![]() ![]() Now, the first qualifying session of the new season appears to have confirmed it. But testing being what it is, nobody quite knew. Testing suggested a shift in the balance of F1 power. The more they run it, the more they will learn, but at the moment it’s a handful. ![]() “We couldn’t run our suspensions and settings in the way that Red Bull does, so we need to make the best out of it and tune the car to what we have available.”įrom the start of testing, both Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas have found the Mercedes tricky to balance. “It’s physically not possible,” Wolff said. They have little choice because it’s a matter of car concept, not simply a question of altering rake level. “We know that for a low-rake car it’s more of a challenge, but we embrace it.” “I’m sure it has been specifically designed to change the pecking order,” he said. Toto Wolff is among those who think that the rule change – ostensibly to aid Pirelli with the heaviest, most powerful F1 cars ever running on its revised construction tyres – was actually also intended to level the F1 playing field. Low-rake cars, like the Mercedes and last year’s Racing Point run fairly flat when viewed in profile, while high-rake cars such as the Red Bull and AlphaTauri, have the appearance of a jacked-up rear end. A theory gathering purchase is that the diffuser modifications have hurt the low-rake cars more than their high-rake counterparts. As Mercedes technical director James Allison says, when you trim that area of the car, you haemorrhage downforce.īut, it’s the same for everyone, right? Well, maybe not. Then, there’s the downforce-robbing changes to the rear diffuser area for 2021. Not much was said about it last year but, in Bahrain, Horner has alluded to a correlation issue with the RB16 that the team now better understands. It was such a rare event that Christian Horner seemed to have forgotten all about it when he proclaimed Max’s Bahrain pole to be the team’s first since 2013!īut there was a tangible confidence at Red Bull as they headed into the winter, having made a step with the car. Max dominated both qualifying – a novelty – and the race. First off, there is Verstappen and Red Bull’s performance in the 2020 season-closing Abu Dhabi GP to consider. How so? Isn’t this a carry-over year before a radical change of regulations in 2022, with the popular perception being that the newly-knighted Hamilton merely has to show up to canter to that record-breaking eight world title?Ību Dhabi win last year has proved to be a springboard for 2021 Fast forward to this weekend, same venue, and it is a complete reversal – Verstappen on pole with an almost identical (0.41sec) margin over Hamilton. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |