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?
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.
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.
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