The third free practice session of the British Grand Prix left little doubt as to which car is the candidate for pole position for qualifying. The number 1 RedBull driven by Max Verstappen he impressed for the times found and for the ease with which they arrived, showing a perfect, very fast and extremely effective machine. Obviously something has changed a lot since yesterday considering that in second place we find Sergio Perez, who, even if with a little more effort, has nevertheless shown that the RB18 has become the car to beat overnight. However, we realized already live that the data recorded by Max Verstappen had a particular characteristic, which did not match well with the video images of the cars, here they are compared with those of the best lap of Charles Leclerc, third in the standings.
The first thing you notice in a macroscopic way is that the RB18 seems to have less load than the F1-75. While the higher draw speeds of Verstappen’s car can be dictated by a different mapping of the power unit, the low speeds at Brooklands, Chapel and Stowe (Turns 6, 14 and 15) normally leave no doubt about it being the classic “da loaded ”, where in fact Ferrari is doing very well. Yet the video images showed a rear wing flap of the Red Bull much larger than the competition, revealing a setting that at first glance would appear to be high, indeed very high, downforce. To try to clarify how it was possible to see such contrasting data and images, we also asked for the help of our Carlo Platella, who rightly pointed out that in RedBull there is a rear wing set to high load, but a beam wing with an angle. of much lower incidence than usual, almost as if to reduce the work of the diffuser. Obviously the load from the bottom of the car is much higher in percentage than that of the wings and the conclusion that we have given ourselves is that RedBull seems to have chosen a level of downforce generated by the bottom of the car lower than the competition but finding the right balance and the right balance through a large rear wing flap. The setting, therefore, would seem only “fake” at high loadinstead showing from the data an RB18 as more and more at ease and more balanced with a lower level of aerodynamic load, which at this moment seems to marry perfectly with the Silverstone circuit.
For its part Ferrari seems to have found a generally correct and well balanced set-up, with excellent speed both in slow corners and precisely in high-load corners, but with some stability problems in braking and especially in changes of direction at very high speed. The entry of Maggots was one of the weak points for both Leclerc and Sainz throughout the session, with a difficulty in entering the F1-75 that seems to suffer a lot from the jolts and porpoising in these situations. The red also seemed more conservative on the engine (we know that the former Honda engines usually do some mapping experiments during free thirds) and this is particularly evident in the stretch that goes from Chapel to the braking of Stowe, where Leclerc begins to accelerate with 7 km / h more speed, but reaches the braking point at 311 km / h against the 321 of Verstappen. Adding the best sectors, it turns out that Verstappen had a further margin for improvement of 77 thousandths, against Leclerc’s 219, which therefore could have contained the gap to about 3 tenths, almost all attributable to the straights (with the sum of the efficiency effects and power).
The impression, therefore, is of a Ferrari that has a potential step in its pocket to get closer, but that will have a very hard life, facing one of the potentially strongest Red Bulls of the year, which seems to have found the magic key to unlock a the car’s high level of potential, even with these “special” set-up choices. Mercedes then it seems to be able to confirm that it is close and the situation in qualifying could mix even more, waiting to see what the weather will combine.
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