Auto Motor und Sport reports that Red Bull Racing can gain 0.2-0.3 seconds per lap by removing the weight of the RB18.
Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Ferrari are expected to win the 2022 opening round at the Bahrain Grand Prix. However, neither team relies on pre-season test hair results. Both expect Mercedes F1 to break into the high-ranking battle. The question is whether the Mercedes F1 was bluffing.
On the final day of the Bahrain test, the balance of power appeared to have changed. Red Bull Racing took the lead with a major upgrade to the RB18. Behind it is Scuderia Ferrari, and the Mercedes F1 is considered a difficult force to evaluate.
However, there are still uncertainties that are only known on the first race weekend. For the first time in the F1 Bahrain Grand Prix Saturday qualifying, everyone will use soft tires and low fuel at the same time.
Scuderia Ferrari impressed Red Bull Racing with its speed and powerful engine. Above all, Ferrari’s F1-75 long run and tire usage drew attention. Ferrari had a short run ahead. Therefore, the engine output is lowered, and according to the calculation of rivals, there is still a lot of gasoline in the tank.
Red Bull Racing still has a trump card hidden in its sleeve. The RB18 should be pretty slim at the beginning of the season. At the test stage, it was well above the minimum weight of 798 kg. However, it’s been overheard that the RB18 can get a gain of 0.2-0.3 seconds per lap just by reducing the weight.
According to Red Bull Racing, Max Verstappen was running at maximum engine power in the pre-season fastest lap (1’31.720 with C5 tires), but the tank had the least amount of fuel. It wasn’t. Therefore, there is still potential.
No one likes to make real decisions about the Mercedes W13. Rival team engineers are confident that the Mercedes F1 is hiding its true performance in testing and that Silver Arrows will work sooner or later. Rival teams calculate that Mercedes has one second in engine power alone. This seems to have been calculated using GPS data compared to Williams. The Williams F1 is said to have run at the maximum power of the Mercedes engine. If that were true, George Russell would have driven at Max Verstappen’s level.
The side pods, which abused the mirror mount to remove the upper crush structure, received critical feedback from rivals. Mercedes argues that Miller is part of the bodywork in the new regulation and that the fairing itself serves an aerodynamic purpose. The radical concept also states that sidepod tricks do not increase the eddy behind W13 and are not against the spirit of F1.
In both Barcelona and Bahrain, the W13 sometimes jumped straight at high speeds like a rabbit. The bounce is explained by the engineer who slowed down Mercedes. When the vehicle height was lowered too much, the car and the driver were shaken violently. If the vehicle height was too high, there was not enough downforce in the fast corners.
Mercedes F1 engineers are working on setting up the car to enter an aerodynamic window that produces a lot of downforce without bouncing. If that succeeds, W13 should be a few seconds faster. Compared to the bodywork that Mercedes F1 ran in Barcelona, the number that you can find about 1 second with a new concept with zero pods circulates in the paddock.
It is doubtful that the Mercedes F1 can control bouncing without additional slots and holes in the undercarriage. Such interventions can theoretically sacrifice lap times and undermine performance benefits. In any case, Mercedes F1 has not yet provided evidence that the concept is the most promising.
Category: Category: F1 / Red bull / F1 Bahrain GP
