Red Bull has won five of the seven Grands Prix held to date, with four wins in a row (three by Max Verstappen and one by Sergio Pérez), highlighting a particular consistency in the team that was its great weakness in the first races of the season .
At the moment, the RB18 is not the most competitive F1 car in history, but without a doubt it has become the reference in the paddock and an example of this is that other single-seaters on the grid are gradually converging towards the solutions devised by Adrian Newey .
The Milton Keynes project is very extreme in terms of not only aerodynamic options, but internally the energy drinks team must also avoid the reliability issues that slowed Verstappen down in two races: Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
Both of those problems involved the fuel system of the Honda engine. Despite this, Red Bull leads both World Cup classifications: the Dutchman has a nine-point lead over Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari, while the team takes 36 units from the Scuderia.
By results, it seems that Red Bull has consolidated an indisputable superiority, while the facts say otherwise, given that Leclerc and Ferrari lost two victories that seemed to be very safe in Barcelona (MGU-H and turbo failure) and Monte Carlo (serious errors in the strategy).
Red Bull seems not to be very constrained by the constraints of the budget cap, because every race weekend the RB18 has been upgraded to a greater or lesser extent. In Monaco, the technicians led by Pierre Waché essentially worked in search of more reliability.
Detail of the rear of the Red Bull Racing RB18
The Austrian team’s last major upgrade package for Spain focused on lightening the weight of the car and had resulted in a couple of kilos being lost in weight.
At Red Bull they thought about replacing the DRS activation system, which is hydraulic, with an electrical solution and discovered that it was not the right one as it caused problems when opening the mobile wing on the main straight. Not only that, but it also created small cracks in the carbon fiber, which required reinforcement to prevent further damage.
At Monte Carlo, a track where aerodynamic efficiency took a backseat, the high-downforce rear wing was reverted to the heavier spec and that affected the front suspension to adjust the steering angle to the needs of Loews’s tight cornering or the Rascasse.
Red Bull Racing RB18 front brake detail
But the biggest changes have to do with reliability: the front brake air intakes have been redesigned to ensure more airflow to the brake disc and caliper.
The reason is easy to understand: the Principality track has the lowest average speed of the entire season so it is essential to increase cooling, even if there are no particularly strong braking sections.
Red Bull Racing RB18 brake cooling detail
Giorgio Piola’s drawing (above) also shows us the enlarged air vents at the rear of the brake ducts. Despite what has happened in the past, the tendency is not to retain the heat generated by the brakes to take it to the tires, but to expel it.
Detail of the front of the Red Bull Racing RB18
The intention, on the other hand, is to give more relevance to the aerodynamic function that seemed to have become negligible after closing the tires with the hubcaps.
Teams go to great lengths to insulate the heat generated by the braking system: Red Bull , for example, wraps the disc in insulating material, to allow cool air to circulate which is redirected for aerodynamic advantage. These are improvements that the FIA regulations wanted to avoid and that the teams, on the contrary, have cleverly managed to avoid.
Red Bull Racing RB18 cooling detail
The Austrian team also paid close attention to power unit cooling and in addition to the maximum opening of the gills on the sides of the cockpit, in Monaco an additional air outlet could be seen at the rear on both sides of the car. .
These are modifications made to expel the heat that occurred during the days of Friday and Saturday, while the rain on Sunday caused more normal parameters and that avoided major concerns in the Red Bull garage.
It will be interesting to know what news they will bring to Baku, an urban circuit characterized by that long straight line in which a medium-low downforce will be required, where efficiency will once again be key and weight will influence the performance of the entire lap.
Side detail of the Red Bull Racing RB18 in Monaco
