Red Bull Racing is working on a new wind tunnel, but this will only strengthen the team’s position. Auto Motor und Sport reports that Mercedes has identified significant strengths in rival Red Bull.
At the request of the late Dietrich Mateschitz, Red Bull Racing is building a new wind tunnel in Milton Keynes. The current wind tunnel in Bedford is quite old and starting to cause more and more problems with the new regulations.
F1 teams have limited use of CFDs and wind tunnels, leaving Red Bull unable to afford the inefficiencies of its older equipment.
But the lack of a state-of-the-art wind tunnel is not seen in Red Bull Racing’s current performance.
Red Bull Racing is said to be at the forefront of the use of computer data, making wind tunnels all but redundant.
According to Auto Motor und Sport, Mercedes is aware that “Red Bull is the gold standard for all things F1 in CFD”.
Furthermore, Mercedes discovered another strength of Red Bull. Indeed, the use of state-of-the-art sensors makes it perfectly possible to read problems on the road and convert them into data in the computer. The team of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez thus became the first team to solve the Porpassing problem in 2022.
Rival teams have struggled with the rebound for some time, but Adrian Newey’s team has developed a car that handles all circuits well.
Auto Motor und Sport is therefore reporting that Red Bull Racing’s 2023 car, the RB19, will largely be an evolution of the dominant RB18.
The main question is how much wind tunnel and CFD time constraints will affect Red Bull Racing in 2023.
