2010 Catalunya Spanish Grand Prix

Can anyone tell me what it is that makes the Red Bulls so much quicker this season?

Last year it was the DDD, but now everyone has that. They don't have the quickest engine, they don't have the F-duct (yet) and their drivers, whilst good, aren't 0.7 better than the rest. Is it just aero/downforce or is there some other Newey magic in there?
 
I hope this doesn't turn into another Bahrain. At least the Catalunya circuit is more interesting than the Bahrain circuit. In my opinion, at least.

Red Bull has won every pole position of the season so far now.
 
Suspense said:
Can anyone tell me what it is that makes the Red Bulls so much quicker this season?

Last year it was the DDD, but now everyone has that. They don't have the quickest engine, they don't have the F-duct (yet) and their drivers, whilst good, aren't 0.7 better than the rest. Is it just aero/downforce or is there some other Newey magic in there?
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Have to correct you that it wasn't the DDD last year. Brawn had it, Red Bull did not. They just had an excellent aero package "above" the car if you will, then stuck the DDD on after. Now that they've been able to combine that with optimization of the DDD, this is what you get. Thank god they don't have a Merc engine.
 
Sauber improved so much! And, yes. Red Bull have the best wing aero package along with the diffusers.
 
Suspense said:
Can anyone tell me what it is that makes the Red Bulls so much quicker this season?
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Having Adrian Newey design your cars.

When he adds an F-Duct / Blown Wing to the RBR6, it's going to be even faster.


And now we know why Alonso and Massa had the funky left-hand gloves - they use that padding to either press against a button or maybe activate a magnetic switch inside the left side of the cockpit to activate their Blown Rear Wing.
 
Well the McLarens and maybe Alonso are very quick off the line and coupled with working F-Ducts, it's not unreasonable to expect Hamilton challenging for the lead into turn one. For the sake of a decent race, I hope he does.
 
Adrian Newey is overrated. He eeks out extra speed at the expense of reliability, and the team paid for it last year.
 
good effort by webber. that car is just sweet.... newey got it cock on.

nice to see schumacher getting back into it, the car is clearly more to his liking. little disappointed with his quali pace, but then again the cars ahead of him are actually the faster cars. im hoping for some good race pace from schumi tomorrow. im also expecting vettel to jump webber at the start and then either bad luck or rubbish strategy to ruin one of the RB's races.
 
Peter3hg said:
Adrian Newey is overrated. He eeks out extra speed at the expense of reliability, and the team paid for it last year.
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he is one of the best designers in the pit lane, but yeah he his a bit over hyped.... i mean for a while a few years ago his cars were just not all that and a bag of chips. he's certainly top at the moment, but i dont think hes consistently been at the top.
 
Adrian Newey is the Gordon Murray/Colin Chapman of the current era F1; designing very fast, but brittle cars. Chapman's Lotus' were designed to be as light as possible stretching all components to their limits so they would ideally disintegrate after crossing the finishing line; if they didn't they were (in Chapman's eyes) over engineered, thus carrying too much weight. It was the same story with Gordon Murray's Brabhams, especially the ones powered by the BMW hand grenade.... They also got it terribly wrong occasionally, Like Chapman did with the Lotus 80, and Murray did with his revolutionary Brabham BT55. With the BT55, though, the concept was proven very much right, just two years later in the shape of the awesomely successful McLaren MP4-4.

After all, Newey has had a hand in the development of a lot of very successful machinery in the past 20 years. The Williams FW14, FW17, FW18, McLaren MP4-13, MP4-14, MP4-14.
 
Topgearfanatic said:
Yeah Webber, yeah!
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Ditto! :)

marcos_eirik said:
Adrian Newey is the Gordon Murray/Colin Chapman of the current era F1; designing very fast, but brittle cars. Chapman's Lotus' were designed to be as light as possible stretching all components to their limits so they would ideally disintegrate after crossing the finishing line; if they didn't they were (in Chapman's eyes) over engineered, thus carrying too much weight. It was the same story with Gordon Murray's Brabhams, especially the ones powered by the BMW hand grenade.... They also got it terribly wrong occasionally, Like Chapman did with the Lotus 80, and Murray did with his revolutionary Brabham BT55. With the BT55, though, the concept was proven very much right, just two years later in the shape of the awesomely successful McLaren MP4-4.

After all, Newey has had a hand in the development of a lot of very successful machinery in the past 20 years. The Williams FW14, FW17, FW18, McLaren MP4-13, MP4-14, MP4-14.
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Yep

Edit:

I suppose tho, you really couldn't blame Gordon on the BMW/Megatron engine...still he did specify a 72 Degree angle on the poor thing....
 
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Suspense will be happy. No rain today.
 
Peter3hg said:
Adrian Newey is overrated. He eeks out extra speed at the expense of reliability, and the team paid for it last year.
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I dunno, maybe as technical director you could blame him for this, however, purely as an aerodynamicst (I'm not going to try and figure out how to spell that or call it otherwise :p), he is head and shoulders above anyone in the rest of the teams. Therefore, design wise, I don't see mechnical problems being his fault, however, as tech director, it IS his responsibility to make sure these problems don't occur.

In that sense, I agree that he is an overrated Technical Director, but not an overrated designer.

That's my opinion, anyway... having said that, he did have some fragile cars. The most recent memory being of Kimis rear wings flying off on the straights at McLaren.
 
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