Red Bull Racing are working on a new wind tunnel, but that will only strengthen the team’s position. Auto Motor und Sport reports that Mercedes has identified considerable strengths that rival Red Bull has.
At the request of the late Dietrich Mateschitz, Red Bull Racing is building a new wind tunnel at Milton Keynes. The current wind tunnel at Bedford is quite old and is starting to cause more and more problems with the new regulations.
F1 teams have limited use of CFD and wind tunnels, leaving Red Bull unable to afford the inefficiencies of its older equipment.
But the lack of a state-of-the-art wind tunnel doesn’t show up in Red Bull Racing’s current performance.
Red Bull Racing is said to be ahead of the curve in the use of computer data, making wind tunnels almost unnecessary.
According to Auto Motor und Sport, Mercedes is aware that “Red Bull is the yardstick for all things F1 in CFD”.
In addition, Mercedes discovered another strength of Red Bull. In fact, the use of state-of-the-art sensors makes it perfectly possible to read problems on the course and convert them into data in the computer. The team of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez has therefore become the first team to solve the Porpassing problem in 2022.
Rival teams have struggled with bouncing for some time, but Adrian Newey’s team has developed a car that handles all circuits well.
Auto Motor und Sport therefore reports that Red Bull Racing’s 2023 car, the RB19, will largely be an evolution of the dominant RB18.
The main question is how much wind tunnel and CFD time limits will affect Red Bull Racing in 2023.
