Red Bull Racing’s F1 chief engineer Paul Monahan, who has done an important job in terms of setting up the car, explained some of the issues the team faced with the RB18.
In the 2022 F1 season, the Red Bull RB18 has made a name for itself as one of the most successful designs in the history of the championship.
For Red Bull F1 chief designer Adrian Newey, this is quite an achievement given his reputation for designing some of the most iconic cars. However, translating a theoretical design into a fast race car is no easy feat.
This is the mandate of Red Bull Racing F1 chief engineer Paul Monahan, who works alongside Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez to extract the last drop of performance from the package each race weekend. .
In an interview with RacingNews365.com, Paul Monahan discusses how teams have been forced to adapt to the new rules when it comes to setting up their F1 cars and what the most delicate part of the new generation F1 cars will be. explained.
The new F1 regulations introduced for 2022 set limits on how cars could be designed and the teams were rigorously tested.
“The (design area) boxes weren’t always as orthogonal as they used to be. The interpretation hasn’t changed much,” said Paul Monaghan.
“The restrictions on the geometry that can be put into the box were much higher than before, even with the front wing[changes]introduced in 2019, which required a lot of curvature.”
“If you change the rules, you won’t be able to apply the same interpretation as before, so change and adapt and stay within the box. There’s no point in drawing illegal cars, because it doesn’t work very well.”
The car’s underbody has a very strong performance thanks to the ground effect effect and the venturi tunnel.
An example of what happens when these are blocked was seen at the Formula 1 British Grand Prix when Max Verstappen ran over debris and got stuck in the tunnels of AlphaTauri’s car.
Max Verstappen, who was leading before the accident, fell back to 7th place after a significant drop in performance.
The idea of the ground effect effect is to make the car run as close to the track as possible. That’s why the infamous Brabham BT46B ‘fan car’ was so dominant when it debuted at the 1978 Swedish Grand Prix.
And Paul Monaghan believes it’s the most sensitive part of the car related to setting it up correctly.
“I would say that ride height is the most sensitive, but if it’s ride height you have to remember that suspension stiffness can come into play,” said Monaghan.
“You can’t separate one from the other. If you want the car to run closer to the ground, you probably need to increase the stiffness of the suspension.”
“The question is: ‘Can your car run in those conditions at the circuit you are competing on?
“Ride height was an important factor, but it wasn’t the only one.”
Asked what the second most sensitive part of the set-up would be, Paul Monaghan could not pick one specific parameter, but among them was aerodynamics.
“You can’t say that one part of the set-up was completely dominant over the other because you can’t change one aspect without affecting another. Compromise is not a separate topic.” Paul Monaghan explains.
“If you make even the slightest mistake, your lap times will get worse, so you fix two or three things to get back to a more competitive situation. You can make adjustments in any race without affecting the other races. I wouldn’t say I’ve made any relatively big changes to any of those topics.”
“You can’t put them in order of the most sensitive set-up parameters, but the overall performance is clearly sensitivity and aerodynamics, which are primarily aerodynamic exercises. If you get the complementary features wrong, you’re not going to be faster.”
When the car goes out on the track for qualifying, it will be in parc ferme. This means that the car set-up is fixed between the qualifying session and the race. However, some tweaks are allowed, such as front wing angle and tire pressure.
Despite a major overhaul of the F1 car for 2021-2022, Monaghan explains that the overall process for setting up a car for a race weekend has changed little.
“In the last few years we have evolved in a certain way towards qualifying before the race. If we get the trade-off right, competitiveness can take us up the grid and score a lot of points.”
“That’s the main objective in the end, and if you get pole position but don’t win the race, it’s wrong.”
“You can change the tire pressure, you can change the front wing, you don’t have to use DRS in the race, that’s it. You can’t make big changes.”
“If we qualify third and win the race, it means we got it right.”
