Legends with a grain of truth
The recent rumor about a hypothetical device used by a top Formula 1 team to obtain an asymmetric distribution of braking is certainly a fascinating and interesting hypothesis. The idea of a valve activated inertially by a simple mass constrained by springs would result in a fairly simple device, but decidedly effective and with an impact that is certainly not secondary on the car’s performance. We are, it must always be remembered, in the field of rumours and voices of the paddock, nothing confirmed or actually verified, but, on the other hand, Radio Paddock has a bit of the characteristic of functioning like legends: even if some rumours appear totally unlikely, sometimes they hide a grain of truth, which is why it is worth making some additional reflections.
The technical hypothesis and the regulatory stability
Summarizing very simply what has emerged, the theory is that one of the top teams (for the moment the main suspect seems to be Red Bull) used a system that allowed the braking to be distributed laterally in a non-uniform manner (perhaps on the rear axle), creating a differential effect that allowed the rotation of the car to be increased during corner entry, through (as mentioned in the introduction) a valve, operated only inertially by a mass, which increased or decreased the braking efficiency of one of the two wheels, obviously increasing the braking force on the internal one. From the point of view of the regulation in force until mid-season, this solution would have been, in fact, within the rulesnot being active in any way, although, evidently, somehow circumventing its spirit. This has led to a revision of the regulation itself such as to lead to the explicit prohibition of any braking system that allows a non-laterally symmetrical distribution of the braking force.
Red Bull rumours: this would explain some data anomalies and Verstappen’s deep braking
As mentioned, the rumors about the use of this system would seem to be focused, for now, on Red Bull, also given the loss of competitiveness relative to the opponents recorded after the first third of the season. Obviously we have no way of knowing if this is true, and we can only formulate some reasoning that comes to mind in light of this hypothesis. Thinking back to the data analyzed so far, the use of a similar technology by the Milton Keynes team would not seem entirely unfounded: one of the peculiarities of Newey’s latest cars, which we have had the opportunity to analyze several times, was the ability to be extremely high-performance in fast cornerstaking advantage of a significant stiffness of the suspension system, and then still managing not to lose effectiveness in slow sections, thanks to a mechanics that somehow seemed to be able to decouple the behaviors, allowing lines and passages comparable to cars with decidedly softer setups. Lately, however, we have seen Horner and Verstappen’s team in difficulty precisely when it was necessary to soften the setups, as in the Monaco and Canadian Grands Prix, a situation that took us a bit by surprise, given that the extreme stiffness of the RedBull suspension system seemed to be an essential starting condition for the correct behavior of the car, and a problem that could no longer be avoided in the case of kerbs, dips and slow corners. Clearly, if the use of this system were confirmed, it could be concluded that the performance in slow corners was better not due to a modulation in some way of the suspension stiffness, but rather due to a car capable of rotating more quickly than the competition, bypassing the limitation of the stiffness. Even Verstappen’s braking style, which we have noticed and highlighted many times, would seem to match the use of asymmetric braking: in fact, we have seen the Dutchman constantly tend to extend the braking phase, bringing it right into the curve, almost to the apex, and this would allow him to fully exploit the system. We repeat, however, that there is no confirmation on this matter, and we believe it is our duty to add that it does not seem likely that Red Bull’s loss of competitiveness is due only to the possible elimination of this system, as the RB20 appears to be more aerodynamically refined than anything elseunlike a McLaren that has been able to continue on its path of growth exponentially, becoming the current best car of the lot.
Other teams may have also worked on the system
Finally, we also want to reflect and make others reflect on the fact that there is no confirmation that the regulatory change on brake distribution was introduced to limit Red Bull specifically or only, and that, therefore, the Milton Keynes team may not be the one (or perhaps not the only one) to have invested in the study of this technology. For example, technological research of this type would also be compatible with the problem of thermal imbalance of the brakes suffered by Leclerc’s Ferrari in Bahrain (although on the front axle, but the real details of the systems in question are not known), a truly anomalous situation, and with other brake temperature problems also found for example in Austria. We also observed Leclerc himself often trying to bring the braking deep down to the apex, a particular detail that could also show how other teams, including the one from Maranello, could also have experimented on this gray area, then definitively closed by the federation.
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