The sporting and technical challenge between the Ferrari F1-75 and the Red Bull RB18 in Spielberg promoted the Italian car with flying colors, highlighting an important supremacy of the red car driven by Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, which was so evident only one other time this season, in the Australian Grand Prix, which took place last April.
Despite the fact that he took pole position and won the sprint race on Saturday, Max Verstappen could do nothing against the much better race pace of Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari but also against a solid pace from Carlos Sainz. In the end, the Dutch driver managed to maximize the final result in Red Bull’s home Grand Prix, taking second place due to the power unit failure suffered by Carlos Sainz and also the fastest lap, which Charles Leclerc was not able to fight for as a result of the throttle issues in the final part of the race.
Ferrari’s excellent race performance compared to Red Bull is largely a consequence of the use of Pirelli tires. “These tires are quite sensitive and if you are not in the right window, degradation can be affected very quickly,” said Christian Horner. One of the RB18’s main strengths is the ability to bring the tires into the ideal window faster than the F1-75. But at rear limited circuits it has a harder time keeping that axis under control. In the main race on Sunday we thus witnessed a worrying drop in performance on Max Verstappen’s Red Bull, with the Anglo-Austrian team having to change strategy, passing from the two planned stops to a 3-stop race due to tyre wear.
In a weekend with only one free practice session due to the sprint race on Saturday, Ferrari managed to find an optimal balance for its car, managing to run longer and with better lap times than the Red Bull RB18 cars on the same compound. In Austria, even more than in Canada, Ferrari showed a clear superiority in terms of race pace. Aside from Silverstone, the Austrian and Canadian GPs both took place on tracks that we could identify as “stop and go”, with Ferrari certainly showing that it has more potential than the RB18.
At Silverstone the floor damage suffered by Max Verstappen did not allow us to have an ideal comparison between the performances of the Dutchman and Charles Leclerc, both consistently more efficient in extracting maximum potential than their respective teammates. But even in that case, Ferrari proved to be very competitive even on a more front limited track than in Canada and Austria. The Paul Ricard circuit will be another important test in this regard, as explained by Rosario Giuliana and Donadoni Piergiuseppe for formu1a.uno
Red Bull is updating the RB18 in a more important way than it seems from the outside with its latest developments
Over the last few races, if we start from the Azerbaijan GP up to the last round at the Red Bull Ring, Ferrari has introduced fewer updates than its Anglo-Austrian rival did. Despite this, the performance remained practically the same: “This is a car that has always proven to be competitive, not only here in Austria but also at Silverstone. As Charles said, we also had a significant advantage in Monaco and Spain. Red Bull has brought updates in England, we also did a little bit and the performances have not changed much.” – confirmed Mattia Binotto.
It is in fact from the Azerbaijan GP that the car designed by Adrian Newey continues to evolve with updates in different areas of the car. Compared to the first phase of the 2022 Formula 1 season in which the main “changes” were less visible to the eye as they mainly concern weight reduction, in recent GPs the entire range of updates on the RB18 is purely aerodynamic in nature. The main focus of the team was to have a car with a higher front axle load and a better weight balance, in order to have very little understeer as required by Max Verstappen’s driving style. On the other hand, Sergio Perez is having a harder time digesting the developments of the RB18, as the Mexican has a driving style practically opposite to that of his teammate and will therefore have to adapt as the season progresses.
The floor is the main element on which the resources of the Milton Keynes team have concentrated. Starting from Baku, on the RB18 the floor has been revised both a the entrance area of the Venturi tunnels, with a widening of the inlets at the expense of a slight increase in drag, and in the rear part around the rear wheels. Then came the more substantial aerodynamic package at Silverstone, and it is precisely from the innovations brought to the UK that we began to see a first important divergence from the concept used in the rear of the RB18 since the start of the year. The new bodywork brought to the fast English track has changed much of the aerodynamics in the area before the rear wing, with a more “waisted” hood around the gearbox, and with raised engine hood vents. In addition to this, there is the Ferrari-style hole in the floor, with the internal flap connected to the lower pad as on the F1-75.
The changes made to the hood are a consequence of the use of a very different beam wing specification compared to the one seen at the beginning of the 2022 Formula 1 season, with a lower downforce configuration and with a single profile. Updates that have changed the way the flow is managed around that macro aerodynamic component. With the increased front axle load, Red Bull was able to counterbalance by using heavier rear wings, effectively reversing the trend at the beginning of the year with a RB18 that was using low downforce rear wings, even much more as was the case of Jeddah, than those of the F1-75.
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Ferrari with fewer updates not for a matter of budget but of technical choice
The changes made to the RB18 as regards the engine cover affect the budget cap less than the floor, which is one of the most expensive elements to develop and produce in this new generation of Formula 1 cars, if entirely rebuilt. However, it seems that various teams, in order to better manage the budget cap, bring evolutions by modifying only that specific part of the floor where the update is found; only at the end of the mileage is the introduction of a completely new floor and with more massive changes, also in terms of lightening in the case of the Anglo-Austrian team, introduced and planned. The opening at the rear of the fin is also “low cost”, to improve the hybrid disposal of the Power Unit in the high altitudes of the Austrian circuit.
One factor that could worry Milton Keynes’s men is that, despite continuing developments, the gap with Ferrari has remained essentially unchanged. Indeed, Ferrari, for its part, was unable to maximize what the real performance of the car would have allowed to obtain, due to reliability problems (Spain, Baku and Austria) and strategy errors (Monaco and Silverstone).
The development path on the RB18 will continue fast also in the next two GPs and in those following the summer break, unlike Ferrari which has chosen to bring fewer updates and above all more spaced packages, also spending much less, to continue to have certainties and avoid to fall into old habits or to bring frequent updates on the car that can undermine the current excellent balance of the F1-75. In short, Ferrari’s strategy is more a technical choice than a situation related to the budget cap. “The car, the team, the drivers, in Austria we also did well in terms of pitstops, then the developments we are bringing, as in England, work. When we bring something, it works. And that’s good news. In England we brought a new bodywork [sidepods] and a new rear wing which allowed us to remove the speed disadvantage compared to Red Bull” – Mattia Binotto confirmed.
However, in Maranello they are always monitoring together with the FIA the quantity and cost of the updates brought by the other teams, with a particular focus on Red Bull.
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