The end of domination: Is Red Bull becoming desperate?

[Crucial_Xtreme]

WB, this was my point. With the DDD - there was a path of development that once on the car; would clearly make the car go forward. But I don't think there's such a case this year.

That still doesn't mean that McLaren will totally dominate. Red Bull have shown us in the past three years that they can run a development race against the other top teams, irrespective of the particular issues of the season. Why should that be any different this year?

RB didn't run a development race in 2011. They were so far ahead, they didn't have to. In 2010, they more or less kept up, but the team(Vettel I think) contend the RB6 was better than the RB7 and it was the start of the RB EDB, which was an advantage over the field. In 2009 they couldn't keep pace with or match Brawn, but in all fairness nobody could.

This isn't a knock on RB. I think this year will show what RB is made up of on the development front. Starting behind from the first race, clearly behind the leader of the grid with their own solutions not working the way the team want. It will be interesting to see how Newey & the team handle the current situation.

[Lycoming]

Given how tight the entire field is, I don't think we'll see any one team dominate; except perhaps in qualifying, which is probably easier than to dominate a race, considering RB's qualifying vs race performance in 2010.

[Maelstrom]

Given how tight the entire field is, I don't think we'll see any one team dominate; except perhaps in qualifying, which is probably easier than to dominate a race, considering RB's qualifying vs race performance in 2010.

After seeing the first two races I doubt there will be much domination in qualifying either. Lotus or Merc easily could have been on pole in both races. It was close.

[Pup]

Not to agree with WB too much, but it does depend on how easy the two technologies - exhaust blowing and f-duct - are to copy. The f-duct seems pretty straight forward, and the teams are familiar with the tech, so my bet is that we'll see those start to show up soon, perhaps as early as next week. That would take away Merc's qualifying advantage in a heartbeat, one would think.

The exhaust blowing seems to be more of a black art, and I'm not convinced that it will be nearly as easy to implement or improve.

And I think there's a third development area, which is McLaren's front wing. Personally, I suspect that RB took a bigger relative performance hit there than with the exhaust.

[Gerhard Berger]

Given how tight the entire field is, I don't think we'll see any one team dominate; except perhaps in qualifying, which is probably easier than to dominate a race, considering RB's qualifying vs race performance in 2010.

After seeing the first two races I doubt there will be much domination in qualifying either. Lotus or Merc easily could have been on pole in both races. It was close.

Not sure - Hamilton aborted his 2nd run in both Aus and Mal. I think he could have gone faster.

[Dragonfly]

Calling RBR (or any other team of that scale) desperate after only two races, one of them being a lottery is, you know, not mature enough.

[GrizzleBoy]

Calling RBR (or any other team of that scale) desperate after only two races, one of them being a lottery is, you know, not mature enough.

Makes for some good drama though.

Btw, how do we know the Mercedes front wing isn't just doing this?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ9cFis55xM[/youtube]

Apologies if it's been posted before.

[Maelstrom]

Given how tight the entire field is, I don't think we'll see any one team dominate; except perhaps in qualifying, which is probably easier than to dominate a race, considering RB's qualifying vs race performance in 2010.

After seeing the first two races I doubt there will be much domination in qualifying either. Lotus or Merc easily could have been on pole in both races. It was close.

Not sure - Hamilton aborted his 2nd run in both Aus and Mal. I think he could have gone faster.

Maybe. But the difference between them was a few tenths. All i'm saying is that its very close.

[kalinka]

Calling RBR (or any other team of that scale) desperate after only two races, one of them being a lottery is, you know, not mature enough.

Usually it's true, but if you look at the small details, it really looks like they're desperate. They are doing things that we didn't see from RBR much so far. Like introducing whole new exhaust concept on the last day of testing. The whole body-langauge of the team. Vettel's behaviour after the incident....Slowly it adds up to the picture of desperation.
2012 will show the true RBR face. I agree that they didn't have to take such a step back so far like this year. And the real faces you can see only when it's trouble. Vettel showed his face already I didn't like it.

[raymondu999]

Like introducing whole new exhaust concept on the last day of testing.

RB6/RB7 ring a bell?

[kalinka]

Yeah, I can remember, but I think it was an already working solution, and the intention was to hide it from other teams as long as they could. It was planned. They even put fake-exhaust stickers on car. This time it's a different story IMHO. I know it's not a proof, it's just when you look at all the small details around the team, it really feels like desperation. Of course I remember McLaren's real desperation with their fancy exhaust last year, and they recovered quite well. Seems that it's not that serious trouble with RBR this year, but also it's visible that they take it much harder than McLaren. Simply they're not familiar with this situation IMHO.

[myurr]

Like introducing whole new exhaust concept on the last day of testing.

RB6/RB7 ring a bell?

But even a sub-optimal EBD was giving a performance advantage, so it didn't have to work perfectly just enough to give an advantage. In both cases they were also coming from a position of strength with cars that were already working well.

This year the whole field have working exhaust solutions so it was critical for Red Bull to have theirs working 100% by the first race. It's no longer a have / have not performance feature, it's a question of who is getting the most from it.

Red Bull came into the final test with a certain amount of arrogance, expecting to be able to slap on their brand new exhaust solution and have it blow the field away. That didn't happen. Either they're not getting the results they expected, or the other teams are getting more from their exhausts than Red Bull thought, or it's not possible to get as big an advantage from the exhausts this year. Probably a combination of all the above.

What I don't get is that the car looks like it's not that special aerodynamically either. It doesn't have more down force than the competition and appears to be one of the most draggy cars out there. That could be that late rule clarifications have hurt the team (they were expecting off throttle blowing and flexing front wings to still be available to them) and that the aero package has therefore been optimised for a different setup / configuration. Or it could be that the EBD was flattering a good but not spectacular car and that a lot of the hyperbole about the team and Newey over the last couple of years was just that. Again it's probably a little bit of both.

[raymondu999]

Yup. But my point was that it's not fair to pin down a last minute package in testing to desperation. You bring up a good point though - what if the RB6/7 was actually an average car with a fantabulpous exhaust. As was shown when McLaren was probably the quicker car towards year end last year, and at certain tracks.

I find the situation somewhat similar to when Newey lost the active ride advantage. Their loss was... How should I say this... Somewhat obscene back then too. From dominating every qualifying with 1.5-2 seconds' margin, down to (relatively) rock bottom. Mind you that was probably a bigger loss back then though (in terms of laptime)

[munudeges]

To call this team desperate after two races is a little.....desperate. It seems people are also reading some very strange things into what actually happened over the past couple of years. No, McLaren was not faster at the end of last year. Red Bull killed everyone off after the summer break where they initiated a development programme that netted them wins at Spa and Monza. No one else came close.

The biggest problem with this current car is the instability their new exhaust system seems to have introduced. The development race has only just started.

[bhall]

It will be interesting to see if/how Red Bull can climb out of this. To me, their situation is reminiscent of BMW Sauber in 2009. They'd steadily gotten more and more competitive from 2006 to 2008 to the point that they entertained legitimate aspirations of competing for the Championship in 2009. But, the new formula completely eviscerated their performance. It seems they relied heavily on the myriad aero appendages that regularly sprouted from their cars, and they were completely lost without them.

Red Bull's situation isn't nearly that dire, but the parallels are there.