Red Bull is in an open war against the weight of its RB18. Adrian Newey ‘s car will not adopt the two steel tie rods allowed by the FIA, after observing extreme flex in some of the flat bottoms of other cars during testing.
Milton Keynes have the most downforce generating car with Venturi channels, and they have managed to get rid of annoying high speed porpoising , but the rigid flat bottom they have designed to achieve this is too heavy.
On the other hand, Mercedes and Ferrari in particular have taken advantage of the opportunity that the technical stewards, led by Nikolas Tombazis , have granted to the teams to try to reduce the harmful effects of porpoising at high speeds.
This bounce only occurs at high speeds, when the stationary forces of the flat bottom push the car down due to ground effect, and the suspension is not able to absorb the effort through damping, causing a lot of downforce to be lost on top of the car. than 250 km/h due to this annoying movement.
Ferrari used its sidepods, which have drawn much attention, to try to limit damage, lifting the F1-75 slightly off the tarmac and relying on the vertical thrust generated by its unusual bodywork.
Mercedes , for its part, has not been able to solve the problem: the W13 has practically non-existent sidepods and, for the Silver Arrows to be able to drive well, it has to be raised a lot, which causes it to lose a lot of downforce.
Red Bull appears to have already addressed the porpoising issue at the design stage, creating a bottom that is stiffer and flexes less than its closest rivals. Thanks to this, the Pierre Waché engineers have built the car with the most downforce on the grid, which has given them the possibility of creating a more unloaded rear wing. This allows Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez to reach the highest top speeds.
However, the RB18 exceeds the minimum weight (798 kg) by at least ten kilos, and team adviser Helmut Marko has admitted that a slimming plan has already been put in place. According to information collected by Motorsport.com, the cost can be estimated at around 250,000 euros per kilo, a figure that directly affects the restrictions imposed by the budget limit.
It is fair to wonder, therefore, if Adrian Newey will try to limit the weight of the lower part, risking this delicate area of the car starting to flex, losing the downforce that has made Red Bull the most challenging F1 car for Ferrari. .
In this illustration by Giorgio Piola, we can see the complexity of Red Bull’s flat bottom. You can’t see the Venturi channels, since they are below, but you can see things like the shape of the RB18’s keel.
