Red Bull

The car builds on the strong platform of its predecessor, but it has been clear that there has been a lot of work done to improve areas which it felt were not perfect – and recover those areas where it had been forced to make changes because of external influence.Suspension evolutionRewind 12 months and a technical directive issued before action even got underway at the start of last ...

read on

Verstappen tipped now-Ferrari driver Vettel into a spin in the closing stages of last weekend's Chinese Grand Prix, one week after clashing with the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton in Bahrain.Vettel stepped up to the Red Bull senior team in 2009 and went on to win four F1 titles, but his first championship-winning season featured some high-profile errors.He wiped out teammate Mark Webber ...

read on

This was a race Ferrari had two chances to win, Mercedes had one chance to win, Max Verstappen had a chance to win and yet Red Bull actually won it with Ricciardo.This would have been quite a straightforward one-stop race without the Safety Car 21 laps from the end, which Red Bull used to attack boldly by stopping both cars (the second time in the race it had double-stopped its cars ...

read on

The Australian’s contract is up at the end of this season, and he is an obvious candidate for both Ferrari and Mercedes if they choose to replace one of their current drivers.While Red Bull’s speed and strategic brilliance that helped Ricciardo win in China on Sunday will have boosted its chances of retaining him for next year, the Aussie says things are not yet so clear cut.Speaking ...

read on

A bold gamble on strategy paid off big time for Red Bull in Shanghai, a quick decision to pit both of its drivers for fresh soft rubber during a safety car intervention mid-way through the Chinese GP netting an unlikely win for Daniel Ricciardo.It could have even been a one-two for the Red Bull outfit had Max Verstappen not lost time with an unsuccessful passing move on Hamilton ...

read on

Vettel headed a one-two for Ferrari after jumping Kimi Raikkonen in the final third of the session, but his former team Red Bull will head into qualifying with serious concerns.Ricciardo pulled up just after the halfway mark in the one-hour session, exiting the penultimate corner with his Red Bull belching bursts of flame and plumes of smoke.A virtual safety car was deployed as the ...

read on

Red Bull came into the 2018 season with high hopes after finishing last year strongly, but it is yet to offer a serious threat to the top two teams in the opening races of the season, with reliability woes ruining what was expected to be a strong race for the RB14 last week in Bahrain.“The team has the potential to win races,” Hamilton said of Red Bull. “In testing they looked a lot ...

read on

However, having clearly had a chassis that appeared so strong in the corners, it was little surprise that the team opted for evolution over revolution.The lack of big change at the team had also been impacted by a difficult pre-season testing programme, which meant the focus switched to curing cooling issues rather than fast-tracking updates.The Australian GP came and went, and apart ...

read on

Stick or twist? This is the question Red Bull must answer as it considers whether to continue to use Renault or switch to Honda propulsion in 2019. When the deal was first done for Toro Rosso to become Honda's works Formula 1 partner last year, this seemed an optimistic hit and hope with a low probability of paying off, but Pierre Gasly's fourth place in the Bahrain Grand Prix proves ...

read on

Pierre Gasly started fifth and finished fourth in the Honda-powered Toro Rosso in Bahrain, helped by a double retirement for the sister Red Bull team – including a Renault energy store failure for Daniel Ricciardo.Renault Sport boss Cyril Abiteboul has made it clear that he wants a decision on Red Bull's future plans sooner rather than later, citing the May/June deadline given by the ...

read on

The team believed that it had a shot at victory but a suspected energy store failure forced Ricciardo to stop on the second lap, just seconds after Max Verstappen had contact with Lewis Hamilton that triggered the Dutchman’s retirement.If the energy store is not repairable Ricciardo will have to take a second one in China, which will put him on the brink of a grid penalty as drivers ...

read on

This area is critical to the performance of the underfloor, which contributes a significant proportion of the car’s downforce.Normally the low pressure created under the car will try to pull air flow in underneath the car reducing the performance of the diffuser and in turn that reduces the performance of the underfloor.Toro Rosso (inset) ran something similar in this area last year ...

read on

The Ferrari driver held on in a grandstand finish as Bottas, on mediums to Vettel's fading softs, just failed to steal the victory.Lewis Hamilton recovered from a grid penalty to complete the podium after Kimi Raikkonen's hopes were dashed during a horror pitstop that left a Ferrari mechanic hurt.Vettel held the lead at the start as Bottas mugged Raikkonen into Turn 1, and built a ...

read on

Raikkonen, who was quickest on Friday, enjoyed an advantage of almost half a second in FP3 as his rivals failed to produce representative laptimes.Teams were hesitant to hit the track given qualifying and Sunday's race will be held in different conditions, and it took 20 minutes for Carlos Sainz to end the wait for a laptime.Sainz's 1m33.893s was never going to be a benchmark that ...

read on

The Aussie topped first practice in the daytime, beating the Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas by three tenths, but was then only sixth and nine tenths off the pace in the evening FP2.But Ricciardo remains convinced of Red Bull's potential this weekend, as he insisted there were factors that limited his performance in second practice."I don't think the positions this evening are too ...

read on

Ricciardo is yet to commit to the Red Bull outfit beyond the end of the current season, and has been linked to potentially vacant seats at Mercedes and Ferrari for 2019.A move away from Red Bull would be significant for Ricciardo, who has been backed by the Austrian drinks giant since racing in the Formula Renault Eurocup a decade ago.Read Also:Why Ricciardo’s F1 career hinges on ...

read on

Alonso finished fifth in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, splitting the Red Bull duo of Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen in what was McLaren's first race with Renault power.However, the result was aided by a well-timed safety car, along with tough breaks for McLaren's midfield rivals, with both Haas cars retiring while running ahead of Alonso and Renault's Carlos Sainz ...

read on

Lewis Hamilton’s significant leap in performance during Q3 in Melbourne put a sharp focus on the use of special engine modes by Mercedes on the laps that count.Although the Brackley-based team and Hamilton himself continued to downplay any talk about party modes, Red Bull remains adamant that the circumstances in Australia forced Mercedes to use its engine at its ultimate potential ...

read on

Although last year's RB13 ended the year strongly, the team readily admitted that its start to the campaign had not been as strong as it had hoped for.Its plight had not been helped by windtunnel correlation problems, but it also had not adopted the right development approach, so lost ground against Me ...

read on

Max Verstappen fell behind the Haas of Kevin Magnussen at the start then spun after picking up diffuser damage early on, while Daniel Ricciardo spent most of his race in traffic on his way to finishing fourth from eighth on the grid.Ricciardo was stuck behind Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari in the second half of the race and backed off late on to have one final attack, then set the fastest ...

read on

Verstappen was the closest challenger to Mercedes on Friday at Albert Park, just 0.127s adrift of pace-setter Lewis Hamilton in second practice, as Red Bull's RB14 appears to have helped it close the gap to the front.But although both drivers are more bullish about their long-run performance than of being able to match Mercedes in the fight for grid positions, both drivers think the ...

read on

Red Bull team principal Horner told Motorsport.com this week that Mekies' hiring had contravened a gentleman's agreement over FIA personnel following the controversy over Marcin Budkowski's move to Renault.Horner backed up McLaren's Eric Boullier in insisting that all the teams had agreed to respect a gardening leave of 12 months for any former FIA or F1 employees who move to a ...

read on

The team enjoyed a strong pre-season in 2018, and race drivers Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen have been upbeat about the progress their team has made this winter.Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko went as far as to suggest that the RB14 chassis is class of the field, telling Motorsport.com: "We know that our chassis is absolutely ahead on the GPS data and so on."There's a problem ...

read on

Christian Horner could be forgiven for thinking that Formula 1 has been a bit of a broken record for Red Bull during the turbo hybrid era.This is yet another season in which many observers have predicted that Horner's team will emerge as the greatest threat to Mercedes. But despite the obvious qualities of Red Bull's young, ambitious driver line-up and technical strength in depth ...

read on

Although Red Bull appears to have made good gains with its chassis and has emerged as the outfit many are tipping to be Mercedes' main challenger for wins, Verstappen is more cautious about the team's potential.In particular, he thinks that the team could still be left on the back foot if it is too far down on power against its main opposition."I think the car compared to last year ...

read on