Ferrari F1-75 is the most competitive car on the grid, but the Formula 1 F1 at the moment is certainly the Red Bull RB18.
If the Scuderia fails to capitalize on a technical superiority that has been seen both in Barcelona and in Monte Carlo, the Milton Keynes team continues to collect victories (fourth in a row) with a car that seems to represent the point of convergence towards which rivals are orienting themselves, including Ferrari.
So why was the red car faster than Adrian Newey’s challenger despite being the car that inspired several solutions that were then copied?
Ferrari was perhaps the first to understand the pitfalls of porpoising in the season that revived ground-effect single-seaters after a long flat-bottomed F1 cycle, and focused on an F1-75 with a slightly higher front end as compared to the opponents, but such as to allow the use of less rigid suspensions that absorbed more the disconnections of the asphalt, making the tires work better in the correct operating window.
The start of the season certainly went in this direction, although the Scuderia’s car was also affected by the bouncing: the F1-75 found the right ways to “turn off” the stationary waves that are generated in the Venturi channels beyond a certain speed faster than its rivals, that is to say at those values that cannot be investigated in the wind tunnel due to precise regulation limits (the wind can blow at a maximum of 150 km / h).
As the aerodynamics began to understand how to neutralize the bouncing, they tried to bring the floor of the car closer to the asphalt, discovering a significant increase in downforce and, consequently, recording an increase in performance and gain in terms of lap time.
According to a reliable estimate made by motorsport.com, with an F1 20 mm higher from the ground than the height studied in the wind tunnel, 10% of the aerodynamic load is lost, which can cost one second per lap. It is evident that all the technicians at the beginning of the season raised the cars to make them drivable by the drivers, while now they are looking for the best solutions to return to the initial settings, knowing full well that to control the height (and, therefore, the load) It is essential to have much more rigid mechanical settings which risk transferring more stresses to the tires.
Depending on the reliability of the systems, research is substantially limited in this area and it should not be surprising, therefore, if certain lines of Red Bull’s development can inspire opponents.
The Maranello team in Barcelona brought the first package of updates with a new floor aimed at improving performance with a reduction in drag and a significant increase in downforce, relying on a red car capable of running lower from the ground. Obviously, attention was focused on the visible parts: the outermost flow diverter at the entrance to the Venturi channels was slightly moved towards the chassis and is much higher.
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The reason? David Sanchez’s aerodynamics had discovered that “dirty” air from the turbulence of the front wheel ended up in the duct, creating a harmful aerodynamic block. On the floor, on the trailing edge, the central part has disappeared, leaving only one opening towards the rear wheel characterized by a central carbon element
The stiffening of the floor made it possible to limit porpoising and, therefore, to have a progressively lower car: like Red Bull, Ferrari also adopted the “skid” just behind the diffuser. On the RB18 it increased in size in length, while on the red car it remained what had been discovered in the Pirelli tire tests at Imola and which had already been briefly tested in FP1 in Australia.
Not even the new diffuser had escaped the tail: a sort of “keel” was glued to an almost flat central part. This modification was designed taking into account the Red Bull innovations that have been introduced in the central part of the floor.
The RB18 hid some discontinuities already from the GP of its debut in Bahrain: while the Ferrari had an ogival hull design, Newey’s car was characterized by the presence of some steps both in front and behind.
In spite of a regulation that abhorred the vortices, these “bumps” on the floor of the Red Bull have the clear function of generating them: the front ones have the task of pushing the flow downwards, while those behind have an opposite action to facilitate better filling of the diffuser.
Ferrari, but also McLaren, did not have too many problems in copying the concepts expressed by Newey. Even the floor that houses the body of the red car is now stepped and is able to reduce drag, allowing the F1-75 to increase top speed, limiting the gap from the RB18 to just 3 km / h.
The Red Bull floor also shows the metallic skate that the Scuderia had experimented with in FP1 in Australia and then used at Imola in the Pirelli tire tests, triggering unnecessary reactions at Milton Keynes.
What will the next move be expected with the Silverstone package? The Ferrari car is very sensitive to changes, a sign that there is still significant room for performance gains. The same goes for Red Bull and we understand, perhaps, the uncompromising attitude of the smaller teams who do not want to recognize the top teams the possibility of recovering the value of inflation (about 7% on an annual basis) which is limiting about 10 million dollars the purchasing power of the teams and, therefore, the development opportunities.
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