By Carlo Platella
There is great attention around the world champions in Baku. Red Bull is expected to redeem itself after the disappointing performance in Monza, on a track, the Azerbaijani one, which on paper should ease the problems of the RB20. From Milton Keynes also comes an important update to the fund, which the team believes has great potential. The prerogative is check the correlation with wind tunnel and CFDbut it will be difficult to get answers before Austin.
Great potential
Red Bull brings a new fund to Azerbaijan, the sixth since the beginning of the year. “It’s not really a new fund”the comment of Paul Monaghan, Chief Engineer of the team, speaking during the Tech Talk programme produced by F1. “We tried a bit to change the way the channels flow. The change is incredibly subtle, but the potential could be quite significant. We will see”. The words chosen by the engineer are extremely reductive, given that the addition of an imposing keel to the diffuser ramp has a significant impact on the car’s aerodynamics.
The impression is that Red Bull is trying to keep a low profile with regards to the changes, which Monaghan himself hopes will confirm their success. “significant potential”. The goal is not to increase downforce and aerodynamic efficiency, but to correct a balance that has been degrading over the course of the year. Asked whether the current RB20 is slower than the one at the start of the season, Christian Horner reiterates how peak performance has increased, but at the expense of driveability: “I think there are different aspects. It’s one thing to talk in terms of absolute aerodynamic load that you put into the car through the updates, but then there’s also the balance. I think at the beginning of the year we had a better balanced car.”.
Correlation to be found
Initially it was not clear how much the updates that arrived in Baku were an initial fix to the car’s problems and how much an experiment in view of future developments. Listening to the team members, the impression is that the new diffuser is somewhere in the middle. The simulations promise important improvements, but the correlation with the track is yet to be verified.
“I think as we increased the aerodynamic load, there was no correlation with what we saw from our instruments”, Horner’s admission. “As we start to push these regulations to the limit, you sometimes find a lack of correlation between the track and the simulation tools, which are essentially the wind tunnel and the CFD. Obviously a lot of effort has been put into understanding and addressing that.”
It is not clear exactly what kind of lack of correlation the Team Principal is referring to. It could in fact be a discrepancy in numbers between reality and the wind tunnel with the same configuration, height from the ground and posture with respect to the ground, but also the emergence on the track of physical phenomena that cannot be replicated with simulation tools. This is a recurring problem with the sophisticated aerodynamics of Formula 1 ground effect, which many teams have run into. In this case Red Bull will have to wait until Austin for a more indicative feedback, on a track which, featuring curves of various geometry and speed, constitutes a decidedly more challenging test for balance problems.
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