The resumption of the 2022 Formula 1 World Championship is approaching, but before looking forward we asked ourselves about some performance of the RB18, initially difficult to understand on a technical level. Some intrinsic features of the Neweyin fact, they seemed difficult to combine with the results of the track, especially as regards the tire management joined to downforce level of the car. We tried to investigate thoroughly between the data and we met with the engineers of some teams to find answers, and what we have reconstructed seems to be of particular interest.
Let’s start from the basis of the project and its evolution. The RB18 hit the track early in the season with a car that generated a vertical load level inferior to direct rival, namely Ferrari. This was evidenced by both the performance in straightclearly superior for the Austrian team, but also by those in the “load” corners, that is the long and fast ones, where the car of Verstappen and Perez often seemed lack of travel speed. If the top speeds are the result of a combination of factors, including a particular aerodynamics that it produces stall of some components to bring down the drag (a team engineer told us “difficult to evaluate the Red Bull on the straight because Newey manages to stall everything”), cornering is a clear and unambiguous symptom of a lower level of downforce. Beyond Helmut Marko’s swaggering about the car’s top speed, Milton Keynes’s team sought to correct this lack of load for a good part of the first half of the season, also struggling with the weight of the car, with repetitive updates. The culmination of this process has come to Silverstone, a track made up of fast corners where load and balance are essential. At this stage we have also seen a process of convergence between Ferrari and RedBull on the performance of the straights, with the F1-75 which adopted the new rear wing specification for both drivers in the British race, and the RB18 which gradually went increasing the load.
The rain in qualifying and the debris hit by Verstappen in the race on the English track deprived us of a genuine comparison from the point of view of performance, but on that occasion we had seen a particular aerodynamic structure with an unprecedented combination of the incidence of the wings and the beam wing (the lower rear wing, placed above the diffuser) brought to the track by Newey’s team, as if to indicate an anomalous behavior of the car and the relative attempt to correct it. The next race, the Austrian Grand Prixshowed what the problems were of the updates brought to the RB18. Indeed, it emerged during the race that the car had indeed found a load, but had at the same time lost aerodynamic stability and balance. With a full tank of fuel and great longitudinal acceleration Verstappen found himself a car with a different behavior at each turnwhich has become particularly difficult to drive, resulting in a abnormal tire wear who handed the race over to Ferrari. This is why in France the RedBull team carried out a long series of comparative tests during free practice, ending up choosing just some of the updates carried on the car and, above all, for give up the high load level achieved, actually taking a step back. Also there top speed range between Ferrari and RedBull it is reopened in the French race, with Verstappen again much faster than the reds in the straight, but significantly slower in the corners. There shortage of load is generally an advocate of a marked degradation of tires because it generates slipping and therefore deterioration of the tread. We have seen that they exist two ways to bring the tires up to temperaturethe first is that correctthrough the downforce it produces a deformation of the rubber carcass both straight and cornering, which in turn generates heat that radiates from the heart of the tire towards the upper layers. This technical situation is the best, plus stable thermally, and which guarantees the permanence of the tire in its ideal window of usethe highest level of grip, and the least degradation.
On the contrary, the sliding causes a only superficial overheating of the rubberwith a heat that does not reach the heart of the tire, leading to a thermally situation much less stable and therefore more difficult to control. In this case, the rubber undergoes many more thermal cycles, in addition to the obvious greater wear of the tread due to slipping on the asphalt and all this produces significantly more degradation.
In all of this, however, we never saw Verstappen go during the season truly in crisis with the tires due to the lack of load, indeed the only race where it suffered collapses was the Austrian Grand Prix where the RB18 brought one of the highest levels of vertical load. We therefore asked ourselves how all this was possible and the answer we have found is in a driving technique measured and meticulously prepared by the driver and team. Observing the telemetry data, the onboards and listening to the radio teams we understood that there is a great job behind Preparation on the driving style of the reigning World Champion. First of all, an engineer assured us that even from the telemetry data available to the teams it emerges that Verstappen has a sensitivity higher than normal in “slippery” conditions and this gives it a remarkable innate ability to manage the limit of the car. This allows him above all to bring the exact speed that allows the tire to generate energy but not slip. In practice, Verstappen manages to slow down while cornering exactly what is required by the lowest downforce of his car, remaining fast but without exceeding in the least and causing slippage. It may seem like a “trivial” thing but being able to drive so perfectly at the limit requires an absolutely first level level of sensitivity and concentration, which only the Dutchman can guarantee with continuity to the team. Not only this, however, it has emerged from our research that if we consider the three phases of the curve, entry, travel and exit, looking at the data it is possible to find who is able to give energy correctly to the tires, that is, in the phase of entrance and traveland who has to manage the temperatures as best he can, ending up with slide the car out curve, perhaps opening the throttle but maintaining a steering angle still pronounced and thus causing it slipping of the front tires. Also in this we have noticed an obsessive attention from Verstappen and Red Bull: The Dutchman’s curve setting, in fact, is constantly trying to charge the front axle with energy in phase of entrance And mileagewhile from the middle of the curve onwards the attitude changes totallywith the pilot opening the steering angle in traction checking it millimetrically just to keep the sliding of the front axle under control.
It is not just the pilot’s initiative: the thing is constantly monitored also by the pit wallso much so that the Verstappen track engineer often talks on the subject with his rider during the race, referring to the sliding of the front as a parameter under constant control. This denotes the level of attention to the thing in the RedBull house.
That’s not all: we also noticed one last interesting technical step in the guide of Verstappen, also emerged in the last race in Hungary. So many times we have encountered one particular driving style in some curves by the World Champion who defines himself in jargon “V”with the pilot ie that extends the braking phase up to the center of the curvewith a sharp-angle trajectory leading a low speed at the chord point but a high speed in the input and output phases. This technique is not just a matter of pure driving style, but it is a huge help in transferring energy to the front axle even in conditions of lack of aerodynamic load. When the driver goes on the brake, in fact, the front is charged with the dynamic mass of the car due to the inertia e this generates a load that we can consider “fictitious” on the front axle. Verstappen lengthens this phase, also imprinting significant steering anglesjust for transfer energy correctly to the tires, using the “fictitious” load during braking instead of the aerodynamic one when traveling. All this attention to the front in particular also derives from the fact that the new Pirelli tiresbrought in this first season of the new regulations, have proved themselves weak right at the frontwith generalized understeer problems for all teams. RedBull therefore had to develop an attitude and driving management technique that minimized a problem that, with the lowest level of load, could become exponentially disruptive. How much everything that has been stated above is conducted literally on the razor’s edge we saw it in the Austrian Grand Prix, when the RB18 has lost the dynamic and aerodynamic balance in the first phase of the race and immediately produced abnormal tire wear.
In conclusion, the findings testify how the pilot element can still make a difference with these new cars, so complex to drive. RedBull, thanks to Verstappen, manages to bring to the track, in addition to the coldness and speed of the reigning World Champion, also a driving technique that manages to maximize the performance of the car even in those areas where it does not excel. A truly meticulously calibrated work that can only generate admiration for both the team and the driver.
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