McG wrote:If it's too tight shouldn't Red Bull open it up a bit instead of relying on the already troubled Renault to make it fit/work in such a tight package?
Looking at the angle at which the tubes enter and leave the sidepods it looks as if they lead air to an area deep down in the sidepods. Simple enlarging might not lead air into that particular spot. It appears they don't have a general thermal issue but rather a localised one. It points to one specific component being in trouble. This bandaid fix indicates to mr that they are confident that it can be fixed internally. At least they did run 66 laps today and picked up some speed.
The trouble seemed deeper at Lotus (and maybe Caterham) today. Still all Renault Teams seem to be struggling significantly with reliability issues. Still not really looking good in that whole camp.
The car itself actually looks not too bad. Clean, open nose with smooth air treatment and the Rear end on this car looks to be as open as it gets this year. They don't have that big overhanging part of the cooling outlets over the floor which all competitors (bar STR) have to a smaller or bigger extent that tends to make the rear center area of the floor prone to stagnation and flow detachment at the coke bottle.
Should Renault get on top of it's woes I wouldn't be too surprised to see the RB being very competitive again.