Adrian Newey talks about the impact that the windtunnel time cut that Red Bull will face in 2023, while adding on competition from Ferrari and Mercedes.
With the advent of their successes last season, Red Bull will have a little less time in the windtunnel. Approx 70% of the time but owing to their cost cap violation, they were handed with a financial fine and an added 10% reduction in their time allotted to the windtunnel which will bring its own headache to the Milton Keynes outfit.
They will now have significantly lower time and cycle than their closest rivals Ferrari and Mercedes, which will certainly give them an advantage. While there is a debate around this cut and how much it will impact Red Bull considering their dominance, technical director Newey feels it will be tough anyhow with some floor cuts that they have to do.
“There’s no testing, is it’s very difficult to put an answer that will cost us so many tenths of a second per lap,” said Newey. “And the reduction of internal testing means we can therefore evaluate less, less different components, less different ideas if we’re really smart and always put’s on the right things on the model; then it doesn’t make much difference”.
“But that’s not how it works; there are always some parts that you hope will work and don’t and vice versa. So, it’s difficult. It’s a restriction for sure that will affect us,” summed up Newey. With success comes confidence and the Brit feels that thanks to the second half of the season, Red Bull should be fine and up for the challenge.
While that might be so but the 2023 season will see far greater competition from all the teams particularly Ferrari and Mercedes as noted above. The Maranello concern came up short last season in both titles owing to some errors while Mercedes started sluggishly and then were a model of consistency.
“I think then there’s a regulation, a small regulation change over the winter, which is lifting of the floor edge by 50 millimetres, which of course, sounds tiny, but in reality, it’s quite a significant aerodynamic change,” said Newey. “So, like all teams were working to reduce the deficit from that in addition to the normal development that goes on from year to year, I think we’ve obviously had a good year, particularly in the second half of the season. We do have the best car”.
“But Ferrari won’t be resting, and they will be kind of sorting out where the weak areas that they had a couple of reliability problems, and they made a couple of pitfall mistakes. So, they’ll be right back. And then, of course, Mercedes. They were quite a long way off the pace and evolving. It’s the point that we the one of the last race for one, so we know they will be right there. So, it’s going to be a tough year for sure,” summed up Newey.
Here’s how the F1 2022 teams were categorised in ranking: https://formularapida.net/f1-2022-teams-categorised-in-tier-system-for-their-performances/
Here’s how the F1 2022 drivers were categorised in ranking: https://formularapida.net/f1-2022-drivers-categorised-in-tier-system-for-their-performances/
Here’s drivers’ list of Top 10 drivers
Here’s the team bosses list of Top 10 drivers
Here’s Christian Horner picking Max Verstappen’s best of 2022
Here’s Max Verstappen on being pushed despite dominance
Here’s Christian Horner on hiring Adrian Newey
Here’s Red Bull trio and Sebastian Vettel on multiple topics
Here’s Adrian Newey about RB18
Here’s Sergio Perez on getting first-ever Top 3 result