Ferrari VS Red Bull Development Battle
Ferrari VS Red Bull Development Battle
While Ferrari may have not been as aggressive as Red Bull in terms of their upgrade schedule, the Maranello team is still making great strides in their development journey as the team has finally addressed their glaring weakness against Red Bull, which is their straight-line speed. And as for Red Bull, Max Verstappen has revealed the team’s weakness that may cost them the title this year if left unsolved.
So what did Ferrari do to make their F1-75 quicker on the straights? And what is the weakness Max Verstappen is seeing in the RB18? Well, you’re going to have to stick around to find out. But before we get to it, consider subscribing as we upload 4 videos at the minimum, just to keep you updated on the latest happenings in the F1 space. Now that’s out of the way, let’s get to it.
Red Bull and Ferrari are undoubtedly the top dogs to watch this season. And each of them have achieved their lap times this season in completely opposite ways. Ferrari has always been better in slow and medium corners, while Red Bull would be the opposite as the RB18 would be like a sprinter running at full tilt on straights where they undoubtedly had the top speed advantage over their competitors, especially Ferrari. Team Boss Mattia Binotto would admit that this was a glaring weakness of the F1-75 that they had to address as quickly as possible. In his words:
“We had a disadvantage compared to the Red Bull no doubt, in terms of straight-line speed especially in the DRS zone,” he said. So in terms of the power of their DRS compared to ours, we worked a lot on it.”
The team would finally address this issue first at the Canadian Grand Prix where Charles Leclerc would first get to use the newly designed rear wing. And the results were more than Ferrari had hoped for, in the official speed trap figures, Leclerc would reach a top speed of 342km/h while his teammate Carlos Sainz would top off at 331km/h.
The wing features several changes, with a notable reduction in the mainplane’s chord length in the central section leading to a much gentler transition toward the rolled endplates. This feature contributes towards the downforce and drag reduction while their drivers floor it to reach top speeds in straights.
In addition to the new rear wing the team introduced in Canada, Ferrari engineers would also increase the undercut on the underside of their sidepods in order to further reduce drag as well. This adjustment was introduced in Silverstone and was used also in Austria.
While this may help the drivers on long straights and DRS zones, it is important to note that this may come at a cost to where they were previously strong so both Charles and Carlos must anticipate their setup choices and the performance of their tires over the long stretch of a race.
Another thing the drivers
And as for their championship rivals Red Bull, the team is as busy as ever introducing new upgrades to their car with each GP that passes. And Austria was no different, eliminating the terminal part of the fin of their engine cover, creating a slot instead to help their Honda power unit from not overheating. The team would also make changes to their venturi tunnels where the innermost fences had been cut to from an l-shaped profile.
But despite all these changes, Red Bull seemed to struggle more than expected. While the team finished in P2 thanks to Carlos Sainz’s retirement, the team looked way off on their pace during race day and the team is still struggling to put in a good performance during qualifying. Red bull driver Max Verstappen would comment on these issues saying:
“We are still a little bit, I would say, not amazing in qualifying. But that hasn’t only to do with just the car, we are still a bit heavy. When all the fuel comes out, that is just a limitation we have. So we need to lose weight with the car, which we’re working on. But that’s why in the race, it’s a little bit less of an issue because first of all, you cannot push like in qualifying so probably that helps a bit with the way we have the car. And that weight issue with a full tank is a little bit less visible.”
Red Bull was reportedly overweight by 15kgs during the pre-season testing, and was able to halve that once the calendar reached the Miami Grand Prix. But since then, the team has been introducing upgrades at every GP which potentially has brought that weight up to 10kgs. And 10kgs would cost them an average of 0.3-0.4s of lap time depending on the track setup.
But it is worth noting that every car on the grid has been battling with this issue since the start of pre-season when 3kgs was added to the original figure of 795kgs as the minimum weight. Alfa Romeo started the season in the best shape while Ferrari also had to work to where they are now. While Mercedes was reported to be also within the vicinity of the RB18.
And while Verstappen was able to take pole in Austria, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc still has more with 6 to Verstappen’s 3. While this may be an issue in Verstappen’s eyes, Red Bull’s chief engineer Paul Monaghan believes that this is a pointless battle to focus on saying:
“We’re only able to influence our own performance, not what Ferrari does. So our challenge is to get as much out of our package as we can within the constraints we operate with this year. If we’ve managed to put a little bit more performance on our car, then it will serve us well for qualifying as well as the race. You wouldn’t do one versus the other, you look to do both – otherwise it’s a bit of a false game potentially. So we’ll just keep on, where we can, trying to find ways of putting a little bit more pace on the car.”
And as the team heads to Paul Ricard, both Red Bull drivers are looking to get back to their winning ways, especially Sergio Pere. Perez at one point was only 15 points behind his teammate and drivers’ standings leader Max Verstappen. But after 2 retirements in the last 4 races, the Mexican is eager to get back on track saying:
“After a tough weekend in Austria, it’s great to be back racing and have a chance to put things right,” said Perez. “We have had two DNFs in the past three races and we can’t afford that in the championships so I’m aiming to change that this weekend in France. I’m still in contention for the drivers’ championship, so personally it is also important not to lose any more points. Last year I scored my second podium with the team in France, and I am very looking forward to trying to repeat that. Paul Ricard is a challenging track because there are different racing lines you can take through the corners and it’s not easy to know which is the best one to use. The high temperatures will also be a factor to consider this weekend, physically it looks like it will be a very demanding race and we will have to see how it goes with the tyre degradation because of the heat.”
And Verstappen on the other hand, who won last year’s French Grand Prix after passing title rival Lewis Hamilton in the ending laps of the race, is looking to keep his winning streak at Paul Ricard saying and to improve on the issues the team faced in Austria saying:
“We had a good result last year in France as a team,” said Verstappen. “The track has a lot of technical and high-speed corners towards the end, so it will be important to look after the tyres, especially considering it’s going to be a very hot weekend. I’m looking forward to another race week where we can hopefully improve on our performance from Austria and learn from our result last time out.”
And there you have it guys, so what do you think? Who comes out on top of this development battel between the 2? And why do you think so? And who has a bigger problem to solve, is it Red Bull with their weight loss problems? Or is Ferrari with their reliability problems? Let us know in the comment section below, and as always don’t forget to like and subscribe to the channel if you haven’t!
