wide set-up window so that slow and fast corner performance can be better resolved, both drivers will move up the grid - and the battle between them can start from where it left off in 2010.

Sky Sports F1 Link

[gandharva]

Dr. Marko confirmed that RBR will race B-spec in next race.

[raymondu999]

For both cars? Link?