KA, I was wondering, as soon as you can, could you do a comparison of the top 3 cars since the before the summer break and up until now? then maybe same at the end of the season? See if there is anything in your amazing technical eye thats making these guys faster :)kipi19Sorry for the wait guys, small legal wrangle and bits and bobs to go yet but once I'm sorted I'll do a compaison of the early Red Bull and the Abu Dhabi Red Bull RB6 and perhaps 1 or 2 other crs as per request. I applogise for any bung typing as I can't see a thing. The text box is white for some unknown glitchspot reason.
.:: Formula 1 Technical Address ::.
The Red Bull RB6 was always destined to be an evolution of the successful Red Bull RB5, arguably the best car from mid 2009 onwards. Due to Red Bulls commitment to the 2009 title race there was no way it could have been otherwise. Mercedes had done the same and look where that put them…
 
Things looked almost grim to begin with as Red Bull once again missed the first test of the season with technical director Adrian Newey refusing to put the car on track at the time so the team could continue to develop the car in the windtunnel and through CFD.
When the car was revealed however it didn't appear as though much had changed. The high wide nose from the RB5 (Silverstone onwards) remained, the front wing was still a three plane with upper elements, the distinctive V nose from the RB5 was retained and many teams jumped on the concept providing more support for the idea. The most significant visual difference between the RB5 and RB6 was shrouded in mystery until the first track tests and even then the optimised double decked diffuser was not much different from its predecessor.
 As with all cars on the grid the RB6 had a significant shift in weight balance due to the necessary increase in wheel base caused by larger fuel tanks forced upon them by the no refuelling rules from the FIA. However, due to the team's choice of engine supplier – Renault – this was going to be less of a disadvantage than first thought. While the RS27 engine is not the most powerful it is more fuel efficient than its competitors meaning the RB6 would have one of the smallest fuel tanks on the grid – along with one of the most easy to package engines – another advantage that would make a difference come Bahrain.
Winter testing showed that the RB6 had some serious pace if still lacking a little reliability. Given its close relation to the RB5 the Red Bull maintained its low sidepods and low exhaust position. What their competitors didn't see coming was the exhausts placed at floor level at the last test of the winter before the season opener, a blinder of a move where significant revisions would be required for their opponents to copy the move. Not to mention their sneaky subterfuge by placing exhaust looking decals further up the car to distract the opposition.
At Bahrain the car appeared as it had in its last test, with the floor level exhaust. In qualifying two the car was right up the top but not untouchable, yet in qualifying three there appeared to be some jump in performance and Vettel took pole no problem. This performance leap would become more apparent later in the season. Later in the race Vettel suffered from a sparkplug issue causing the car to misfire and leaving it vulnerable to Alonso who took the win. The truth, it would turn out, was that the sparkplug issue and qualifying pace were linked.
The low exhaust position allowed the diffuser to have an energised airflow over its upper deck a similar idea to one that had seen wide use in the early 90's and at one point was looked at as a potential cause of Ayrton Senna's fatal crash in 1994. Exhaust blown diffusers fell out of favour when it became too difficult to balance the rear of the car under braking and through bends that required the car to lose or gain a lot of engine speed. This effect was due to the unavoidable fact that higher revs would yield more hot exhaust gases being blown through the diffuser and increasing downforce, however, as soon as the revs dropped so too did downforce, and quite dramatically.
Red Bull had thought of a way to maintain exhaust gas temperature while the car was not accelerating, the idea would use unburnt fuel to flow into the exhaust later and allow it to ignite and burn in the exhaust – i.e. Retarded ignition timing. When the car comes off the throttle the car would revert to a fuel map that would have the sparkplug fire later in the power cycle of the engine, probably after TDC (top dead centre, which would explain the odd engine note) this could waste more fuel and put more stress on the exhaust and could burn a sparkplug causing it to fail; but would allow the diffuser to work harder and produce more downforce right through the speed range.
In qualifying three the cars run on fumes so the fuel efficiency was a non issue, the packaging of the exhausts appears to have had this in mind from day 0 and so the impact on them would be low it was only a risk to keep using the map for extended periods in the race, something Red Bull as well as Renault, McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari all managed to work around by the seasons end.
So while Red Bull had developed a successful exhaust blown diffuser over the winter McLaren had developed the FW80 or F-duct a rear wing stalling device operated by the driver. This was the next big thing for Formula one cars for 2010. Red Bull, lead by Adrian Newey, were never going to let this innovation go unused. It did take them some time to introduce the F-duct to the RB6 but after testing beginning in Turkey and for many Fridays it was finally ready for use in Valencia. This was another important development for the RB6. The car lacked straight line speed due to its bias toward high downforce and the slight lack of power from the RS27 units in the back of the car.
Red Bull took the F-duct and improved on it allowing an element of the wing to be blown (and thus stalled at high speed) as well as blowing below the main plane. To do this is intricate and photos of the F-duct piping without the engine cover prove the complexity. For an F-duct to be legal no physical piece of the car can move to provide the "on/off switch" for the airflow through the ducting, this was either done by the back of the left hand or the side of the left knee of the driver. Via fluidics the change in air pressure allowed the air to flow through the upper and lower ducts to stall the rear wing, reducing drag significantly as well as disrupting its ability to produce downforce – hence the need for an ability for it to be turned on or off as required.
 
Later in the season came the flexi-wing controversy. The RB6 and to an extent the Ferrari F10 both featured a front wing that, at high speed, would bend toward the ground thus increasing the ground effect available to the wing and increasing downforce. The process by which it happens is still a closely guarded secret but the most plausible explanations are that the carbon fibre lay up for the front wing were arranged in a way so that the front wing could flex at its extremities under extreme load and yet would remain entirely rigid for the FIA tests used to measure whether the wing is conforming to the regulations; or that the front splitter and the skid plank on the bottom of the car were built in a way to allow them to flex to be more parallel to the ground which, consequently, allowed the entire front end to squat down. After McLaren's protestation at the amount of the flex in the wings the FIA doubled its test force but this did not appear to stop the flexing wing.
The RB6 qualifying speed was unarguable with 15 poles in a single season to its name it is the third best car of all time in this respect. In Abu Dhabi the Red Bull RB6 came together in its entirety taking the drivers championship with Sebastian Vettel having secured the Constructors in Brazil. In these last few pictures you can see how few big changes there were to the car. It was built without any kind of flaw to begin with so it required no barn door diffuser like the McLaren MP4-24 only race by race refinements.
The floor and diffuser received attention throughout the year on the RB6 to optimise the use of the exhaust blown diffuser while the wing mirrors moved inbound due to an FIA ruling pre-China ordering them there citing "safety" reasons. The small podvanes in front of the sidepods became thinner as the season wore on; this seemed to coincide with the removal of the wing mirrors so it may have been that they didn't require the added mass to keep them stable once the mirrors were gone. However the vast majority of the car remained visually very similar to the RB6 presented back in the winter. The front and rear wings were tweaked throughout the year for each circuit's demands and to support the incoming F-duct.
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