One of the aspects that contributed to making the 2021 championship one of the most fascinating, if not the best ever, in the history of Formula 1 was the vastness of the fronts on which the competition between Mercedes and Red Bull has branched out. In addition to the pure competitive spirit on the track between Verstappen and Hamilton, throughout the course of the season the teams of Brackley and Milton Keynes faced each other in the field of strategies, set-ups, development planning and invariably in the technical area, the latter aspect where numerous interpretative differences emerged with which each team underlined their own design identity. Although in its infancy and therefore still far from being a confrontation of equal magnitude to the one staged in 2021, the challenge in 2022 between Ferrari and Red Bull is settling on similar levels. If possible, even more marked differences are emerging between the approaches of the two teams than those that characterized the 2021 duelincreasing the points of interest of a championship far from even reaching the halfway point.
The new generation of single-seaters immediately offered a profound variety of interpretation in the design of the sidepods with fairing of the sides. In this aspect, Ferrari and Red Bull have less marked differences than those recognizable in the rest of the package, recognizing similar philosophies but declined with different nuances between the RB18 and the F1-75. In fact, both the Maranello and Milton Keynes teams reject the winning concept in the previous technical cycle of maximum tapering of the bellies, revived in 2022 by Mercedes, Williams and to a lesser extent by McLaren. Ferrari and Red Bull in fact compensate for the disappearance of the previous aerodynamic appendages in the center of the car such as bargeboards and boomerangs by means of wide sides to remove the harmful turbulence generated by the front wheels laterally. Furthermore, in contrast to the deep recess in the lower part visible in the sidepods of, for example, Alfa Romeo and Aston Martin, the body of the F1-75 and RB18 remains wide at the bottom until it meets the bottom. The ultimate aim is to accelerate the flows close to the outer edge of the bottom, so as to encourage the extraction of lateral air from the underbody like a common diffuser, to increase the generation of load in the center of the car.
The main interpretative difference in this area between Ferrari and Red Bull lies in the trend of the bellies towards the rear. On the RB18 these decline downwards, exploiting the adhesion of the flows to the surfaces to convey air in the direction of the environment behind the car, so as to encourage extraction from the diffuser and the generation of load from the bottom. On the Maranello car, on the other hand, the sidepods retain almost the same height for their entire width, with the upper flows thus bypassing the rear suspension unit, directly hitting the beam-wing.
Another distinction in the bodywork of the two single-seaters emerges in the shapes of the central portion of the hood. The Honda-derived Red Bull power unit retains the bulky pack of radiators centrally positioned at the head of the engine, raising the center of gravity but reducing the bulk in the bellies. On the other hand, the F1-75 returns to a configuration similar to the SF90 and SF1000, with the cooling system more located in the sidepods, lowering the center of mass and streamlining the hood at the top.
To fully appreciate the philosophical differences between the two competitors, it is necessary to move to the suspension groups, both the front and the rear. In fact, the suspension determines the way in which the entire car package works, both in terms of mechanics as regards balancing and tire management, and on the stabilization of the aerodynamic platform to optimize the generation of load in all driving conditions as the heights from the ground vary. At the front, Red Bull marries the pattern pull-rod against the more traditional push-rod of the Ferrari, while at the rear the situation is reversed, with the F1-75 sporting a tie rod geometry opposed to the strut kinematics of the RB18. The push-rod design offers greater accessibility to internal components for tuning operations, while the pull-rod ensures a slight lowering of the center of gravity thanks to the housing at the bottom of the internal suspension assembly. Similarly, it is not possible to establish an absolute mechanical superiority of one of the two geometries, dependent more than on the scheme itself, on the method of implementation: inclinations of the members, orientations of the triangles, transmission ratios and arrangement of the internal components. It is also eloquent how much the teams do not agree on which kinematics has the best aerodynamic influence, with Ferrari deeply convinced of the superiority of the push-rod at the front, which however does not undermine Red Bull’s confidence on the greater aerodynamic validity of the pull-rod. Two completely different architectures, therefore, which reveal the opposite beliefs, approaches and philosophies for the two teams.
Even more than the contrast between push-rod and pull-rod, it emerges how much the teams of Maranello and Milton Keynes differ in the arrangement of the external triangles of the suspension, as always the result of the compromise between aerodynamic influence and desired kinematics. Red Bull’s external suspensions appear much more articulated and branched than what is seen on the Ferrari, with a more marked reciprocal orientation of the various arms in all three directions. The technical department led by Pierre Wache wanted to give the RB18 a better stabilization of the car’s pitch during longitudinal load transfers in traction under braking, which by causing the car body to swing back and forth alter the optimal ground clearance, affecting the load released from the bottom. The Anglo-Austrian team thus wanted to pursue a more anti-squat and anti-dive kinematics of the suspension group, to improve the performance of the aerodynamic platform, while Ferrari favored the cleanliness of the flows.
Turning to the front of the power unit, Mattia Binotto revealed that the Maranello unit makes extensive use of clipping for its intrinsic design characteristics, cutting electrical power at the end of the obverse to deliver it decisively in the recovery phases. Red Bull, on the other hand, inherits the Honda concept, with a heat engine that sacrifices part of the efficiency and therefore of the combustion power with the aim of having more residual energy in the exhaust gases. This energy is then stored in the battery through regeneration by the MGU-H coupled to the turbine, outlining a car with an abundance of energy that allows the drivers to enjoy the thrust of the electric for the entire duration of the straight, accentuating the already excellent speed skills of the British car. So Yuki Asaki, responsible for the development of the Honda power unit in 2021, described the work done at Sakura: “Another aspect we had to think about was that the combustion efficiency was better. […] Due to the laws of physics, the amount of storable energy had changed and this meant that the residual energy in the exhaust gases had decreased. For this reason, with respect to energy recovery [dall’MGU-H, n.d.r] we had last year [nel 2020]what we had to work on was to increase the output power to the crankshaft, but at the same time ensure that there was a good level of output at the exhaust, therefore a sufficiently high gas temperature“. It is no coincidence that, especially in the first half of 2021, Red Bull expressed higher extension speeds than Mercedes, whose exponents attributed the gap to the reduced clipping of the Japanese power unit.
However, the differences between Ferrari and Red Bull emerge not only in the design characteristics, but also in the strategic set-up choices. The Maranello team prefers aerodynamic configurations with greater load in order to improve tire management in the race, thanks to the current superiority of the RB18 on this front, an aspect that amplifies the speed gap between the two cars on the straight. However, while Ferrari tends to increase the load to favor race pace, Red Bull tends to take the opposite path, as reflected in the words of chief engineer Paul Monaghan: “We are looking for the best compromise between qualifying and the race. In qualifying you want a little more load, while in the race you want less“. The question arises whether the reduction of the load in the race on the RB18 is aimed at a higher top speed in close comparisons or if instead there is a discourse of better stabilization of the tire pressures.
Finally, it is the case that takes the lead at the moment the strategic differentiation between the two teams in development planning. Continuing the tradition of the past years, Red Bull splits the evolution of the car with small updates introduced almost at every race, purely aerodynamic in the pre-season tests followed by the weight reductions in the current season. Ferrari on the other hand, after having refined the fund before the inaugural race, left the F1-75 unchanged, working in Maranello on an evolutionary package conceived with an overall vision and expected to make its debut in Barcelona. It is impossible to establish which approach will prove to be successful at the time of the end-of-season budgets, the only real goal to which the efforts of the teams in their respective factories are aimed.
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