In the race they weren’t slow, it’s just a difficult track to overtake on and the safety car came at the worst possible time for their strategy. If the safety car had come early or late they’d have been in a very strong position, even without the safety car I think Max could have got a podium. As it was he still came 5th.I don't understand why Red Bull were so slow. It's either incredible incompetence or external factors.
There’s a lot of rumour-mongering going on.I’m pretty sure that the FIA announced a crackdown on flexing wings and may be this has effected Red Bulls more than others?
In qualifying a few things happened that resulted in RBR being slower than usual.There’s a lot of rumour-mongering going on.
I’m no Red Bull fan, far from it. However, it just seems that they’ve had trouble turning their tyres on at this track. During the race, Verstappen managed to get his up to temperature and was lapping at a decent pace. I think he may have been riding a very narrow tightrope, but he did it. If the rumours about flexi wings/floor were on the money, he’d have been lapped at least once.
But, let’s see what happens in Japan.
Earlier in the season, at similar looking tracks, when out of position they've seemed to have more margin than today (I'm recalling perhaps Saudi Arabia?). Max may have been 5th but he was a long way back.In the race they weren’t slow, it’s just a difficult track to overtake on and the safety car came at the worst possible time for their strategy. If the safety car had come early or late they’d have been in a very strong position, even without the safety car I think Max could have got a podium. As it was he still came 5th.
Earlier in the season, at similar looking tracks, when out of position they've seemed to have more margin than today (I'm recalling perhaps Saudi Arabia?). Max may have been 5th but he was a long way back.
We'll know next weekend, if they're dominant again all is clear, if not then they've been hobbled.
There's always hope. And of course it's traditional to take the leader out at the first corner in Japan...Saudi is a much fast circuit than Marina Bay, the faster the better the RB performs due to its low drag. Max was a long way back in a large part because of that safety car timing I mentioned earlier. As Ian said in the race his pace was only bettered by the Mercs, but there are other factors in play of course. Anyway the long, tall and short of it is that I think you'll find normal service will be resumed in Japan.
How about this for an idea:
Allow F1 teams to do as much testing before and during the season, but, it has to be within the budget cap.
No more turning up at the first test session a few days before the season starts with an expensive pile of underperforming rubbish.
The powers that be know exactly what the teams are spending and where, so it should be an easy process to monitor.I loved the free testing era but it did mean a rich team could and did win by more. I wonder how they could manage the cost cap and extend testing
I have talked with a few people like who worked for a long time in F1 about the current situation. Which brought up the following points:How about this for an idea:
Allow F1 teams to do as much testing before and during the season, but, it has to be within the budget cap.
No more turning up at the first test session a few days before the season starts with an expensive pile of underperforming rubbish.
Another case of be very careful what you wish for, maybe.I have talked with a few people like who worked for a long time in F1 about the current situation. Which brought up the following points:
The wind tunnel / CFD limitations were brought in quite a few years ago to limit the rate of lap time reduction. This was then extended so that the amount of wind tunnel time was calculated based on the teams finishing position in the constructors championship (first gets least and last gets the most).
The ever tightening technical regs it has made it more difficult for teams to innovate to improve but above the should have made it easier for the grid to close up.
The budget cap should have brought the grid close together as spending on technical areas is limited to the same cap across the grid. The cap was introduced when money was a bit tighter for the small teams, but redistribution of prize money and additional sponsorship has brought greater income and team value across the grid. This has resulted in the teams being cash rich so they have continued to expand spending their money outside the budget cap to deliver performance a bit more indirectly. Mercedes and Alpine F1 teams for example have around 1000 employees, whereas when I left Merc in 2014 it had around 600.
Meanwhile the top 3 salaried employees, the owners and shareholders have become very rich as they are outside the budget cap. This has been achieved by making senior engineers redundant and recruiting new graduates to replace them and paying less than other industries. And hence F1 will not be attracting some of the best students as banks and other industries pay so much more, whilst the very experienced engineers are lost for good.
We concluded that there are too many limitations and they should free up the technical regs to encourage innovation as they already have wind tunnel time limits (the biggest area for performance gains) and the budget cap to manage spending. Whilst bringing the top 3 salaried employees and drivers into a larger budget cap to try to rebalance the budget spend.
Or the law of unintended consequences. The brains employed by the teams have tended to be in a different league from those in the governing body. Ross Brawn was the obvious exception, but maybe he wasn't listened to?
Or perhaps it's simply the nature of a bunch of ultra-competitive people - find the unfair advantage and then fight like hell to keep it.