How Red Bull turned it round

Red Bull Racing have been the chasers in this year’s championship so far, mounting the only real challenge to the dominant Brawn GP team. Yet at Silverstone this weekend they suddenly became the class of the field, romping to an easy one-two finish at Brawn’s home race.

So how have they done it? Much has been talked about the aerodynamic upgrades that Red Bull brought to Silverstone, but how have they improved the car?

Is the RB5 now the car to beat? It may be too early to say

First of all it’s important not to get carried away in the sudden upturn in form of Red Bull relative to Brawn. Silverstone was much cooler this weekend than most of the other races this year, and Brawn have already admitted that cool conditions do not suit their car particularly well. The reason for this is that the Brawn is not particularly hard on its tyres – when struggling with sub-optimal super-softs this can be a bonus, as we saw particularly in Monaco, but when the temperatures drop it means that the car struggles to get heat into its tyres and therefore loses grip.

Red Bull, on the other hand, are supreme in cooler temperatures – the Chinese Grand Prix, another one-two for the team, had already demonstrated this but they showed it again in Britain. Their car is very aggressive on its tyres, much like last year’s McLaren, which means that harder compounds and cooler conditions come more naturally to them than a car with a lighter touch on its rubber.

How much of the team’s apparent improvement was down to favourable conditions, then, and how much was down to genuine improvement in the performance of the car, remains to be seen. If it is warmer in Germany and especially Hungary, Brawn could well stage a fightback.

But the technical steps forward that have been made with the RB5 are real and cannot be attributed solely to the weather suiting them well. Of particular interest is the team’s new double diffuser, Adrian Newey’s innovative response to the FIA ruling that similar features on the Brawn, Toyota and Williams cars were legal. By improving downforce at the rear, the diffuser has clearly had some impact on Red Bull’s lap times.

Red Bull's RB5 originally featured this "skinny" nose design.

But the more significant leaps have been made at the front end of the car. The Red Bull’s original (and, incidentally, monstrously ugly) skinny nosecone has been replaced with a much wider version, similar to Renault’s in its “platypus-like” design. The improvement in front downforce this provides has really brought Red Bull up to a position that is somewhere around the performance level of the Brawn, rather than lagging behind as it had done previously.

What remains for Red Bull is to see whether they can mount a genuine championship challenge to Brawn, already well up the road in terms of drivers’ and constructors’ points. Common sense would dictate that the team would have to start favouring one of their drivers in order to ensure that they have the best possible chance of catching Jenson Button, but they are not in a position to do that yet.

Sebastian Vettel was undoubtedly the star of Silverstone, but teammate Mark Webber has outperformed him in the three races prior to the British GP and cannot be discounted just yet. A team cannot favour its preferred driver by speeding him up; they have to do it by slowing their second driver down. Right now it is unclear which of Red Bull’s two drivers will emerge as the leader, so actively hindering one of them at this stage is a very risky proposition. As the Red Bull corporation’s favourite son, perhaps Vettel will get the nod over Webber, but given that the Australian has not lain down and folded like many predicted, that could be a dangerous approach to take.

What is certain is that Red Bull’s win at Silverstone brings some life into this championship, long considered a settled affair, and if they can bring the fight to Brawn GP it might make the rest of 2009 worth watching.

Race Analysis: British Grand Prix

The British Grand Prix was far from inspiring as F1 races go, particularly in the context of this most historic of events, but it could be crucial in the long run as the championship for the first time appears to be far from settled.

Sebastian Vettel won the British Grand Prix for Red Bull Racing

Sebastian Vettel had the perfect weekend, pole position on Saturday with the heaviest car of the top ten being sufficient to all but guarantee him victory. But Vettel made doubly sure that the race was his by putting in a phenomenal first stint, over a second per lap quicker than second-placed Rubens Barrichello to pull out enough of a margin to ensure that nothing could deny him first place.

The most likely challenger to that top spot had always been his Red Bull teammate Mark Webber, but the Australian was on the back foot already come race day, having been blocked on his final qualifying lap by Kimi Raikkonen. Webber started third when pole had been a distinct possibility, and his inability to pass Barrichello at the start of the race meant that he could do no more than follow his teammate home from a safe distance. The third podium in four races for Webber, however, means that he is far from beaten as Red Bull chase the championship.

Brawn GP had their worst weekend of the 2009 season, taking “only” nine points away from Silverstone as Barrichello finished third and championship leader Jenson Button sixth. Barrichello had a quiet race, never really presenting a challenge to Webber other than getting in his way before the first pit stops, while Button suffered starting behind Jarno Trulli, slow to get away in his Toyota. Quick laps when it mattered put Button ahead of Trulli and Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen in the closing stages to take three points, a late challenge to Nico Rosberg not materialising.

Brawn made perhaps their first real strategical error of the year here, running both drivers for a long middle stint on the uncompetitive harder tyre. This is the same mistake that cost Toyota dearly in Bahrain; here, however, Brawn were fortunate that the error cost them nothing significant as they were unlikely to finish any higher than they actually managed. Button drove well in the final part of the race but faded in the middle; the car’s reluctance to supply heat to its tyres hampered the championship leaders this weekend.

Kazuki Nakajima had perhaps the first sensible pit strategy he has had all year, but fell down the order after an excellent start from fifth place to finish eleventh. Williams teammate Nico Rosberg went the other way, claiming fifth after losing a long battle with Felipe Massa. The Brazilian made the most of an excellent Ferrari strategy, the first in a long time, to take fourth place and overhaul Raikkonen, who came home eighth after fading away in the run to the flag.

Toyota had another solid if uninspiring weekend; Trulli picked up seventh after a poor start compromised him and those starting immediately behind him, while Glock just missed out on points with ninth place. Behind him was Giancarlo Fisichella, who had previously provided one of the few moments of excitement in the race with an excellent opportunistic pass on both Nick Heidfeld and Fernando Alonso early on. The Force India is clearly improving, though not by enough to get them points just yet.

Jenson Button had a difficult race, but still leads the championship

Renault and BMW both had days to forget, with Nelson Piquet leading Robert Kubica, Alonso and Heidfeld as all struggled. Heidfeld had broken his front wing early in the race, but elected to drive around the problem, holding up all those behind him and leaving them too far behind Fisichella to do any better than they eventually managed. Lewis Hamilton was sixteenth behind all of these, tense battles with Alonso and Piquet going unrewarded as the world champion fell behind them, then spun to round off a difficult weekend.

Adrian Sutil and Sebastien Buemi were the only other finishers; neither was a factor at all in the race. Heikki Kovalainen and Sebastien Bourdais retired after colliding with one another, the Finn audaciously pulling out in front of the Frenchman in a move that would almost certainly have resulted in a penalty for a car of any colour other than silver.

On the face of it, little has changed in either the drivers’ or constructors’ championships, Jenson Button still leading by 23 points from teammate Barrichello, and Brawn GP still way out in front in the constructors’ table. However, the result of the British GP signifies a change once again in the pecking order of Formula One, a Red Bull resurgence that could bring life to the championship, something that could so easily be a foregone conclusion by now.

Saving the British Grand Prix

You’ll be hard pressed to find too many F1 fans who believe that a season without the British Grand Prix wouldn’t be damaged in some way. The drivers, too, recognise the history and tradition of the race – Silverstone, remember, hosted the first World Championship Grand Prix back in 1950 – and few would be happy to see it go.

The 1950 British Grand Prix at Silverstone was the first in world championship history

The venue, too, is a matter of some debate among crowds of F1 fanatics. Since that first world championship race, the British Grand Prix has been held at Aintree and Brands Hatch as well as Silverstone, though the Northamptonshire circuit has been the most frequently visited, as well as arguably the most popular among fans.

Donington, too, has been fortunate enough to host a round of the F1 world championship, though it did so only in 1993 under the banner of the European Grand Prix. And it is Donington that hogs the headlines once again this season, in the wake of the announcement that the British GP will be held there, for at least seventeen years at last count, from 2010 onwards.

Donington’s plans to host the British Grand Prix have been fraught with planning and construction problems almost from the very start. Though race promoter Simon Gillett has been bullish throughout, insisting that the race will take place as planned in July of next year, a great number of people have been sceptical. Some have even suggested that the whole scheme was an elaborate ploy by Bernie Ecclestone, who would utilise Donington’s inability to get ready as an excuse to take F1 away from Britain entirely.

It has long been common knowledge that Ecclestone’s relationship with the British Racing Drivers’ Club, who own Silverstone, is not particularly good. Ecclestone’s own application to join the club was reportedly blackballed by members, and since then his position at odds with the BRDC has been seen by many as a very personal dispute, with F1’s commercial boss bent on exacting revenge on the club.

But Bernie is a businessman, and anyone with any knowledge of F1 history knows that he is far too smart to let personal vendettas get in the way of good business. In his apparent crusade against Silverstone – centering largely around his insistence that the facilities at the venue need to be upgraded – Ecclestone is merely trying to impose on the BRDC similar conditions that he imposes on other Grand Prix hosts.

In the past Silverstone has found itself in a very privileged position compared to other F1 venues. It pays much less than most other circuits to host a Grand Prix, yet gets away with having far poorer facilities. One or the other had to change – and considering that the British GP is the only race left on the calendar that is not directly supported by local or national government, Bernie chose to forgo higher fees in exchange for circuit upgrades.

He has been insisting that Silverstone improve its facilities for years, and the BRDC have constantly gone no further than the planning stage in producing these improvements. In this time they have built themselves a brand new clubhouse, the archetypal ivory tower from which they can oversee the steady and dignified decline of the rest of their property. So Ecclestone, tired finally of the BRDC’s games, has convinced Gillett to help take the British Grand Prix to Donington.

Clearly the comments of the nay-sayers who insist that Donington will never be ready have had an impact on Ecclestone, who finally conceded today at Silverstone that the British GP could return there if Donington fails to upgrade itself in time for next year’s race. But this concession comes not as a massive, unprecedented U-turn, but as the result of some sweeping changes within the BRDC, who have finally appointed some “commercial people,” as Ecclestone puts it, to oversee the improvements to the track that he has been insisting on for years.

Silverstone could host the British GP again in 2010 if Donington is not ready

The fact that the future of this most historic and prestigious race has been safeguarded, at least for now, is a welcome relief to fans of F1 and puts to bed the conspiracy theories of any “anti-British” sentiment being harboured by Ecclestone. But there is another inference we can perhaps make about the future of F1 in Britain, when Donington is completed and the country has two F1-standard venues for the first time since the early 1990s.

When Michael Schumacher caused a huge upsurge in F1’s popularity in Germany, Ecclestone responded by adding a second Grand Prix at the Nurburgring to the German Grand Prix already taking place at Hockenheim. Fernando Alonso, too, has brought fans in his native Spain flocking to the sport in droves, and Ecclestone’s response has been to include the Valencia street race as a second Spanish race after Barcelona.

With Lewis Hamilton’s world championship last year rekindling Britain’s love for F1, and a second successive title for Britain now almost assured to come home with Jenson Button, the British GP – which will be one of the only near-sell-out GPs of the season – could find itself with a very near neighbour in the near future.

Could we see, as soon as 2011, the British Grand Prix at Donington joined by a European Grand Prix at Silverstone? You heard it here first.