Fred Vasseur believes Red Bull and Max Verstappen are now making mistakes they previously were not making during their dominant Formula One 2022 and 2023 campaigns following the introduction of the new ground effect car design regulations. After two dominant campaigns and a start to the season which saw Max win four of the first five Grand Prix, the expectations from the paddock were that this year again would see Red bull run away with both championships.

A mechanical issue saw Max fail to finish the race in Australia handing Carlos Sainz the win, then in Miami McLaren delivered a better race strategy which enabled Lando Norris to benefit from a safety car where he pitted and took the lead and held on to claim his maiden victory in F1. Norris was narrowly beaten next time out in Imola and at last weekends Monaco event Red Bull were at sixes and sevens for the entire weekend.

 

 

 

Ferrari boss notes increase in Red Bull mistakes

The understated Ferrari boss claimed after the race victory for his Monegasque driver in the principality: “I don’t want to draw any conclusions about this weekend, but if you look at the last two or three weekends, I think Max made more mistakes in Imola than in the last three seasons,” commented the Scuderia boss.

“If you can stay in your comfort zone every time with the strategy and everything else, you don’t make mistakes. They were in that situation, but now they have to push more.”

Clearly Ferrari and McLaren are much closer to Red Bull this year and the pressure Red Bull are now under Fred Vasseur suggests is the reason for their lack of dominance this year.

Much of Red Bull’s success since 2022 has been down to the experience their design guru Adrian Newey had in the 1980’s while working in Indycar. Then the cars were also ground effect design and Newey learned the playbook long before many of the current generation of engineers were even born.

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Newey chose suspension as his input into ground effect RBR cars

“It was a long time ago but my early career was with Venturi cars, in F1 and in IndyCar. Some of that knowledge has been useful in terms of knowing the potential pitfalls from Venturi cars – particularly the bouncing, or what we call proposing,” Newey explained earlier this year.

“My first visit to the racetrack, when I was at Fittipaldi, was in 1981. Harvey Postlethwaite was the technical director and he decided that because the front suspension was so stiff, we could save weight by throwing away the dampers and the coil springs and replacing them with bump rubbers.

“We did that as a test at Silverstone. Keke Rosberg was the driver and he came past the old pits at Silverstone and the car was bouncing so badly, you could just about see air through the front wheels,” Newey is quoted as saying by f1.com

Newey also admitted his input into the new breed of RBR ground effect was was predominantly into the suspension, which he knew would be the key to solving the bouncing which the likes of Mercedes trialled with for the best part of a season. The rest of the car was conceived by Wache and his team and is the best aero package out there on the grid.

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Ferrari design now better than RBR

By including an ‘anti-dive’ component into the front suspension it prevents the cars from dipping at the front under heavy breaking. Similarly at the rear he designed an ‘anti-squat’ for the rear suspension to prevent the car sitting down when under fierce acceleration. All this created a stable platform where the air flow under the car – which now creates about 50% of the downforce – would be undisturbed.

However, a consequence of Newey’s suspension design means the car runs very stiff which a high speed circuits with low kerbs is not a problem. However introduce the kind of kerbs we see at tracks like Monaco and the upcoming circuit in Montreal and the car when it clips the apex and the kerb is bounce back onto the track causing the driver to lose a split second here and there getting back on the power.

Ferrari in Monaco demonstrated their more compliant suspension mean t the drivers had more margin for error over the high kerbs in the slow corners meaning Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz could apply the throttle earlier than the red bull drivers and take advantage of that early launch they cold get along the short straight sections of the narrow and winding streets in the Cote D’Azure.

When questioned about his lack of apparent speed in monte Carlo, Max Verstappen revealed this was no new problem but one which is a consequence of the Newey suspension design.

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Max says suspension is a fundamental problem

“It’s like I’m driving without suspension,” explained Verstappen.

“The car is bouncing around a lot, not absorbing kerbs, bumps or camber changes. In the last corner, the number of times I almost hit the wall is unbelievable. We’ve been having this problem since 2022. For the last two years, our car advantage has masked it. But now that everyone is catching up, our weaknesses are being exposed…”

Red Bull’s 2022 car the Rb19 was the basis for an evolution for the all conquering RB20 and most F1 observers expected them to create a second evolution for this season. However, when the cars hit the track in testing it was clear this years challenger was significantly different from its championship winning predecessors and Verstappen now reveals this was in an attempt to solve the Newey suspension difficulties.

Yet despite the difficulties with the suspension, Verstappen claimed to be surprised he was just three tenths behind the pole position time in qualifying last Saturday in Monaco. When asked where he could have been had he not made a mistake on his final Q3 run, the world champion was candid: “F*** knows,” he replied with a laugh to the assembled media in the pen after the session.

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Newey failed to solve the problem

“I’m pushing flat out. The car is just super tricky. In Turn 1 it suddenly goes over the bumps. There was no big mistake. The car is literally on a knife edge to drive.”

It was suggested to him that the Newey re-design of the RB20 was supposedly to solve these problems, again Max did not pull his punches replying: “Yeah, supposedly, but it didn’t happen.”

Adrian Newey announced his retirement from the Red Bull team prior to the Miami Grand Prix and many F1 pundits believe this will signify the downfall of the mighty F1 team from Milton Keynes. Yet he has not held the position of technical director for almost ten years. Pierre Wache was promoted to the role in 2018 and it is he who is responsible for pulling the various aspects of the car design together.

There is some irony in the fact that the aspect of the new car design Newey took upon himself to develop, is now the one causing Red Bull the difficulties they are facing. Wache and his team will need to correct the design to deliver a more compliant offering for the circuits like Monaco, Canada, Singapore and quite a few others where such a stiff suspension is a significant disadvantage.

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Wolff rebukes Hamilton ‘favouritism’ accusation

Lewis Hamilton made the extraordinary announcement prior to the start of this season that he was leaving for Ferrari next year, despite having declared months earlier a new two year contract with Mercedes. With such a long lead time before his departure it was always going to be the case that the team transitioned to functioning without the seven times champions input.

Though it may be the team are breathing a collective sigh of relief given Hamilton’s threats of last season where he publicly called for “accountability” and questioned why the design team had “not listened” to his comments on the problems with their 2022 W13… READ MORE