Paul Monaghan on how to approach car tuning in 2022

In 2022, Formula 1 switched to a new generation of chassis and the Red Bull Racing team solved the task of creating a car that makes the best use of the ground effect, taking a landslide victory in both championships.

The RB18 will go down in Formula 1 history as one of the most successful cars, with Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez taking it to 17 victories. This is an impressive achievement, even for Adrian Newey, the legendary racing engineer who is still head of technology at Red Bull Racing. But developing a theoretically efficient chassis is only half the battle, relatively speaking, and ensuring that the pilots behind the wheel of such a machine win races is a distinctly difficult task.

Red Bull Racing Chief Engineer Paul Monegan is up to the task: he and his team helped Verstappen and Perez every race weekend to maximize the RB18’s potential.

“Restrictions on the shape that can be given to certain elements of the car have become much stricter,” RacingNews365 quoted Monegan as saying. – Already in 2019, when the front fenders were changed, many previous approaches had to be abandoned. If the technical regulations change, you can no longer interpret the rules as before, so you have to change your approach and adapt. There’s no point in making a car that can be recognized as non-compliant – you won’t get very far that way.

According to Monegan, the underside of the car, with its Venturi tunnels, which create the ground effect, is one of those parts of the car that especially requires the right approach to the settings.

“Someone might say that ground clearance has the biggest effect on how a car behaves, but remember that if you change it, you most likely have to change the stiffness of the suspension as well,” he explained. One cannot be separated from the other. If you want lower ground clearance, you probably need to stiffen the suspension.

But then the question arises: can you apply such settings to the specific track you will be racing on? Ground clearance is an important factor but cannot be considered in isolation. I don’t want to single out one particular setting that would dominate the others, as it’s impossible to change one without affecting the rest.

If the compromise you have chosen turns out to be wrong, the results on the circle will get worse, and to return to the desired level of competitiveness, you will have to adjust two or three parameters. I can’t name a single race where we made significant adjustments to one setup parameter without affecting other areas.

It is impossible to rank such parameters by the degree of their influence on the settings, but it is clear that the efficiency of the car depends primarily on its aerodynamics. If any of the functions related to this complex are violated, you will not achieve high speeds.

Because we have developed a certain approach in previous years to prepare for qualifying, and we have learned to find the right compromise, our competitiveness allows us to claim high starting positions, and this allows us to have the highest possible number of earn points in the race.

In the end, this is your main task, but if you won the pole, but could not take the race to victory, then you did something wrong. After qualifying in a closed park, you can change the level of tire pressure, the angle of attack of the front wing – that’s it. These are not such drastic changes. And if you finished third on Saturday and then won the race, you did everything right.”