Verstappen: 'Red Bull's problem was not just weight, but also its location'
Red Bull Content Pool
F1 News
- GPblog.com
It looks like Red Bull Racing's lighter chassis is not going to be there this year, but as things stand, the team no longer needs it. A lot of weight has been taken off the RB18 during the 2022 Formula 1 season and Ferrari would have lost its advantage in that area by now lost.
RB18: from heavyweight to model athlete
The RB18's weight was perhaps the Red Bull car's biggest problem. Since the start of the season, the Austrian racing stable's engineers are said to have taken some 20 kilograms off the car. With that, Ferrari has lost its weight advantage. Reports Auto, Motor und Sport.
The Red Bull has only become more efficient during the season and is now highly competitive on every type of track. With more constant downforce in the corners, tyre wear has also been reduced. Moreover, the RB18 seems to be the only car in the F1 field to be immune to porpoising thanks to Adrian Newey, who already took into account at the design stage that the effect could occur.
An additional problem was weight. The Red Bull car was among the heaviest cars in the field and was said to have 'lost some 20 kilos' since the start of the season. The car would now be just two to five kilograms above the minimum weight of 798 kilograms.
Verstappen: 'Weight was also in the wrong place'
Verstappen confirmed in Monza that the weight reduction was a crucial factor. "It wasn't just the weight itself. The weight was in the wrong place. That pushed our car more into understeer," he explained. The Dutchman is not a fan of that, and it seems his car is rid of that trait.