It is no secret in Formula One Sebastian Vettel and the Red Bulls have been struggling the most during the offseason.
But all of the talk has been about the poor performance and lack of development in the new 1.6-litre V6 turbo Renault engine which, under new regulations, replaces the 2.4-litre V8s that have been used in recent times.
The Renault teams – Red Bull, Lotus, Toro Rosso and Caterham – have been simply lacking the horsepower, in some cases the Mercedes has been up to 30km an hour quicker.
But this is something that all the Renaults have to deal with, not just Vettel’s Red Bull.
The underdeveloped Renault engine is the constant within the four teams and all four have had to deal with its lack of horsepower. It is Red Bull that appears to be having the most problems staying out on the road, having difficulty with reliability over the three tests.
Vettel completed the fifth-least amount of kilometres of any Formula One driver during the three test sessions in the RB10 car. The German completed just 859 total kilometres in the offseason, compared to Nico Rosberg in his Mercedes, who topped the list, with 2,182km and new Swedish driver Marcus Ericsson, Caterham, 1,535km, covering the most kilometres with a Renault engine.
If Caterham can complete 1196km more than Red bull over the three pre-season tests with significantly less resources and money than the Milton Keyes team, there must be something more to it than just the adaption to the underpowered engine that is causing Red Bull to have major difficulty.
Adrian Newey, Red Bull’s chief technical officer, has always had his clever ways of designing the Red Bull car to give it maximum performance, creating a car that pushes the design limits and regulations to exert a perfect balance of high end speed and down force.
Vettel is a precision and pin-point driver, although a lot of his success has been due to the clever design techniques of Newey, which has constantly given him the edge over his fellow rivals in the paddock.
It was Newey, at Red Bull, that first developed the idea at the beginning of last season to divert hot exhaust gases into the diffusers to gain downforce.
This tactic has now been revised and all F1 cars will now have to abide by new regulations, which stipulate a single exhaust tailpipe that exits centrally behind the rear wheel centreline must be used.
Last season’s RB6 car’s front-end was also significantly more developed with its design than the rest of the F1 field. Newey had mastered front wing technology, engineering its plates to flex under high loads of pressure to create more or less downforce to the car when needed in different areas of the track.
‘Nose height – for safety reasons the height of noses has been reduced for 2014. The maximum height is 185mm (previously it was 550mm).’
‘Front wing – front wings will be a little narrower from 2014 with the width reduced from 1800mm to 1650mm.’
These two adaptions to the rules nullify the development of Newey’s RB6 front wing. The advantage of having flexible plates in the front wing were to adjust the height of the wing itself and the front of the car to the ground, effortlessly resulting in more downforce to the car.
By reducing the height of the nose, Red Bull are forced to redesign their front wing and have not be able utilise the previous design on the new RB10.
Reducing the width of the front wing adds to Newey’s development issue, the new design will have to direct the airflow between the chassis and an always moving tyre.
It could be said the 2014 regulation changes have effected Red Bull the most, because, obviously, with four consecutive championships, their car was the most advanced in its development and therefore fastest, quite logically.
Newey is known to be an aggressive car designing genius around the paddock. It would be crazy to think he has not thought outside of the box once again when trying to overcome the harsh regulation changes while designing the RB10 car, to get Red Bull’s familiar edge over the rest of the teams.
The question that is being raised is, have the new regulations finally proven too much for Newey?
The Renault engine has high demands in terms of cooling and Newely’s crafty ways of keeping the RB10 car aerodynamic while tending to the needs of the larger cooling system has already proven to be destructive, Vettel’s car catching fire during the test in Jerez, in February.
“It was, you could argue, a result of aggressive packaging but we felt that we needed to take a few risks to try to get a good package that would minimise the aerodynamic damage of this very large cooling requirement,” admitted Adrian Newey to autosport.com.
“The radiator area that we need to cool the charge air from the turbo and additionally all of the extra cooling we need for the electrical side of things, the batteries, the motor generator unit and so forth, the control box…
“It means that the radiator area is roughly double last year’s car with the V8.
“So trying to package that in without compromising the aerodynamics too heavily is a challenge,” continued Newey.
The Jerez incident could very well be the clearest indication the Red Bull technical team are pushing the limits with the packaging, something we have come to expect from the world champions, but perhaps they need to walk before they run, like the other three Renault engine supplied teams.
Is it Newey and his team’s risk-taking mentality in the design and his masterful ways in the field of aerodynamics that is causing the Red Bull team to be so far behind of the field heading into the first Grand Prix in Melbourne, in just a couple of days?
Is it that Red Bull were so far ahead in development, that they have had the furthest to come back in the opposite direction?
Either way it is going to give the Formula One world the opportunity to see if Vettel can actually ‘race’ with the rest of the field, which is probably the most tantalising aspect to all of this Red Bull drama.
It feels like an age ago since we actually got to see Vettel have to race for a grand prix victory, taking half of his 2013 wins by over 10 seconds. Just two of the German’s last season wins were within five seconds, one of those was ahead of teammate Mark Webber in Malaysia and the other to Kimi Raikkonen in Korea, although Vettel led the whole race.
It will now be interesting to see how Vettel can work his way through the traffic with a car that is not superior to the rest of the field. He will now be forced to fight his way onto the podium, which has been the missing link in the Vettel repertoire on his quest to greatness.
Many of Vettel’s doubters have been waiting for the time when the German would be levelled out with the rest of the field and not be cradled by driving an Adrian Newey masterpiece.
Now, after calls for Vettel to switch teams in 2014 to prove his worth, he doesn’t have to change his colours to demonstrate if he can, or cannot, showcase the driving skills and talent to win races behind the wheel of a car that doesn’t have supernatural, spaceship-like powers.
The 2014 season appears, at the moment, to be the year when the four-time world champion can prove to all of his sceptical critics that he deserves to be ranked in the same class as formula greats like Ayrton Senna and Juan Manuel Fangio.
What’s your best bet? For great odds on all your favourite sports check out PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.
It’s a pretty good time to be a Tasmanian sports fan right now. After years in the sporting wilderness with not much to celebrate,…
Olympic swimming legend and Australian Sports Commission boss Kieren Perkins has warned that "someone will die" if a multi-sport event that allows athletes to…
In 2015 when heavyweight boxer Tyson Fury beat Wladimir Klitschko, the fighter regarded by many as the ‘Greatest of all time’ in the sport,…
Join Australia's most vibrant online sports community and you have the chance to win $1000. The Roar is the perfect blend of sports reporting,…
Here is a review of our boxers who made a splash in the world rankings over the past year.
After intense debate at Roar HQ, we’ve selected the 23 most controversial moments for 2023.
