F1 | Red Bull: Max's brakes overheating is mysterious

Max Verstappen retired on the fourth lap of the Australian GP: his Red Bull began to suffer from overheating in the right rear corner immediately after the start. The Dutchman, who was in the lead after starting from pole, ran wide on lap 2 and was then overtaken by Carlos Sainz's Ferrari which took the lead peremptorily. Then the RB20 began to visibly smoke, before long tongues of fire came out of the brake duct vent and also hit the side bulkhead of the rear wing.

There was overheating which caused the braking system to fail: in the lane towards the pits the three baskets covering the caliper and disc literally exploded and a black cloud of composite material was seen.

Red Bull has completely closed baskets: the attempt is to preserve the tires by trying to dispose of the heat that is produced by the friction material from the rear vents, while in the past with the 13-inch rims the heat was used to send the tires at temperature and to keep them in the right operating window by also heating the wheel.

Christian Horner, Red Bull team principal, explains: “There was a problem: the caliper blocked the disc from the start of the race and, therefore, heat accumulated. Already on the second lap it was as if Max had a handbrake on at turn three which allowed Carlos to pass him and then we started to see smoke and, therefore, fire. So it's frustrating: it's the first withdrawal from Australia two years ago. We didn't collect points while we were fighting at the head of the group.”

The Milton Keynes boss talks about the effect of the problem, but did not explain what the causes of the failure were. From this year, Red Bull has decided to switch to the supply of Brembo discs on the convinced push of Max Verstappen who had carried out tests and found the material from the Bergamo multinational which already supplied the calipers to the world champion team to be more performing.

Red Bull RB20: here is a rear corner without the carbon baskets

Photo by: Uncredited

The first information excludes failures in the braking material: Red Bull will carry out very in-depth investigations to find out what stopped the world champion after 43 races always finishing in the points. Newey's team usually goes with baskets that are particularly closed and also sealed with silicone, but it was not identified what caused the overheating: a small rubbing between the carbon parts is enough to trigger devastating effects or a little sealant which perhaps it creeps into the pumping elements.

And we cannot even rule out an anomaly in the functioning of the brake-by-wire, the electronic braking distribution which compensates for braking when the hybrid system is in action compared to when the MGU-K does not recharge kinetic energy in release.

Usually the brake-by-wire acts in the same way on the two rear wheels, while the Red Bull problem was limited to the right corner. Doing a thorough investigation will not be easy because the material was literally cooked in the persistent fire.