This is the new RB6 from Red Bull Racing. The Adrian Newey-designed machine appears to be a logical evolution of the 2009 RB5, which became a major threat to Brawn GP in the second half of last season’s world championship.
The RB6 features a more extreme V-nose solution compared to the RB5, with a highly crafted sidepods and the now standard shark-fin engine cover that has appeared on every other rival machinery.
In addition, the car features an intricate front-wing design and has been fully developed around the double-diffuser concept that had to be incorporated onto the RB5 mid-season last year.
Following their six Grands Prix victories in 2009, which powered the team to second place in the constructors’ championship, Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber will again be at the wheel of the Adrian Newey-designed challenger.
Webber gave the car its initial run at Jerez shortly after the wraps came off, the team having opted to skip last week’s Valencia session to give them more development and wind tunnel time.
Hopefully this gamble on missing out the first pre-season test will benefit Red Bull Racing with better reliability and performance. The car certainly looks the part with the aggressive aero. Lets see how it goes against the stopwatches.
News articles on the new Red Bull Racing RB6. See the links for additional information:
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/81366
http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2010/02/10/red-bull-launch-rb6-pictures/
http://scarbsf1.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/redbull-rb6-first-impressions/
http://www.formula1.com/news/headlines/2010/2/10418.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/8504426.stm
Sebastian Vettel is unfazed by suggestions that he is the favourite for this year’s world championship, but has made winning the title his clear target for 2010.
The 22-year-old German finished runner up to Jenson Button last year and has been tipped as a favourite for the title this year, ahead of the Red Bull RB6’s unveiling at Jerez today.
When asked how he felt about heading into the season considered one of the favouites, Vettel said: “Happy, but I don’t really care. Being favourite or not, I set my target for myself. I know what I want to achieve this year.
“Most important now is that the car is running and that we improve the reliability and speed. First you need to make your car work, then you see where you are and according to that you set your expectations.
“For sure there is only one target, to be just one step better than last year. I want to win the world championship. If we are the favourites, that’s fine. If not, that’s fine too.”
Vettel says that so early in the year it’s not possible to know whether he can challenge for the title, or who his main rivals will be.
“First of all we have to find out how good the cars are,” he said. “Then you have a lot of good drivers in Formula 1, not only one or two, so we will find out who is fighting or who is falling in the position to fight for the championship.
“Obviously I hope we are as strong as we were last year, or even stronger. Then you’ve got McLaren and Ferrari, who look very competitive already, and Mercedes with Michael. It’s going to be an interesting season for you.”
More on Vettel’s first impressions on the new RB6 can be read here: http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/81368
Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner has warned that more manufacturers could leave Formula 1 if the FIA does not act on equalising engine performance.
Having pushed hard over the winter for the sport’s governing body to ensure that the output of different engines in F1 was rebalanced, with his Renault power-unit believed to be behind the opposition, Horner fears that if the situation is left unchecked it could result in a single car maker dominating the season.
And he believes that could be the spur for rival manufacturers to leave the sport – in the wake of Honda, Toyota and BMW all having turned their backs on it over the last two seasons.
“The problem with the engine freeze is that you freeze in an advantage,” he said at the launch of Red Bull Racing’s new RB6 on Wednesday.
“I think the Renault has some good aspects and Renault, when the freeze came, took it a bit more literally than some of the other manufacturers. I think there is disparity currently within engine performance.
“On a fair and equitable basis, we rely on the governing body to ensure that you don’t have large disparity between engines. Because the problem is that as the chassis converge in performance, the engines will become a key performance differentiator, and the idea of freezing the engine was largely to eliminate the performance differential between the engines.”
He added: “I think the problem is if you don’t allow some development, then you freeze in an advantage for one team or a disadvantage for another. So there has to be a balancing of that, otherwise we will end up with Mercedes-powered cars winning all the races – which I think is not good for F1. And other manufacturers may choose to leave F1 off of the back of that.
“The engine isn’t supposed to be a key performance differentiator and therefore hopefully the ruling body will balance out somewhat the differences there at the moment.”
Horner said that he was happy to leave the matter with the FIA, who made it clear last season that it was looking into the relative performance of the different engines.
“The FIA has all the facts and it is for it to deal with,” stated Horner.
More on Horner can be read in this interview here: http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/81371
Adrian Newey has doubts that a Formula 1 team can successfully design a car without using a wind-tunnel, as Virgin Racing’s ‘virtual’ VR-01 gets ready for its first proper test at Jerez this week.
Virgin Racing has produced the first modern era car not to have been near a wind tunnel, with chief designer Nick Wirth adamant that modern computer simulations are good enough to deliver all the information he needed.
However, famed designer Newey thinks that CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) still has its limits – and that wind tunnels remain a vital part of car development.
“I think CFD is a very powerful tool, there is no doubt about it, and it is another way of simulating the real environment,” Newey said at the Red Bull launch when asked for his opinion on the Virgin Racing car. “A wind tunnel is a simulation of the real world.
“CFD is an electronic simulation of a real environment, but it still has pitfalls – not least that every single run in CFD for a given attitude of the car, or ride height, or whatever it might be, is a discreet run. Whereas in the wind tunnel, what we call a normal run, will have 20 or more data points in it. In other words, that is equivalent to 20 runs in the CFD.
“That is a limitation of size really, so your CFD cluster has to be that much bigger to do that many runs. And there are some areas that CFD physically doesn’t capture as well as a wind tunnel – like basic aerodynamic properties.
“So how well it turns out, we shall see. It is a different route, and my personal belief is that you still need to combine the two at the moment. But maybe their car will go very well and I will have to revise my opinion.”
More on Newey can be read here: http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/81373
Mark Webber says Red Bull Racing has left no stone uncovered in its bid to ensure the RB6 is good enough to capture the world championship this year.
With the Milton Keynes-based outfit having lost out to Brawn GP in 2009, Red Bull missed the first test at Valencia last week to spend more time in the factory developing its new car.
Webber, who drove the car for its first laps at Jerez in Spain on Wednesday, says the team knows it needs to do better this season if it is to deliver on its ambitions.
“I think the team has some very good, high expectations,” he said prior to his first run in the car. “We had a great season last year and we are not looking to go backwards from that position, so we have some tough goals to meet – as do all the other teams.
“To go forward from there we need everything right and that’s what we’ve tried to do as best we can. We are very excited, we’ve worked hard and there’s been a lot of anticipation.”
Last year’s RB5 was a trend-setting design, but its form was compromised by the double diffuser issue that marred the start to last season. And although rival teams have copied some of the concepts from Red Bull Racing’s old car, Webber believes that design chief Adrian Newey still can produce an edge over its rivals.
“It’s very rewarding to see lots of people have used our concept from last year and put it into their cars this year,” he explained. “That was a real feather in the cap for our people, and particularly Adrian [Newey] and how clever he is.
“The longer the regulations stay the same, it’s harder for him to show people the way, but he did a great job last year with the team we had at Red Bull. Hopefully this year’s car is enough to be having a try at the front and challenging at every grand prix track we go to.”
Team principal Christian Horner is equally eager for Red Bull Racing to improve on the platform it set last year – as he predicts a four-way fight for the championship.
“I think that 2009 was a massive year for the team,” he said. “We made a huge step forward. I think the group matured very well.
“You have to remember that Red Bull Racing is still a relatively young team, so I think with the lessons that we learned in 2009 about the performance of the car and how that evolved during the season, plus the stability we’ve had throughout the winter, we are in good shape for 2010.
“Our target is obviously to win the championship, but we totally respect the quality of the opponents we have. We have set ourselves very aggressive targets.
“I think you are going to have four teams that are race-winning contenders this season. McLaren and Ferrari look like they have come up with good cars, and for sure the Mercedes GP team is going to be competitive with its driver line-up.
“But we are quietly confident we’ve made good progress during the winter. We’ve kept our heads down. We’ve kept working on the concept that served us well last year – and Adrian and his guys have come up with another very good car.
“We go into the year with continuity with the drivers as well. Sebastian [Vettel] matured very well in 2009 and got stronger and stronger throughout the season, and Mark [Webber] is now back to full fitness – which compares to 12 months ago, when he was carrying a nasty injury.”
Mark Webber interview can be seen here: http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/81377