Red Bull suspension: the secret in the new brakes?
“The RB19 was a 60% RB18, there are components that have won more than 30 races”. Thus the Red Bull team principal Christian Horner he underlined that the RB19 dominated 2023 without significantly revolutionizing the project which had already collected 17 victories out of 22 in 2022 reaching 21 out of 22 in 2023.
Compared to the 2022 Red Bull, the RB19 certainly benefited from a lighter chassis, but several pieces of the puzzle have found a better placement compared to the previous championship. Among these there are certainly also the new brakes brought to the track in 2023 by the Milton Keynes team.
Ferrari's technical director spoke about it Enrico Cardile interviewed by the German newspaper Auto Motor und Sport: “I don't think other teams have smaller brake calipers than us. This is a so-called open-source component. If a team changes something, they need to share the CAD design plans with everyone else. We can see them and of course we also study the photos. As far as I know, the dimensions of the brake calipers are almost the same for all teams. Red Bull introduced new technology this year that differs from what Mercedes and we have been using for several years. It is possible that these new calipers bring a weight advantage. This is an aspect that must be evaluated. But whether the piece is larger or smaller than a millimeter makes no difference.”
The real advantage of this new technology would not be that relating to the reduction in total weight, but the decrease in the weight of the unsprung mass of each wheel, which being downstream of the suspension system has a direct impact on the dynamics of the car. Ideally, the unsprung masses should be as light as possible and that's exactly what Red Bull may have improved through the new brakes.
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