The end of domination: Is Red Bull becoming desperate?

[Dragonfly]

You can't make parallels between a twice in a row champion team and a team which had only one lucky win and then willingly decided to not try to fight.
It seems many of you a taking RBR with a dose of disregard and disdain. I think you are heavily underestimating their capabilities. It does not matter whether it's a team with a long history or not. By that logic Ferrari must be on the other side of desperation

[bhall]

I didn't draw a parallel between the two-time defending Champions and a "lucky" team who subsequently withdrew from F1. I drew a parallel between two similar situations in which a team has struggled/is struggling due to the banishment of their engineering bread and butter, as it were.

[Richard]

The discussion about technical details on the exhaust placement are good technical posts about the car so I've brought them into the RB8 thread.

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=11807&view=unread#unread

Incidentally, why have a separate Red Bull Racing team thread and this one? I guess if this one serves a purpose and I'm ambivalent about it.

[C29]

It seems they relied heavily on the myriad aero appendages that regularly sprouted from their cars, and they were completely lost without them.

I don't know about that. If they relied on aero development, then the F1.09 wouldn't have had such an amateurish front wing to start that season. I believe the rumour was that BMW was relying too much on the new KERS and flexible front wing technologies and had built the car around those functions. They had to build a B chassis half-way through the season (with a resulting performance improvement)once it became apparent that KERS wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Mind you, the FIA making KERS optional didn't help, as some teams had completely abandonded the idea (to those teams' advantage), and focused more on the DDD. If KERS had been mandatory in 2009, the pecking order would have been shuffled up a bit (certainly Brawn wouldn't have dominated to the extent that they did).

[raymondu999]

I guess we know the answer now.

About the BMW F1.09 - they had always announced that they were banking on KERS; and common gossip says that they spent too much time flirting with the KERS system and so jilted on aero

[jamsbong]

After the Mugello test, I think we will get a better picture of who is stronger. The Pirelli tires are giving everyone a big headache. So far, the wins had been just a stroke of luck.

When the European season starts, I think we will see a consistent performance from some of the top teams.

[raymondu999]

I think it's a bit harsh to say they're just strokes of luck. But I get your point though - the pecking order so far seems more decided by whoever has got the tyres right that weekend.