Red Bull RB7 Renault

[segedunum]

It's been there since the last 1 or 2 tests

No, they do apparently have a new wing (not sure what's different on it) and Newey and a few engineers were looking underneath it for signs of damage from track contact. I think what they're doing now is perfecting how low the wing gets in relation to the amount of downforce placed on it and making it stable.

They're obviously miles ahead of everyone else in being able to get their carbon fibre to flex like this, and the ironic thing might be that with the new tests put in place it's made it more difficult for other teams to catch up quickly and has effectively locked in the advantage Red Bull have. The new tests certainly appeared to affect them last year and then after a few races they seemed to have recovered everything of what they apparently lost.

[ringo]

They're using the downward rotation of the tyre and it's friction to pump/pull the exhaust down under the diffuser, hence the proximity to the tyre.

[siskue2005]

wudnt that cause higher tyre temp & degradation?

[halllo_fireball]

It's been there since the last 1 or 2 tests

No, they do apparently have a new wing (not sure what's different on it) and Newey and a few engineers were looking underneath it for signs of damage from track contact. I think what they're doing now is perfecting how low the wing gets in relation to the amount of downforce placed on it and making it stable.

They're obviously miles ahead of everyone else in being able to get their carbon fibre to flex like this, and the ironic thing might be that with the new tests put in place it's made it more difficult for other teams to catch up quickly and has effectively locked in the advantage Red Bull have. The new tests certainly appeared to affect them last year and then after a few races they seemed to have recovered everything of what they apparently lost.

Actually the testing restrictions shouldn't be a big issue in this case, as you can calculate the load on the wing and design the wing accordingly. Obviously it's more the design-process which seems to be the problem here.

[Dragonfly]

wudnt that cause higher tyre temp & degradation?

Well, Pirelli claimed during the winter testing that the tires would degrade less and begin layering rubber in hotter conditions.
So who knows.

[PlatinumZealot]

How is their pull rod pivoted so low?

[Dmitry]

So who knows.

I think its only the beginning of problems.

[Poleman]

I think its only the beginning of problems.

I noticed that too on the live stream.It was from FP1...Preety nasty stuff.

[raymondu999]

strangely enough Sebastian didn't have any problems at all on his run on those tyres though. He didn't even realize it was there

[Poleman]

Yeah strange that but still...Who wants to have a 1,5cm (from the looks of it) hole in his front tyre? That cant be good for the tyre's lifetime IMO.

[A13EX_f]

So who knows.

I think its only the beginning of problems.

...pic removed...

not really a problem all teams will be testing exactly how many laps each tyre will do before being replaced in order to work out roughly when they need to pit in the race.

[Poleman]

It looks like as if it was re-treaded in a very cheap and quick way.

[raymondu999]

Looks more like a tyre issue than a car issue IMO. But I wonder why that happened. Or what it actually is.

Can we stop requoting the pic btw? It's annoying.

@A13EX_f, that's not tyre wear though. It could be wear related, but it's more like a structural failure of some kind

[segedunum]

This kind of thing was pretty routine during winter testing.

[finishline]

@A13EX_f, that's not tyre wear though. It could be wear related, but it's more like a structural failure of some kind

This was brought up on the BBC coverage, they mentioned that Vettel had hit some of the bodywork that a sauber had lost.