Adrian, IMO there aren’t many, many better F1 tech channels on YT, at least ones that regularly do high quality videos on latest F1 news and races. I think most of us would agree The Race is the best overall F1 channel on YT, esp for free.
@SI57 kind of yes. The difference was that RB is not an engine developer. So RB basically always had a good car with descent aerodynamics but they where dependent on the engine manufacturer. Now they have a good engine and also the budget cap creates a more even playing field. Mercedes for example with the amount of money they threw at it in the past, could experiment different options. Now that's alot harder. I hope other teams will catch up. Obviously Mercedes is a really great professional team, I expect them to catch up sooner then Ferrari. And Aston Martin is also in a happy place. But you are right like in any sport dominant teams comes and goes.
Newey's newest design implemented in the new regulations of 2022 and the newer 2023 season has brought newfound success for their drivers. If only the other teams knew what Newey knew at the start of new season.
Simply titled, how one F1 team out designed and out engineered the others. To me, the current Red Bul dominance is very reminiscent of the dominance Mercedes enjoyed for years after the 2014 regulations came into effect. Then, it was way ahead of everyone else because it out designed and out engineered the competition and had a generationally talented lead driver, skilled enough take advantage of that and not make any mistakes. Now Red Bull has such a driver in Max who is doing the same - consistent, virtually no serious driver errors and extracting the car’s maximum potential lap after lap and race after race.
Current Red Bull isn't close to the level of dominance enjoyed by Mercedes from 2014 onwards. Mercedes were over 2 seconds a lap faster than the rest of the field (which was shown in the 2014 Bahrain race) and they simply turned the engine up and down to ensure easy wins without blowing everyone away by too much to bring in some restrictions. In 8 years Mercedes had 80 front row lockouts (which is more than any team has had in the 70 years of F1) so I think it's a bit premature with Red Bull to compare them to previous years of domination until at least a few more years of data.
@@andrewvicendese9008 yeah, they (merc) were great with their designs and engineering but more so because they shaped the rules and were working on it WAAAAAY ahead of everyone else. Red Bull did not. Heck, Toto has been actively trying (and succeeding) to change rules... 1 that cost them atleast 1 world championship, maybe even more now.
About the anti-dive front suspension making the RB19 take longer to get the tires into the proper window, I think that's partly true. If you remember the Saudi Arabian restart after Stroll's SC, Checo pulled away on the first lap. That could be quite justified by the performance advantage alone, but it could also be related to tire heating. In Australia for example, the Ferraris took two laps to warm up their tires before the timed lap while the RBs only one. I think Mercedes has more problems than RB in this regard. In any case, it is true that things are closer in qualifying, but wouldn't they solve this by doing an additional preparation lap before each timed lap??? With the traffic in Monaco it will be difficult, but for longer circuits it could be useful.
Yeah I thought of that too. Maybe they could try a "warm lap" (not quite a hot lap but also not just a prep lap) where they run the car at 80% of pace but without the hybrid just to get the tyres as hot as possible (at the cost of sacrificing tyre life but idk, it could give them enough temp to work with)
In Australia Max did do an aggressive warmup lap in Q3 where he was the first to leave the pits and could determine his own pace. Being behind others would make this more difficult
Melbourne race was moved 4 weeks into fall…much cooler and low bite track surface caught RB off guard but this will not be an issue as summer nears and track surfaces will be hot…tire deg for Mercedes and Ferrari will once again be a major problem.
@@johndansby3620 absolutely. However there's still plenty of tracks located in tropical places and/or with unpredictable weather (Miami, Singapore, Japan) where massive, sudden rain could take place cooling the track surface
Watching races, it's been noticeable that Red Bull cars spark against the road surface less frequently than other constructors. Also, I love that the king of aero helped keep his car in front by returning to a component as old-school and "solved" as the suspension. Newey isn't just a design genius, he's a competitive advantage genius.
@@Quick_in_and_out Not with RB, where they use aero closure of the floor edge, contrary to physical closure that the other teams depend on. RB definitely still has plenty rake, even if it isn't as extreme as they had in the old regs.
If F1 cars are anything like the RC cars I race, then anti squat is a very good tuning option. A few degrees can make an undrivable car managable when you nail the sweet spot
F1 is totally different from rc cars because they're all about aero. The Redbull geometry makes the 'non aero' handling considerably worse Bu on balance the performance is superior.
Teams are going to have a hard time copying this during the season and have to wait till next year for a complete redesign/copy. And by then, Redbull could be onto the next best idea/hidden trick.
Nice video this. We thought that porpoising last year was because of floor design, this was still the case but we completely forgot about the suspension characteristic on keeping the car weight distribution balanced.
You did, to me it was obvious. Ride height is the result of downforce as well as suspension stiffness/characteristic. It's the result of both aero as well as mechanical design, they work in tandem to position the car relative to the track.
@@EntropicExergy Yeah, at first I thought it was nothing to do with suspension design because they couldn't use non progressive spring like 2021 and just newey out designing underfloor of merc and ferrari.
One of your best videos, in that it explains something technical without making it too complex or splitting it from its interrelated factors. Aerodynamics and suspension are connected in any race car which generates much downforce. When the downforce is generated under the car those things will be even more important to one another. It illustrates that complex, highly engineered cars are systems.
I don't agree with the point that RedBull cannot generate enough front tyre temps. I think that the disparity comes from RedBull compromising it's setup in favour of the race, whereas its main rivals are obliged to place more emphasis on qualifying. This partially explains why RedBull is kinder on its tyres, being able to pull longer stints on softer compounds if necessary.
I put my money on the undercut of the sidepod, the negative space resembles the profile of the underfloor, the large entrance, small gap under the sidepod and finally a upward exit accelerate the air making a second floor and also helps to seal the underfloor due the huge amount of air it takes meanwhile Mercedes looses that air in the entrance of the sidepod
Ferrari and Mercedes were massively disappointing. Let's not fool ourselves, Aston's leap has been amazing to watch, but it has been magnified in part thanks to Ferrari and Mercedes dropping the ball.
True but it does put Aston ahead of schedule in their bid to become a front running team. They've got the concept Ferrari and Mercedes would want but they've got all the aero development time advantage into this year and next.
When Mercedes had the dominant car on the grid, the Media didn't look so interested into exposing why the car was so fast, or advocating for more competition.
Well there was a Engine freeze so no one could ever catch up to Merc for 8 years . Any team has the right to change there desighn each and every year now, just like AM did .Its a totally different scenario than the Merc 8 year "Snooze fest"
@@Mandykiss4500 Yes, this British bias against Redbull is clear, I mean they had David Coulthard as a flagship driver, Christian Horner as a team principle for about 100 years, head designer Adrian Newey who is particularly looked down upon by British people, and them being based in Milton Keynes just compounds this feeling...
@@BeBe-vh4ry And when is Red Bull with a dominant car the Media divert more their focus in glorifying Adrian Newey, while down playing the Drivers or the other Engineers inside the Team.
The interesting thing is that Red Bull extreme anti geometry goes against what you learn in vehicle dynamics. Extreme anti geometries are to be avoided bc they take grip away from the tire and in a pure mechanical (no aero) environment using heave springs are a much better form of pitch control than anti geometries because they are generally better for extracting grip from the tires. But when operating with such ride height sensitive cars the benefit of the increased pitch control results in more downforce and more grip. My guess is the Red Bull will struggle in low speed tight mechanical grip tracks like Monaco. Not saying they won’t win but I would expect their advantage to be reduced.
yea my thoughts exactly... this kinda does beg the question though (mostly because this is something that I have been wondering for a few days now), could it be possible to decouple things like bounce compliance and aggressive anti through the use of more sophisticated geometry, for instance by using a multi link setup as RB's used since 2020?
This is definitely the era for Red Bull. Sure other teams may bridge the gap before the 2026 regulation changes, due to the development over the coming years, but the new era is all about aerodynamics where Newey excels. The Mercedes dominances was mainly due to the engine, owing to the head start Mercedes got to develop the power unit for 2014 onwards, although to their credit they did design some innovative engine architectural layouts that was later copied by other teams. Mercedes enjoyed their dominances because of their powerful engine, which meant they could run more downforce without compromising too much straight line speed. The inverse may be true for Red Bull now. Very efficient aero means they can run low downforce without compromising cornering speeds whilst maintaining great top end speed at the same time.
This really helps explain why Mercedes had such extreme porpoising last year and couldn't just tune it out. Their floor design was radical and paired with suspension that couldn't be kept in a good window no matter how firm they made it, so once the tunnels did their thing, the rear would bottom out and start bouncing like crazy.
This is also not the most costly thing to design and or test specifically...so kinda ironic that one of their biggest advantages they have isn't affected by the limited aero testing, it actually probably makes their aero testing more efficient as their platform is more stable so they can get away with less testing even.
My question will always be why merc haven't use this suspension on their 0 pod design.. it was clear they issue was inconsistency and keeping your car level would have help.
Combined with the right spring rates front and rear, you can dictate the floor geometry for corners of different speed so the balance is always in the right place during all corner speeds and all phases of the corner. The RB just seems like a really nice race car to drive, does what the driver wants when and how they want it to.
That all sounds cool and probably gives them an edge but imo, from what I observed watching all the onboards, I think it’s that the RB rides curbs much much better than any other car. I think the other drivers are very cautious about even just touching the curbs out of fear of losing ground effect. I think the point of rbs clever suspension isn’t to be clever and gain time through downforce, it’s so that the drivers can feel assured attacking curbs, or at the very least, if the go off line for whatever reason and need to touch the curbs, they won’t have fear of losing the car. This is what I believe makes the red bull faster over all. Qualifying deficit proves that the car isn’t actually the fastest iver one lap because over one lap a driver can afford to put all focus and attention on doing the perfect lap and avoiding curbs. Race situation is different and they aren’t going to be so confident. The Rb isn’t actually light years faster, it’s just more stable and gives the driver more confidence, as simple as that really. This is what I think anyway, I’m convinced of it but no one is talking about it. I think the Rb will get better and better at it and sometime later this season people will start noticing and this will become the talking point. I said it first 😊
It's the negative pressures the tires experience on the curves meaning lower temperatures and downforce for harder accelerations. Red bull has an organic rear curve wing meaning much exotic air effects
@@givemeabreak8784 Williams also isn't anywhere near RB in cornering speeds. RB simply used a higher downforce set-up, which they can easily afford with their powerful DRS.
Newey is just one person don't disregard the rest of the design engineers at Redbull. I know that liking Newey is like the latest trend, but him alone couldn't have done the whole job.
@Harry but the flow of air matches that of the rb 18 if their floor is different it won't work as efficiently and would result in them not having even the 6th fastest car
From an engineering perspective, with the introduction of extreme anti-dive suspension geometry, the natural kinematics of the suspension system are changed. With that change that is designed to reduce or neutralize dive on the front end and squat on the rear end also reduces small bump compliance and suspension responsiveness. A test will be when riding the curbs is needed for a fast qualifying lap.
Thing is McLaren also had the same pushrod pullrod configuration as Red Bull and they were well off the pace. So it must be in the finite details were red bull are gaining performance.
Bravo! “THE RACE continues to validate its leadership and popularity…now if only you could obtain a clear image of the RB19 aero bottom and specs on the suspension springs and Belleville’s plus packaging of key elements within the body and side pods…best season of the hybrid PU era with all the other teams hustling before Baku race!
Let's not forget the interlinking of the rear pull rod suspensions. Which need to be running under the gearboxes. While Red Bull can place these over the gearbox. Resulting in more space under the gearbox. And thus more possibilities for aggressive floor design and downforce.
It's crazy how Red Bull brought this in from Day 1 of the regulations and whilst everyone has been busy copying their sidepods and almost everything else about the car, no-one has decided to copy their suspension....
I think that for Monaco they are going to use less D30 in the shock absorbers at the front at least, to allow more rebound and less rigidly the front tyres 😊
@@Switll72 haha I’m genuinely curious, my guess is that they have access to privileged info to some degree. Maybe some engineers work for the channel as well?
Newey’s point seems very logical. With ground effect derived downforce being the main downforce contributor & going over to the larger wheels (I believe with the smaller wheels something like half of the travel was in the tires themselves … at least at one point) putting a lot of focus on getting a really adept suspension setup seems like a very prudent move. Ofc these cars & their development process is so complex (plus the different types of corners *and* track surfaces they have to contend with) I’m sure there is a lot of over simplification going on. But the way Aston Martin has been effected recently by the change in tire construction seems to lend some credibility to my point
Suspension linked somehow let's not forget AN and when he was at Williams developed active suspension that is currently banned, so he's obviously found a loophole somewhere as the RB19 is almost level under nearly all conditions where it counts with the exception of low speed acceleration following a slow speed corner, but in all other conditions it's level, how they are doing this under the current regulations is anyone's guess but they are doing it
The Merc engine is a Beast, even with that unrideable car, they manage to keep pushing. Once they nail the Aero, they will win again. On the other side, Ferrari have a lot of issues in the Engine and Aero department, at least the strategy seems to be on point.
I've seen a couple videos addressing the Red Bull suspension but there is never discussion about the solid one piece forward connected wish bone (can't remember if it's top or bottom but I know they changed it for the new regs). I've searched and can't find a good explainer for this concept, it would be cool to hear a bit about that, how it works and why it's a benefit...
yea I remember autosport doing a thing on it back in 2020 when they RB switched to a multi link setup... cant find the article on it but I dont remember them saying much on it either as it was part of some report. I figure it might offer some quasi dampening characteristics. Ironically enough, it was done around the time that we heard RB was experimenting with some high caster setup that induced front end dive mid corner as the driver added steering lock. but yea you and I are in the same boat my friend
Yes it's true that Aston Martin takes parts from Mercedes. But they shouldn't be restricted to same rear pull rod suspension. As McLaren also uses Mercedes engine and push rod rear suspension.
If suspension is the main thing differentiates Aston Martin and Red bull then how come Aston Martin is good in the race pace and tyre management compare to one lap pace same as red bull? 🤔
i bet there is gonna be some people saying "They overspend the budget cap because they are human error bla bla bla" They are quick because your favourite teams build shit cars
i really need to see these pull/push rods in action through a turn... there is verbiage describing "loads" and "forces" but i just can't picture it without a proper full animation. animagraffs pls help!
@@joehutchisson3130 yea i saw that one... not a big fan of the noisy setting at the f1 garage tho... but chain bear's explanation video was really good.
It seems like the cost cap is just having more detrimental effects to the closeness of the racing rather than the other way around. Sure it's meant to bring the midfield closer to the front but it feels like this season is a complete wash already, if things turn out differently it will be a big big surprise. We shouldn't count our chickens too soon but if Max doesn't win nearly every race this season something big will have to have happened.
this isn't that new information tho? during last season it was already mentioned that mercedes' suspension was too stiff which was one of the factors with the porpoissing and other performance gains where to be found there
This is becoming old now: RedBull is more aero efficient, does not porpoise, can run as close to the ground than anyone else, trick suspension, trick DRS, quick in both slow and fast corners, great straight-line speed, most powerful engine, JEEZ! And to top it all they have Max. Let FIA just give them both championships and they go home and let the other nine teams compete for 2nd to 10th. That would be a more exiting championship.
While i do agree the front tyres are harder to get on the right tyre temps. Only the redbull needed 1 lap to get te tyres on temp in the australian qualifying.
For both Ferrari and Mercedes to “admit defeat” and switch concepts due to having reached a local peak is significant news. For midfield, and especially backfield, teams, aping the best team and attempting to finish 4th or 5th is a W. The goal might not be to win the WC, but merely to improve as much as possible. Ferrari and Mercedes’s goal isn’t to be as high as possible, but rather to beat Red Bull. Ferrari and Mercedes, on the other hand, have a double incentive not to copy RB and hope that their local solution proves better. First, any team that copies another is bound to have growing pains, and they are chasing a moving target; while they attempt to do what RB currently does, RB can spend time improving it. Second, if they do stumble upon a better solution, other teams will try to copy it, meaning that the burden of catching up becomes your adversaries’. Abandoning core rival concepts is a big admission of failure, and takes courage. TLDR: copying RB is a great strategy for Aston Martin or Alfa Romeo, but is fundamentally problematic for RB’s rivals. That they are willing to do it is telling.
I suspect the RB19 suspension has been tuned for better aero down force yet less aero resistance and that this tuning has made the car less pointy…so car is more Checo friendly, so he will definitely be closer to Max this year…unless Max’s car evolves like last year and Red Bull gives him some aggressive braking and pointy front back with little or no loss of gained aero stability and he goes even faster…like last year.
