Max Verstappen continues to dominate. The world champion is in impressive form and his Red Bull R18 too. The car has become strong on any type of circuit and is even the fastest on all racetracks. When aerodynamic efficiency is called for, like in Baku or Spa-Francorchamps, the RB18 is in a league of its own. When maximum downforce is required, as in Budapest and Zandvoort, the Red Bull is still capable of winning. With Max Verstappen in the cockpit.
The situation has changed, as well as the score. In the first half of the season, the Ferrari F1-75 was the car that was fast in most races. Red Bull technical director Adrian Newey was almost jealous: “Ferrari is good in all conditions and on every type of tire and works over a wide range of ride height.” That has changed. Now the Red Bull doesn’t mind if it has to be raised like in Spa. The Ferrari, on the other hand, has crashed in terms of performance.
It is in the DNA of the Ground Effect cars that they have to make do with a smaller working window compared to their predecessors. Whoever can make it as big as possible holds a key advantage. The form curves of the Red Bull and Ferrari are the best examples of this.
At Zandvoort, Max Verstappen praised his engineers for trimming the car for a broader working window. According to Newey, however, the room for maneuver is limited. Every car is trapped in its concept. To turn the characteristics completely upside down, you would need a new car.
Ferrari team boss Mattia Binotto admits that some of the good qualities of the F1-75 have been lost: “The working window isn’t as big as it used to be. We let ourselves be pushed into a corner a bit, which limits our setup.” You can see the consequences in the race. The Ferrari is still a bit faster than the Red Bull RB18 in one lap. But during the Dutch Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc was only able to follow Max Verstappen for ten laps in Zandvoort.
This leads to the curious situation that the Red Bull has become a Ferrari and the Ferrari a Red Bull. Ferrari is investigating the reasons for this, as the Maranello team is now looking into the upgrade at the French GP, where Ferrari introduced a new floor: “In search for more downforce, we lost drivability” – Mattia Binotto admits, according to German automobile magazine ‘Auto Motor und Sport’.
The competition believes that Ferrari had to lose some key features in order to reduce bouncing and that the Technical Directive, which came into force in Spa, limited the F1-75. But Mattia Binotto denies that. “The Technical Directive has nothing to do with it.”
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Mercedes can only challenge the two championship rivals on certain circuits. Tracks like the Hungaroring or Zandvoort. Tracks where you can drive deep. Tracks that have as few different corners types as possible, where the corners point mainly in one direction. Then it is easier to find a setup that protects the floor. The biggest issue of the Mercedes W13 is its small working window. The Silver Arrow is a car for specific tracks and even then, it still has to deal with certain weaknesses. In Monza, for example, the long straights, as Red Bull is simply faster there.
Red Bull never wins its time on the fast corners, almost exclusively on the straights, which the RB18 dominates from start to finish. Also against Ferrari and today much more than at the start of the season. Good traction was still a trademark of the red cars, but when the window gets smaller, the suspension has to be adjusted harder. And that stresses the tires.
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