There are still four Grands Prix to go until the end of the 2022 Formula 1 season but its outcome has already been decided in favor of Max Verstappen and Red Bull.
A result that is hardly surprising judging by the ability of the Dutch driver and the Austrian team to perfectly execute race weekends, unlike their rivals, mainly Scuderia Ferrari. What is most striking, however, is the huge gap in the standings, considering that the Maranello team had built a fast car.
However, its competitiveness was lost after the summer break and, although public opinion has “blamed” the Technical Directive TD039, Mattia Binotto himself denied the hypothesis.
The first outings on track during the pre-season testing session and the first GPs had indicated a championship marked by the contest for the title between Red Bull and Ferrari, but a duel that eventually did not take place, as Ferrari lost valuable points midway through the year, before falling behind also in terms of race pace. But what is the reason for the Ferrari performance loss?
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Many have railed against the Technical Directive TD039, which would have played a fundamental role in the separation between the two teams. The technical directives were created to support the FIA in controlling the direction taken by the technical development of the single-seaters, thus managing the gray areas of the regulations.
The TD039 is the so-called “antiporpoising”. Especially in the early part of the season, in fact, due to the new floor rules, the F1 cars began to suffer from sometimes unmanageable vertical oscillations. See Mercedes in Baku. In this regard, already from Canada, the FIA should have made the directive known to try to fix the problem in a fair way for all the teams.
The proposals and the concerns of the teams, however, delayed the official introduction which arrived in the Belgian GP, when the beginning of the difficulties of the Maranello team was traced back. But is it really so?
The answer to the question is “no”, at least according to Mattia Binotto. The Ferrari team principal, in fact, stated that TD039 did not influence the drop in performance of the F1-75, as it had already begun at the Budapest GP.
“Even if there have been some obvious interventions that have affected the floors of the cars following the new technical regulations, I am sure that these have not affected the performance of our car. It is not the TD039 that has caused our problems. We already realized in Budapest that something was wrong, a month before the race at the Spa Francorchamps circuit.” – said the team principal.
Martia Binotto then explained what the cause was: a greater ability from Red Bull to design and develop its own car.
“I think we have been penalized by the impressive and fast development with which Red Bull has improved the RB18. We weren’t as good as they were at perfecting the car’s potential,” the manager finally admitted. “This can be clearly understood by looking at the rest of the car as well. Even though the gap at the beginning of the year was quite high, Mercedes managed to make up for the disadvantage, while we remained more or less at the same level. ” – the Ferrari boss explained.
Red Bull therefore won the development battle against Ferrari. On the occasion of the Emilia Romagna GP, in fact, the Milton Keynes team brought the first real package of updates, consisting of lighter parts of the car. These made the RB18 more agile, allowing it to correct its understeer nature and thus giving a faster car to an unbeatable Max Verstappen.
However, behind this leap forward, there is a better study of the car, which can be traced back to many years ago. In fact, we must not forget who designed it: that genius of Adrian Newey. The engineer had already designed a car without the porpoising issue some time, a car capable of handling the ground effect in total fluency.
Over the course of the season, again, the Milton Keynes team was able to partially replicate that rake set-up that has given great satisfaction in the past. All without “switching on” the aerodynamic bouncing with the result of obtaining increased performance.
Red Bull, consequently, is already by its very nature a car designed not to suffer from vertical oscillations and therefore, while everyone else was going crazy to interpret the TD039 using their energies to fight porposing, the team from Milton Keynes was able to concentrate on winning the F1 double world championship, thinking about how to improve the car. Newey once again proved to be one step ahead of his competitors.
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