2021 F1 Red Bull Car Launch Review by James Punt
2021 F1 Red Bull New Car Launch Review
2021 F1 Red Bull Car Launch – The biggest change at Red Bull is that their driver line up has been bolstered by the signing of the very experienced and effective, Sergio Perez. For too long, Red Bull had persevered with promoting young drivers from Toro Rosso before they were ready. Max Verstappen is a rare talent and just because he managed the step up, winning his debut race for Red Bull, it doesn’t mean that anyone can. Finally, they have taken the best available, experienced driver from outside the Red Bull driver program.
Perez In As No.2
Clearly Perez is going to be the defacto number two driver regardless of what Helmut Marko might say, but he is there to deliver the maximum points possible for the team, something that he is very good at doing. He will not be as fast as Verstappen, but he won’t be getting lapped by him either. If and when he settles in, Perez will bring more points to the team that Albon and Gasly have done for the last couple of years. This will improve Red Bulls chances of getting closer to Mercedes in the Constructors Championship.
A Sergio Perez in a Red Bull should be more of a match for Bottas in his Mercedes than Albon was. For the first time in a while, Verstappen will have a teammate who is quick enough to come into play in the race. That helps the team strategically and means that Verstappen will not be fighting two Mercedes singlehandedly.
2021 F1 Red Bull Power Unit Questions
One big question mark over Red Bull is the fact that Honda are pulling out of F1 at the end of the year. That begs the question of how much effort and resources are they going to put into development of their power unit? Honda say they want to go out on a high but that remains to be seen. Honda have built a new power unit for 2021, effectively bringing forward the design for the 2022 unit. They say they are 100% committed to working flat out for the season ahead. It has been confirmed that Red Bull will take over the Honda engine program for 2022 and beyond.
Red Bull are sticking with their high rake concept, despite the fact that a long wheelbase, low rake concept adopted by Mercedes has won the last seven constructor’s championships. You would think that Red Bull might acknowledge that maybe Mercedes is on to something? At the start of last season, the Red Bull was spinning out of slow corners all too often as the high rake concept ran into problems in the slower corners. It took the team most of the season to find a cure. By which time, the championships were lost. They now believe that they are ready to hit the ground running this season. And that they will have better performance than Mercedes. Mind you, they said the same thing last year.
Slow Starters
Traditionally Red Bull start the season slowly and end up with a very competitive car. By the time they get the car sorted, the titles are lost. It has been suggested that this year, with the regulations largely stable, that Red Bull will be able to start the season in much the same way as they finished 2021, with a win. There is some logic in that but there are still changes to be made. Mercedes have been better at hitting the ground running in the turbo hybrid era.
Red Bull have invested so much time and energy trying to perfect the high rake concept, that they are locked into it. They dare not do a U-turn and try the low rake concept. Even if it has proven to be better. Every season Red Bull have come up short. Yes, they have also been hamstrung by less powerful engines much of the time, but that gap has closed to a manageable margin. Now it is all about trying to make the high rake design work. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. But there is another school of thought that says repeating the same behaviour and hoping for a different result, is a form of madness. Past form suggests that Red Bull could be doomed to another year of failure. Unless they can start the season on par with Mercedes.
The team have an added incentive to be competing for the Championship in 2021. Max Verstappen, their great white hope to reclaim the World Championship, has a contractual clause that says he can leave at the end of 2021, if Red Bull have not provided a car that is capable of winning races.
Car Launch
The new 2021 F1 Red Bull is designated the RB16B. The fact that they have just added a ‘B’ to last year’s designation underlines that this is an evolution of last years car, a ‘B’ spec. Around 60% of last years car has been carried forward. This is promising as Red Bull ended 2020 with a race win from pole position. They had finally been able to beat Mercedes on merit.
Mercedes had such an advantage last year that they had the luxury of stopping development of last year’s car in late summer. This freed up resources to work on the 2021, and 2022 designs. Red Bull on the other hand, had to keep on working on last year’s car. Mercedes have had more time to refine the design of their 2021 car and, as usual, they will have improved on what was one of the best Formula 1 cars ever built.
Optimism
One area of genuine optimism is that Red Bull are hopeful that they will not have the same correlation problems between factory and racetrack that they had last year. It is fairly common that teams can get the ‘wrong data’ from their wind tunnels. That means the car does not behave as it should in the real world. It is very difficult to correct quickly as it means the DNA of the basic design of the car is wrong and any new parts also likely to be flawed. It took Red Bull most of last year to identify the problem and it is hoped that the lesson’s learned from last years correlation issues, will not be present in the RB16B. However, they will not actually know until they go testing.
The 2021 F1 Red Bull ‘launch’ amounted to releasing two photographs of the RB16B, which, not surprisingly, bear a remarkable similarity to the car that took pole position and one in Abu Dhabi, in the final race of 2020. It is realistic to expect the car that starts the first race of the season will be a little different. There are subtle differences to the front wing and the nose is a little narrower. The tidying up around the nose and where it joins the wing are said to be addressing those slow speed spins we saw at the start of 2020. The sidepods are a little different, trying to improve airflow to the rear of the car and recover some of downforce lost by regulation changes.
Mercedes The Benchmark
The hope is, for everyone outside of Mercedes and their fans, is that the RB16B will be on a par with Mercedes at the start of the season. The fact that the regulations for 2021 mean that this year’s car are largely carried over from 2020 helps. Red Bull had finally got their car sorted by the season’s end and they should be able to start this season with a car that they understand and is competitive. Honda have provided them with an all-new power unit, designed to give more power and reliability and they have beefed up their driver talent by employing Sergio Perez. There are genuine grounds for optimism.
However, the sobering reality is that Red Bull finished 2020 a massive 254 points behind Mercedes in the Constructor’s Championship. Max Verstappen was 133 points behind Lewis Hamilton in the Drivers Championship. There are grounds for optimism, but they have a bloody big mountain to climb, and of course, Mercedes will not have taken their foot off the gas since ending development of last years car, some six months ago.
This year’s season kicks off in Bahrain. We last raced on the same track late in the 2020 season and Hamilton qualified on pole, 0.414 seconds ahead of Verstappen. If we are going to see a truly competitive season, we need that gap to have shrunk massively come the end of the first qualifying session in 2021.
