Fresh F1

One of the three teams testing this week is Red Bull. Its RB3 car has improved after the two tests in Bahrain, but it is still 2 seconds off the pace of Ferrari. Automoto365’s spies in winter testing found out the problem is the RB3 is losing rear end downforce in corners and under braking. Top speed is the only good thing about the car.

The source of the problem lies in the decision of the team to design the car in two groups : the rear developed by the old aero staff in the team’s new wind tunnel while the front is penned by Adrian Newey.

It seems the new wind tunnel was just too new to deliver good data and the figures from the wind tunnel tests were not accurate. Therefore Newey trusted the figures from the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), and designed a new aero package, that is going to be tested this week. at Magny Cours.

The new package, consisting of a new front wing, rear wing, barge boards and undertray will be according to the computer data 7 to 8 tenths of a second faster, so Red Bull hope be more competitive in Melbourne.

It is interesting to see if the same new parts will appear on the Toro Rosso, which is also testing this week…

~ by Wiz Kid on March 7, 2007.