F1 Tech | Why is Red Bull still in a technical crisis despite a 'much calmer' RB21?

Verstappen and Lawson with two car's specs 

As we already explained in a dedicated analysis, during the last day of testing in Bahrain, Red Bull brought almost a “B” version of the car, with a lot of changes that concerned front wing, floor and engine cover. Despite the various evaluating runs that were made, some components were discarded, because they were not yet working as the team was hoping. 

As a consequence, Red Bull Racing decided to take those new components to Australia as well to understand how well they were working on the car and see what effective improvement in performance they brought compared to the data seen in the simulations (mainly CFD and wind tunnel). For this reason, Verstappen and Lawson drove two different car’s configurations for the whole weekend: Max Verstappen drove the “B” spec, which included a new front wing and a new floor, while Liam Lawson adopted the “base” configuration of the car, with the front wing that appeared on the car during the first day of testing in Bahrain, but with Verstappen's same new floor. 

For what concerns the new components, the new front wing is characterised by a completely different design: as highlighted in the drawing below, while in the first version adopted by Lawson the nose connects directly to the mainplane and has an almost flat trend throughout its length, in the new solution fit on Verstappen’s car the nose connects to the second element and has a much rounder profile (light blue arrows). Moreover, the width of the nose also changes, as highlighted by the green arrows: while the old version narrows as it gets closer to the mainplane, the new version is much wider and thicker. As a direct consequence, the new version features a gap between the mainplane and the second element, which can be helpful to increase the local downforce produced by the front wing itself. Moreover, the new mainplane features a much flatter profile in the central portion (just below the new nose) with a much more pronounced (almost squared) slope to the lateral profile, mainly to help pushing the air towards the Venturi inlets behind (orange lines and arrows).

Moreover, the connection of the top two profiles to the endplate has also changed, as shown in the detailed drawing below. While the version used by Lawson features an inclined airfoil profile that is connected to the endplate by a simple metallic support, the new version seen on Verstappen’s car is characterised by a much more complex connection that provides benefits from an aerodynamic point of view (red arrows). The goal here is to push the air towards the outside of the front tyre as much as possible, increasing the outwash effect of the front wing. 

For what concerns the new floor edge, there is a very small but noticeable difference in the vortex generators placed at the front of the floor edge wing. The new version was fitted on both cars, with the old spec tried during testing. As highlighted by the red arrow on the left in the drawing below, the last vortex generator has a different shape and inclination in the new version compared to the version adopted in testing, with a much sharper and similar shape to the vortex generators placed at the front. The other new element is the raised lower lip of the floor edge wing, placed immediately adjacent to the new vortex generator just described (red arrow on the right), which is quite steep and square. In the version used in Bahrain, however, the vortex generator is much smaller than the vortex generators placed at the front and has a more triangular and curved shape, while the lower lip connects to this vortex generator in a more curved and smooth way, as visible from the red arrow at the bottom right. These new components aim at improving the flow extraction in this area of the car, avoiding that the front tyre turbulence gets sucked into the Venturi channels and towards the diffuser, keeping the flow underneath the car as clean as possible. 

Difficult Friday for Red Bull, but a good perfomance in qualifying 

This said, Friday’s free practice sessions were particularly difficult for Red Bull’s duo: while during FP1 the car seemed quite balanced, during second practice the RB21 looked very nervous, switching from understeer in mid-corner to oversteer at the exit of almost every slow corner, as explained by Helmut Marko to GPblog at the end of the first day of practice: “[…] the performance of the car this morning was better. So the changes we did, the car was more nervous, was going from under to oversteer.” 

To solve this issue, many changes were made by Red Bull’s engineers during second practice, with Verstappen who almost stayed in the garage for 30 minutes before coming out again: the mechanics changed multiple torsion bars, trying to improve the car’s behaviour at low speed, changed the car’s heights (both at the front and at the rear) as well as the anti-roll bars. These kind of changes are usually rare to be seen during free practice sessions because they take time, but the shocking aspect was that they had almost no effect: once Verstappen came out of the garage, he was still having major driving issues, struggling to make the car turn in slow corners. 

As a consequence, the team worked hard during Friday’s night to turn the situation around, with a massive effort both at the track and back at the factory with the help of the simulator. They eventually managed to do so, as when the RB21 hit the Albert Park circuit on Saturday’s FP3 and qualifying it was a completely different car. 

The impression is that it's very difficult for the team to find the right compromise between mechanical grip and aerodynamic stability, but once Red Bull engineers find all the right parameters (after many tests) that make the car enter its working window, the RB21 has a modest balance, with a very strong front end that fits Verstappen’s driving style and allows him to make a huge difference in terms of performance. Particularly significant were Verstappen’s words after Saturday qualifying, as he explained that the team had to do a lot of tests and work hard to find a solution to the poor performance seen during free practices: ”We had a bit of a tough start. So it took a bit of time to understanding and how we can improve the situation, and, we did that today.” 

Horner himself explained how McLaren, by contrast, manages to find the right balance between mechanics and aerodynamics in almost every condition, having a good impact on tyres as well: “It's always an interaction between aero and mechanical, and you can see the McLaren, they've got in a very sweet spot. And then with that comes, you know, very good degradation and the car is very kind on its tyres.”

The car performed well in qualifying, showing off many strengths. The RB21 was very quick in warming up the tyres up and had an excellent top speed in the second sector thanks to the very unloaded setup the team chose for the weekend. Both Verstappen and Lawson, in fact, adopted a medium-low downforce rear wing characterised by a mainplane with a very reduced chord and a flat leading edge, matched with a low downforce double-element beam wing. This choice turned out to be correct, as both Lawson and Verstappen set a top speed of 331 km/h at the end of second sector’s long straight with at least 5 km/h of advantage over all competitors. 

Despite this big advantage, the RB21, as most of other cars, couldn’t avoid overheating on the softest C5 in the last sector, losing a lot of grip especially in the last two corners. By contrast the MCL39 seemed on rails for the whole lap and didn’t suffer and kind of degradation on any compound. Verstappen pointed out that “Tyres are quite sensitive around here as well with all these high-speed corners,” explaining that drivers need to be extremely cautions on which section of the track they want to push, to really make the rubber last for the whole lap. 

RB21 still suffering overheating in the race

For Sunday’s Grand Prix, the Red Bull Racing team made a very common choice: since Liam Lawson qualified only in P18 and the race set to be wet, they decided to fit a higher downforce rear wing and beam wing on his car and make him start from the pit lane, essentially making Verstappen and Lawson run two completely different cars during the race. The rear wing and beam wing adopted on the New Zealander driver were of a medium downforce level, the same adopted in Bahrain (green and orange arrows), which better suited the track in wet weather conditions. 

Despite the different setups and the step forward made between Friday and Saturday, the RB21 still suffered a lot in terms of overheating the intermediates. Only Verstappen was able to outdrive the car’s problems, which performance would otherwise have been worse (probably behind Mercedes and Ferrari). Despite managing to stay close to the two McLaren in the first few laps of the race (from lap 8 to 17), once he made a mistake and was overtaken by Piastri, he then fell behind to 16 seconds in only 17 laps, meaning he drove about 1 second slower per lap compared to the two Papaya cars in front.  

Verstappen denounced overheating as the main problem that slowed him down during the race, pointing out that the team still needs to do a lot of work to catch up: “I was struggling with my tyres. It was similar to yesterday. Now, Intermediates are even more of a soft compound, so they are even more prone to overheating. If you look at the first stint, we were quite a bit off. As soon as the tyres started to overheat, we had no chance. McLaren just took off. So, we still have a lot of work to do to fight for a win.”

Why is Red Bull still struggling to make the car work?

The performance seen during the first weekend of the year is the proof that Red Bull hasn't solved last year technical problems yet. Horner said that the RB21 has a great potential that still needs to be discovered, and that this year’s car is much calmer that the previous one: “I think the characteristics that this car has is much calmer than RB20. So I think it’s actually a platform to develop through the season, there’s not the nasty snaps that there was on RB20, so  that gives us a good dynamic platform for us to develop the car through the season, through all the different races that we're going to head to.” 

However, the reality is that it still takes a lot of time to find the right setup that makes the car enter its operating window, with a lot of work required both on track and back at the factory. Moreover, even when the car enters this aforementioned window, the performance is not at McLaren’s level, which is a big worry for the team. Another aspect that needs to be taken into consideration is that on Sunday the water and cold conditions helped Verstappen keep the tyre temperatures reasonable in the first few laps but as the track dried, he started struggling with overheating. 

In conclusion, despite having a more predictable car this season, Red Bull still needs to do a lot of work to improve the RB21 performance. The approaching Sprint weekend in China shouldn’t be an advantage for the team, as they will have very little time between practice and qualifying to find the right set-up for their car, possibly resulting in using the Spine as a test to unlock performance.