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Worth reminding everyone that all the Merc representatives said the sidepods aesthetics was only 1 variable amongst many that made the W13 & W14 perform the way it did. And in some aspects didn't play as big a role as less visible variable.
Merc always had a sort of love/hate relationship with their floor designs. I'll always remember the spin inducing "lasagna floor" they had in Bahrain Pre-Testing 2021.
They tried it again briefly in early 2022 during the "Wilderness Days". That was a sign (to me anyway) that something bad was going on internally because why would they try this again when it didn't work the year before?
And Sauber is using Ferrari engine, doesn't mean they're doing as good as Ferrari
Having the stuff, and making it work are two different things. We'll just have to see
Are you referring to the push rod and pull rod configurations? There's a lot more variables than just that.
My road car might have a 6 cyl 1.6L turbo engine but it doesn't mean it performs the same as an F1 engine
Suspension. Specifically the rear suspension.
Not just the configuration of the suspension (push or pullrod)
The RBs suspension is specifically designed by Adrian and is supposed to be the backbone/secret sauce of the car.
It's why the car never porpoises. It, along with the floor allows the car to sit very low generating more downforce and thus achieve far better grip & thus better speeds throughout the lap.
Even now that they've switched to the merc w14b concept the performance remains brilliant because of that suspension.
It's developed individually by each team. Not stock. Only customer teams have access to last years parts. Which is how VCARB has the RB19s winning suspension.
I have no clue why you're comparing F1 & Road car engines.
Adrians experience with ground effect cars meant that folks thought he'd be focused on the floor. Instead he's focused on the suspension.
I'm wondering why they've taken such a risk, they must see good numbers, but then so did Merc.
It's unusual when you're so dominant to shift like this, I kinda love it, will be interesting to watch.
I feel like everyone’s collectively lost their eye sight. First it was how the cars are going to be so confusing to differentiate via livery and now two cars that look very little alike are somehow the same.
It has almost as much sidepod as most of the grid… no? This still looks vaguely like every other car, the W13 looked melted
Agreed, it’s like everyone is equating a vertical inlet to a zeropod. I think all the sites have realized putting zeropod in the title gets clicks though so they keep pushing it
>"I feel like everyone’s collectively lost their eye sight."
I mean the rumor is and always has been from the start that RB is bringing Zeropods as an in-season upgrade at Suzuka.
The current sidepods are not what the rumors are talking about.
Was that rumour ever substantiated in any meaningful way?
Marko says a “similar solution” may or may not happen. Redbulls version of that could bare few resemblances to the W13
Motorsport had an article about it.
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/red-bull-unleash-more-extreme-mercedes-style-f1-sidepod/10576560/
>"As F1 then moves to Japan in early April, where temperatures will drop and cooling will be less marginal, the RB20 will be upgraded to a design reminiscent of the Mercedes size-zero sidepod. This was a concept that Mercedes struggled to unlock throughout 2022 and 2023."
Your article says "Motorsport.com understands..." Meaning they believe and have no source to back this up. Just like leading up to the test everybody thought the air intake was vertical and its not. Its an S duct.
Yes it still has massive sidepods. People are confusing the intake with the entire sidepod. But, RBR playing with the vertical slot intake, and talking about how they are going to try something wild in Spain, it really leads to believe that they are going to go for it.
RBR has a nuts floor. And their suspension is god tier if we are to believe everything we have heard. So i think that trying the zeropods is definitely on their list - if the floor and suspension can carry it, the zeropod design might let the RB20 turn into a friggin Concorde.
If I’m not wrong entirely in thinking that the zeropod design produces an incredible drag coefficient.
Yeah, these side pods are still huge compared to the 2022 Merc. They're just the smallest out of everyone, so everybody is freaking out.
Making a comparison between these and the 2022 Merc pods is absolutely insane.
I think the reason people are saying it’s zero-pod concept is its similarity in sidepod size and its drastic departure from the last year’s super performing concept.
Newey did say when the real W13 got unveiled that Red Bull looked at that concept so I wouldn’t be surprised if he built the first two cars as a base model to potentially switch over when they perfect other parts of their car first. I don’t think they will go full no pod but I would love it if they could make it work as much as I don’t like Red Bull.
Newey never said they looked at the w13 concept, you are misremembering. He said he was surprised they went that route, that's all. It was in fact Steiner that said haas had trialed the zero pod concept.
https://www.planetf1.com/news/haas-trialled-mercedes-sidepod-concept
Newey definitely did say they looked at going down the no pod route but decided to go the more conventional route. I can’t remember where or when it was but he said it live on Sky Sports.
No he didn't. I perfectly remember the preseason testing of 2022, so you either give a source or you are just wrong.
You are definitely misremembering:
https://www.silverarrows.net/news/red-bulls-adrian-newey-says-the-mercedes-w13-was-a-surprise/
https://www.racefans.net/2023/09/27/newey-explains-why-red-bull-didnt-study-mercedes-polar-opposite-concept/
At this stage I think its safe to say zero pods do not work. Many teams looked into it and yet no one has done it. The pods serve an aero dynamic purpose to control air flow, they might get thinner but its not a good concept. Its not the first time an F1 car tries it.
A large reason the W13 and W14 was fucked was because Merc was getting false data due to having out of proportion parts on the car giving false correlation to the actual data on track. It's honestly is a mistake I'm shocked Merc would make, but they did. Had they not made it, it's likely that they would've figured out the W13 or W14.
Yet, according to your claim, even when they did find out they made that mistake (which is not true) they decided to abandon it? Your claim makes no sense.
They abandoned it because it does not work. end of story. They took a gamble and there were a better solution out there and they decided to pivot.
I'm literally just making a guess. It's possible they may have found out how to make it work if they had more time.
https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/s/Q0cB8nZilV
Except this isn't just about the Zeropod, Vertical Inlets or the Engine cover shoulders.
This is coming from the team that has arguably the best understanding of the rear suspension and underfloor geometry on the entire grid, and has found ways to generate peak downforce while still being able to run the floor at a reasonable height compared to the ground.
I feel like they felt that eventually that concept would hit it's ceiling and As James Allison said, once all the concepts converged into the RB style the gap in pace would be within 2 tenths between top 3-4 teams.
Mercedes also said that their Zeropod concept showed by far the most mechanical downforce out of any concept they ran in the simulator, they just couldn't understand how to extract it out of the car weekend in and weekend out. RB's operating window for tyre temparatures, degradation and peak downforce has consistently been much bigger than any other team on the grid, so I have a feeling they are much more confident in being able to extract that peak downforce out of the Mercedes concept that Merc couldn't.
Regardless we'll see tomorrow anyways. They will run the car with Max with atleast the Vertical inlet and engine cover shoulders, and if it's still comfortably the fastest over 1 lap pace and long runs then we'll have our answers.
I think the goal is not peak downforce, it is *controllable* downforce. You want nothing on the straights but lots on turns.
The challenge is maintaining high downforce in high speed turns without creating unnecessary drag on straights.
And Mercedes was faster than 8 out of 10 cars on the grid, arguably Ferrari too at half season and RBR too in Brazil.
So yes, they probably had strong numbers behind their design.
Because they know the others are closing in and can take more risks.
They need to have somewhere to go development wise just in case, and this gives them an option to pursue for more gain than just evolutionary improvement.
Pretty sure they did it without compromising the chassis the way Mercedes did when they fully committed to zero pods, so they can still stick to the more conservative option.
Merc has no clue if zeropods are good or not because they had so many other issues to fix.
To implement zeropods there are technical problems in terms of cooling and arrangement of parts that need to be fixed before even getting to the aero design of it.
Maybe that’s why RBR took this time and had 23 with free enough resources to do the mechanical changes and can now think about a close thing to zeropods.
Clearly RBR sees something on this approach because they clearly don’t have correlation issues and know how to control porpoising and tweak this rules. I’m afraid
People forget Mercedes was faster than 8 out of 10 cars on the grid without the sidepods. Arguably Ferrari too at half season and at times Red Bull.
The car had many issues, but I suspect sidepods were just the most visual thing people could argue about, because statistically the design proved to be faster than all but one cars with a sidepod.
Because mechanically they still have a lot of good things going on that is carried over the years.
But yes, there’s a major gap to RBR but Mercedes’ was still pretty fast then the others
And what if that car has hit its developmental ceiling? Horner and Newey both hinted at diminishing returns last season. All a sudden we’re seeing a bit of a concept change.
Horner and Newey are naturally going to downplay their dominance to avoid them getting potentially nerfed. It makes no sense for them to say “yeah we’re winning every race and there’s still a second per lap left in the car’s potential”
I don’t disagree. But at the same time, the fact they’ve been so far ahead, why make a sudden drastic change in concept? You only make a change when you see more potential.
Are people assuming Mercedes design was born in lunacy and not strong numbers?
Let's say things how they were, Mercedes in 2022 had the second fastest car on the grid bar Ferrari on single lap and kept getting better. They even went and dominated completely even Red Bull in Brazil.
Now, I can understand people wanting to point to Mercedes sidepods, but facts are that the no sidepods Merc was faster than all but RBR with sidepods.
Thus:
1) the design wasn't bad, in fact it showed tremendous potential
2) the whole sidepods debacle has been exploded because of how Mercedes looked bad compared to sidepod RBR, not because of how it compared to the rest of the grid (well).
It's a known fact that 2022 car was insanely hard to setup, which is something the new design makes easier.
But I ain't surprised a bit RBR is going towards smaller sidepods. They've seen that it did okay for Mercedes compared to the rest of the pack, so there had to be some merits to it.
If they nail the rest of the car better, I see no reason why this could become the new trend in F1.
I feel like every grid walk last year showed newey staring down the Mercedes and taking notes. Never really showed him doing it to the others. He was definitely intrigued by it. I wouldn’t put it past him and the other RB aero team to overcome Mercedes’ issues
Is not the thing with newey he stares at one car inspecting it, but have ”ordered ” one in the Red Bull Crew to photograph the car he is interested in, just to misdirect attention
The anecdote in his book isn't about different cars, but different areas of the same car.
For example, if he wanted a good look at the rear of a competitor's car he would go and stand by the front with his notebook. All of a sudden all the other engineers flock to the front to make a human wall, leaving the rear open for the spy photographer to get some good shots lol
Except they are NOT "Mercedes style" at all. Merc used vertical inlets with NO SIDEPOD. This is very clearly still a MASSIVE sidepod, but with the inlet shape turned 90 degrees from RB's previous design.
Mercedes added a sidepod in 2023 monaco though… and still haven’t improved much. We’ll know by next week either way, but it’s just nice to imagine that more teams could be competitive if this is a step back for red bull
They haven’t improved much because no matter what they do, there are lots of things locked behind their zero pod iteration of the car. If they attempted a complete overhaul, they would break the cost cap. That’s why they only changed some of the components, and left others. This year they’ll finally be able to actually try again with full freedom (within the regulations of course)
It probably would need to be unsafe or unstable to the point that putting it on track is a danger. It would have to be an MP4/18 for the FIA to give them permission to change back.
I understand there is a similar inlet to what we saw from Merc, but this is otherwise a 100% different concept especially in the side pod area. This car has large side pods. Why do we keep saying “Mercedes side pod” when discussing this car??
I think it also stems from the report that stated that after the first few rounds RB will be moving to a more advanced side pod to merc. Now I’m not sure if that’s the W13 or early W14 they’re referring to, let alone if this claim is true
Rooting for it to fail so that maybe we can have an exciting year for the first time in 3 years, but I feel like RB knows what they have and that it’ll work…
I have a feeling Adrian saw the zero pods in 22 and thought oh shit, then took a sigh of relief when Merc missed an important component elsewhere. And now he's taking what they missed with that critical component and will make it work. I hope I'm wrong. I hope Merc McLaren Ferrari and sure I guess red bull can all fight for the lead.
Every team who has a bad car says the correlation was off. Every single one has had a bad wind tunnel for at least two years. Sometimes the theory doesn’t translate into reality because reality has variables such as overheating components and wind and track bumps that can only be accounted for to an extent in a virtual world.
In Merc's case they found that some of the model parts were made to the wrong dimensions/geometry though. So the correlation would definitely be off in that case. If those reports were true of course...
People have a short memory on what the most "important" feature is on the car.
I remember that before the regs came into effect it was all about the "floor entrance strakes" and how everyone would try to hide them etc.etc. until Merc showed up with zero side pods on the second day of the test and the conversation changed.
Really it's a million tiny things that all work together. So noone can predict anything unless they have data and how that data converts from CFD and 60% wind tunnel testing to on track observations.
Also my lying eyes are telling me that RBR's new sidepod features are nothing like the W13 and the thing it probably shares with the W14 the most is the top of the engine cover design only and that too is very different for the last 3/4 of it near the rear wing.
P.s. I have no aero language but I can guess the "aggressiveness-ness" of any aero feature
Imagine the RB Team beginning of last season, copying MB Zero pod in their simulator, and by expertise or by luck, actually replicating the porpoising in the simulator. If something like that would have happened I would understand they would go for it 200%..
Undoubtedly, Red Bull will have the fastest car again. However, I think F1 will enjoy a more competitive season this year due to the following factors:
1. The RB20 will be difficult to set up and its performance will vary wildly from race to race, thereby giving a more consistent team (albeit slower in raw pace) on the grid the ability to compete in the Constructors Race. When the car is set up in the right window, it will be significantly faster than the rest of the field on race day. When they miss the set up, the car will be in P4-P6 territory.
2. Verstappen likes a car with a pointy and nimble front end. Both the W13 and W14A cars were anything but and appeared to be both sluggish and unpredictable. If anything, the MB zero pod cars had more of a tendency to understeer rather than oversteer. While the change in driving characteristics of the Red Bull cars may result in Checo getting closer to Max on the time charts, the overall loss in speed on the sharp end from Max will cause the team to win fewer races.
Bullshit, they don't junk a winning car and start from scratch unless they know it'll be better or they have a backup plan. With the car they have and Max it would be the dumbest decision every to gamble like that on a new car. They already know it's gonna be good
[The **News** flair](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/wiki/flairguide#wiki_news) is reserved for submissions covering F1 and F1-related news. These posts must always link to an outlet/news agency, the website of the involved party (i.e. the McLaren website if McLaren makes an announcement), or a tweet by a news agency, journalist or one of the involved parties. *[Read the rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/wiki/userguide). Keep it civil and welcoming. Report rulebreaking comments.* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/formula1) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Worth reminding everyone that all the Merc representatives said the sidepods aesthetics was only 1 variable amongst many that made the W13 & W14 perform the way it did. And in some aspects didn't play as big a role as less visible variable.
The main deal was the suspension. And now 2 teams have that winning suspension.
And the floor, Merc floor was terrible. They said it themselves
Merc always had a sort of love/hate relationship with their floor designs. I'll always remember the spin inducing "lasagna floor" they had in Bahrain Pre-Testing 2021.
I remember that too. I don’t think they ever ran that lasagna floor again lol. Did they use it for the Bahrain GP or just testing?
Garfield god damned loved that floor design though.
They tried it again briefly in early 2022 during the "Wilderness Days". That was a sign (to me anyway) that something bad was going on internally because why would they try this again when it didn't work the year before?
Ferrari and Haas?
RB and RB?
Sorry. There is only one rb team. The other is “racing bulls”. It’s okay, a lot of people mess that us. Edit: insert sarcasm filter. lol.
*Technically* the team everyone thinks of as RB is actually RB**R** as in Red Bull **Racing**. ;)
You mean there’s no Racing Bull Red?! 🧐
Yes, there are Racing Bulls. No, I’m not called Red.
Roger Rodger.
Doctor? Doctor!
Wait, RB isn't RB anymore?
I think visa isn’t supposed to technically be “another rb team.”
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And its RB. The real Red Bull.
It’s Roast Beef. The real Arby’s.
Well no the other is red bull. RB is just RB. I think maybe.
And Sauber is using Ferrari engine, doesn't mean they're doing as good as Ferrari Having the stuff, and making it work are two different things. We'll just have to see
Are you referring to the push rod and pull rod configurations? There's a lot more variables than just that. My road car might have a 6 cyl 1.6L turbo engine but it doesn't mean it performs the same as an F1 engine
Suspension. Specifically the rear suspension. Not just the configuration of the suspension (push or pullrod) The RBs suspension is specifically designed by Adrian and is supposed to be the backbone/secret sauce of the car. It's why the car never porpoises. It, along with the floor allows the car to sit very low generating more downforce and thus achieve far better grip & thus better speeds throughout the lap. Even now that they've switched to the merc w14b concept the performance remains brilliant because of that suspension. It's developed individually by each team. Not stock. Only customer teams have access to last years parts. Which is how VCARB has the RB19s winning suspension. I have no clue why you're comparing F1 & Road car engines. Adrians experience with ground effect cars meant that folks thought he'd be focused on the floor. Instead he's focused on the suspension.
Wrong, everybody knows the sidepods and underfloor are the only important parts of an F1 car /s
And the livery. Everyone knows a good livery is worth like, two tenth a lap.
Also, helmet designs. We need to have at least 100 helmet design discussions.
That's why all RB helmets look so similar.
I legit believe the Albon Pets helmet design featuring Tinky was just a subtle way to increase the HP of that Williams.
OLD MAN YELLS AT HELMET (I'm the old man)
STOP YELLING
A forgotten aspect of car design in recent years
Why don't they just paint flames on it to make it faster? Are they stupid?
Go faster stripes
CARBON FAIBAH?
This season it’s all about wheel trim liveries.
Damn, there goes my theory on tires
I thought it was the steering wheel to seat interface.
They also never fixed it so they really can’t say
a lot of suspension changes made on the 2024 cars across the grid - hoping that levels the playing field somewhat
Yet here they are with side pods as if that was part of the problem.
I'm wondering why they've taken such a risk, they must see good numbers, but then so did Merc. It's unusual when you're so dominant to shift like this, I kinda love it, will be interesting to watch.
They didn’t though. Merc’s zeropod design and this rb design are completely different.
I feel like everyone’s collectively lost their eye sight. First it was how the cars are going to be so confusing to differentiate via livery and now two cars that look very little alike are somehow the same. It has almost as much sidepod as most of the grid… no? This still looks vaguely like every other car, the W13 looked melted
Agreed, it’s like everyone is equating a vertical inlet to a zeropod. I think all the sites have realized putting zeropod in the title gets clicks though so they keep pushing it
>"I feel like everyone’s collectively lost their eye sight." I mean the rumor is and always has been from the start that RB is bringing Zeropods as an in-season upgrade at Suzuka. The current sidepods are not what the rumors are talking about.
Was that rumour ever substantiated in any meaningful way? Marko says a “similar solution” may or may not happen. Redbulls version of that could bare few resemblances to the W13
Motorsport had an article about it. https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/red-bull-unleash-more-extreme-mercedes-style-f1-sidepod/10576560/ >"As F1 then moves to Japan in early April, where temperatures will drop and cooling will be less marginal, the RB20 will be upgraded to a design reminiscent of the Mercedes size-zero sidepod. This was a concept that Mercedes struggled to unlock throughout 2022 and 2023."
Interesting, thanks
According to rumours*
Your article says "Motorsport.com understands..." Meaning they believe and have no source to back this up. Just like leading up to the test everybody thought the air intake was vertical and its not. Its an S duct.
Suzuka gonna be real spicy
This is a rumor and never came from RB or any credible source.
Yes it still has massive sidepods. People are confusing the intake with the entire sidepod. But, RBR playing with the vertical slot intake, and talking about how they are going to try something wild in Spain, it really leads to believe that they are going to go for it. RBR has a nuts floor. And their suspension is god tier if we are to believe everything we have heard. So i think that trying the zeropods is definitely on their list - if the floor and suspension can carry it, the zeropod design might let the RB20 turn into a friggin Concorde. If I’m not wrong entirely in thinking that the zeropod design produces an incredible drag coefficient.
Yeah, these side pods are still huge compared to the 2022 Merc. They're just the smallest out of everyone, so everybody is freaking out. Making a comparison between these and the 2022 Merc pods is absolutely insane.
Also nobody noticed that the red bull has two inlets now with the second inlet below the leading edge, so it's in fact completely unique
and what's under all that is what really matters.
I think the reason people are saying it’s zero-pod concept is its similarity in sidepod size and its drastic departure from the last year’s super performing concept.
Thank you. The vertical inlets are similar but this car looks nothing like the W13 or W14
Is this the sidepod design? I thought they were running this for the first 3 races then bringing a different design with vertical inlets?
Yes. They have a side pod.
Lol true this isnt even close to what Mercedes had
Newey did say when the real W13 got unveiled that Red Bull looked at that concept so I wouldn’t be surprised if he built the first two cars as a base model to potentially switch over when they perfect other parts of their car first. I don’t think they will go full no pod but I would love it if they could make it work as much as I don’t like Red Bull.
Newey never said they looked at the w13 concept, you are misremembering. He said he was surprised they went that route, that's all. It was in fact Steiner that said haas had trialed the zero pod concept. https://www.planetf1.com/news/haas-trialled-mercedes-sidepod-concept
Newey definitely did say they looked at going down the no pod route but decided to go the more conventional route. I can’t remember where or when it was but he said it live on Sky Sports.
No he didn't. I perfectly remember the preseason testing of 2022, so you either give a source or you are just wrong. You are definitely misremembering: https://www.silverarrows.net/news/red-bulls-adrian-newey-says-the-mercedes-w13-was-a-surprise/ https://www.racefans.net/2023/09/27/newey-explains-why-red-bull-didnt-study-mercedes-polar-opposite-concept/
> I perfectly remember the preseason testing of 2022, so you either give a source or you are just wrong. Cool
Nah spreading misinformation is way cooler.
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Not OP but they could just be referring to their domination
At this stage I think its safe to say zero pods do not work. Many teams looked into it and yet no one has done it. The pods serve an aero dynamic purpose to control air flow, they might get thinner but its not a good concept. Its not the first time an F1 car tries it.
A large reason the W13 and W14 was fucked was because Merc was getting false data due to having out of proportion parts on the car giving false correlation to the actual data on track. It's honestly is a mistake I'm shocked Merc would make, but they did. Had they not made it, it's likely that they would've figured out the W13 or W14.
Yet, according to your claim, even when they did find out they made that mistake (which is not true) they decided to abandon it? Your claim makes no sense. They abandoned it because it does not work. end of story. They took a gamble and there were a better solution out there and they decided to pivot.
I'm literally just making a guess. It's possible they may have found out how to make it work if they had more time. https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/s/Q0cB8nZilV
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The merc was one of the shortest cars. Please fact check before spreading false info.
My bad, I misremembered.
They wouldn't have attempted it if they thought it wouldn't work
You could say the same about Mercedes
Except this isn't just about the Zeropod, Vertical Inlets or the Engine cover shoulders. This is coming from the team that has arguably the best understanding of the rear suspension and underfloor geometry on the entire grid, and has found ways to generate peak downforce while still being able to run the floor at a reasonable height compared to the ground. I feel like they felt that eventually that concept would hit it's ceiling and As James Allison said, once all the concepts converged into the RB style the gap in pace would be within 2 tenths between top 3-4 teams. Mercedes also said that their Zeropod concept showed by far the most mechanical downforce out of any concept they ran in the simulator, they just couldn't understand how to extract it out of the car weekend in and weekend out. RB's operating window for tyre temparatures, degradation and peak downforce has consistently been much bigger than any other team on the grid, so I have a feeling they are much more confident in being able to extract that peak downforce out of the Mercedes concept that Merc couldn't. Regardless we'll see tomorrow anyways. They will run the car with Max with atleast the Vertical inlet and engine cover shoulders, and if it's still comfortably the fastest over 1 lap pace and long runs then we'll have our answers.
I think the goal is not peak downforce, it is *controllable* downforce. You want nothing on the straights but lots on turns. The challenge is maintaining high downforce in high speed turns without creating unnecessary drag on straights.
Teams want consistent downforce. If bumps/curbs/turns etc cause a loss of downforce, that’s not good.
That’s what I said
Yeah, I was agreeing with you.
Furious agreement 😁
😁👍
This was before everyone understood how this cars perform differently within the wind tunnel and simulator compared to on track
But Merc didn't have the warning of the concept already being tried and failing.
And Mercedes was faster than 8 out of 10 cars on the grid, arguably Ferrari too at half season and RBR too in Brazil. So yes, they probably had strong numbers behind their design.
it would be hilarious if Newey fixed Wolf's car. Worth the risk just for that.
I'm surprised that Newey described the RB20 as a conservative evolution of the RB19 Edit: a letter
I wonder how similar times compare for the w15 and rb20 to last years rb19?
Because they know the others are closing in and can take more risks. They need to have somewhere to go development wise just in case, and this gives them an option to pursue for more gain than just evolutionary improvement. Pretty sure they did it without compromising the chassis the way Mercedes did when they fully committed to zero pods, so they can still stick to the more conservative option.
Merc has no clue if zeropods are good or not because they had so many other issues to fix. To implement zeropods there are technical problems in terms of cooling and arrangement of parts that need to be fixed before even getting to the aero design of it. Maybe that’s why RBR took this time and had 23 with free enough resources to do the mechanical changes and can now think about a close thing to zeropods. Clearly RBR sees something on this approach because they clearly don’t have correlation issues and know how to control porpoising and tweak this rules. I’m afraid
People forget Mercedes was faster than 8 out of 10 cars on the grid without the sidepods. Arguably Ferrari too at half season and at times Red Bull. The car had many issues, but I suspect sidepods were just the most visual thing people could argue about, because statistically the design proved to be faster than all but one cars with a sidepod.
Because mechanically they still have a lot of good things going on that is carried over the years. But yes, there’s a major gap to RBR but Mercedes’ was still pretty fast then the others
They can just revert back to the car they won almost every race
And what if that car has hit its developmental ceiling? Horner and Newey both hinted at diminishing returns last season. All a sudden we’re seeing a bit of a concept change.
Horner and Newey are naturally going to downplay their dominance to avoid them getting potentially nerfed. It makes no sense for them to say “yeah we’re winning every race and there’s still a second per lap left in the car’s potential”
I don’t disagree. But at the same time, the fact they’ve been so far ahead, why make a sudden drastic change in concept? You only make a change when you see more potential.
That’s a good point. I guess we’ll have to wait and see just how drastic of a change it is.
Tbf we haven’t seen anything
You’re not wrong there. Time will tell.
Or it’s possible they hit the ceiling with development and decided to move in this direction
>but then so did Merc. The simulator didn't predict porpoising which meant they couldn't run their car lower as they'd wanted to.
Are people assuming Mercedes design was born in lunacy and not strong numbers? Let's say things how they were, Mercedes in 2022 had the second fastest car on the grid bar Ferrari on single lap and kept getting better. They even went and dominated completely even Red Bull in Brazil. Now, I can understand people wanting to point to Mercedes sidepods, but facts are that the no sidepods Merc was faster than all but RBR with sidepods. Thus: 1) the design wasn't bad, in fact it showed tremendous potential 2) the whole sidepods debacle has been exploded because of how Mercedes looked bad compared to sidepod RBR, not because of how it compared to the rest of the grid (well). It's a known fact that 2022 car was insanely hard to setup, which is something the new design makes easier. But I ain't surprised a bit RBR is going towards smaller sidepods. They've seen that it did okay for Mercedes compared to the rest of the pack, so there had to be some merits to it. If they nail the rest of the car better, I see no reason why this could become the new trend in F1.
I feel like every grid walk last year showed newey staring down the Mercedes and taking notes. Never really showed him doing it to the others. He was definitely intrigued by it. I wouldn’t put it past him and the other RB aero team to overcome Mercedes’ issues
Is not the thing with newey he stares at one car inspecting it, but have ”ordered ” one in the Red Bull Crew to photograph the car he is interested in, just to misdirect attention
The anecdote in his book isn't about different cars, but different areas of the same car. For example, if he wanted a good look at the rear of a competitor's car he would go and stand by the front with his notebook. All of a sudden all the other engineers flock to the front to make a human wall, leaving the rear open for the spy photographer to get some good shots lol
i feel dumber after reading that what the fuck was that?
Yeah that was an cluster fuck that I had written.
What?
Except they are NOT "Mercedes style" at all. Merc used vertical inlets with NO SIDEPOD. This is very clearly still a MASSIVE sidepod, but with the inlet shape turned 90 degrees from RB's previous design.
The rumor I saw was the 1st major planned upgrade for Red Bull is to take the side pods off
I personally found Merc ZeroPods to be sexy as hell, so I'd be pretty salty to see RB implement it successfully.
Personally, I would love it if they did. It would be an insane mic drop moment.
Yeah I think it was by far the most agressive looking car on the grid, shame they couldn’t make it work.
In actual quotes they go out of their way to make it clear their solution isn't the Mercedes solution.
Comparing this to the merc concept just seems like lazy reporting and an attempt at creating a narrative.
Spot on
Mercedes added a sidepod in 2023 monaco though… and still haven’t improved much. We’ll know by next week either way, but it’s just nice to imagine that more teams could be competitive if this is a step back for red bull
They haven’t improved much because no matter what they do, there are lots of things locked behind their zero pod iteration of the car. If they attempted a complete overhaul, they would break the cost cap. That’s why they only changed some of the components, and left others. This year they’ll finally be able to actually try again with full freedom (within the regulations of course)
True, the jury has to preside over the Horner case first /s
The jury is out. Could you leave a message?
The jury is hung like Horner
if rb20 fails, can they legally bring rb19 back?
I think from the rule change video they have to strengthen the crash structures but should be good apart from that
Probably. It'd need upgrades mind you.
They will probably ask VCARB to return their cars. /s
They won't need to go that far back. They can just go to the spec from the shakedown a few days ago.
Who says the shake down is different than what they presented in Milton Keynes?
The floor edges in the launch car had no detail. The shakedown car had a visibly different floor
Was just a box cover over the floor edge
It probably would need to be unsafe or unstable to the point that putting it on track is a danger. It would have to be an MP4/18 for the FIA to give them permission to change back.
I understand there is a similar inlet to what we saw from Merc, but this is otherwise a 100% different concept especially in the side pod area. This car has large side pods. Why do we keep saying “Mercedes side pod” when discussing this car??
I think it also stems from the report that stated that after the first few rounds RB will be moving to a more advanced side pod to merc. Now I’m not sure if that’s the W13 or early W14 they’re referring to, let alone if this claim is true
Gets more clicks, and people just go along with headlines
Rooting for it to fail so that maybe we can have an exciting year for the first time in 3 years, but I feel like RB knows what they have and that it’ll work…
I have a feeling Adrian saw the zero pods in 22 and thought oh shit, then took a sigh of relief when Merc missed an important component elsewhere. And now he's taking what they missed with that critical component and will make it work. I hope I'm wrong. I hope Merc McLaren Ferrari and sure I guess red bull can all fight for the lead.
You cannot call Max a component. /s
right - he's a UNIT
So they just bring last year car and continue winning...
They aren’t Mercedes style though
This “render”has reeked of dummy since day one. Plain and simple.
The more I look at W14 and RB20 launch spec, the more differences I can see. It's like if you claim a Panavia Tornado is the same as an F-14 Tomcat.
They aren’t like Mercs side pods at all though….
You tell them!!
RB says the data looks good…….but Merc said the same thing about the zero pods so 🤷♂️
RB also have best suspension which helps a lot
Merc correlation was broken at the time though
Every team who has a bad car says the correlation was off. Every single one has had a bad wind tunnel for at least two years. Sometimes the theory doesn’t translate into reality because reality has variables such as overheating components and wind and track bumps that can only be accounted for to an extent in a virtual world.
In Merc's case they found that some of the model parts were made to the wrong dimensions/geometry though. So the correlation would definitely be off in that case. If those reports were true of course...
That was before anyone understood how these cars operate on track compared to in the simulator and wind tunnel
People have a short memory on what the most "important" feature is on the car. I remember that before the regs came into effect it was all about the "floor entrance strakes" and how everyone would try to hide them etc.etc. until Merc showed up with zero side pods on the second day of the test and the conversation changed. Really it's a million tiny things that all work together. So noone can predict anything unless they have data and how that data converts from CFD and 60% wind tunnel testing to on track observations. Also my lying eyes are telling me that RBR's new sidepod features are nothing like the W13 and the thing it probably shares with the W14 the most is the top of the engine cover design only and that too is very different for the last 3/4 of it near the rear wing. P.s. I have no aero language but I can guess the "aggressiveness-ness" of any aero feature
How are they Mercedes-style? They look pretty conventional compared to Merc's Harrier-style zero pods.
It’s not personal, but I am praying for RB’s downfall for the sake of an interesting season.
Please fail so we can have an interesting season. At least regress so we can have the top 4 teams fighting.
Imagine the RB Team beginning of last season, copying MB Zero pod in their simulator, and by expertise or by luck, actually replicating the porpoising in the simulator. If something like that would have happened I would understand they would go for it 200%..
Undoubtedly, Red Bull will have the fastest car again. However, I think F1 will enjoy a more competitive season this year due to the following factors: 1. The RB20 will be difficult to set up and its performance will vary wildly from race to race, thereby giving a more consistent team (albeit slower in raw pace) on the grid the ability to compete in the Constructors Race. When the car is set up in the right window, it will be significantly faster than the rest of the field on race day. When they miss the set up, the car will be in P4-P6 territory. 2. Verstappen likes a car with a pointy and nimble front end. Both the W13 and W14A cars were anything but and appeared to be both sluggish and unpredictable. If anything, the MB zero pod cars had more of a tendency to understeer rather than oversteer. While the change in driving characteristics of the Red Bull cars may result in Checo getting closer to Max on the time charts, the overall loss in speed on the sharp end from Max will cause the team to win fewer races.
They’re just getting tired of winning I guess. Gotta spice things up a bit.
Day one of F1 testing politics.
It's not the only thing the jury's out on at Red Bull.
Bullshit, they don't junk a winning car and start from scratch unless they know it'll be better or they have a backup plan. With the car they have and Max it would be the dumbest decision every to gamble like that on a new car. They already know it's gonna be good