Side pontoons RB19 caught everyone’s attention

Winter testing began in Bahrain on Thursday and a number of technical features of the top teams’ cars, either just presented or simply manifested when work began on the real track, caught everyone’s attention.

Not all moments that fell into the field of view of observers belong to the category of novelties: for example, the nose cone of a Ferrari car seemed to be pressed under the pressure of oncoming air, and a small depression appeared.

It is unlikely that this was conceived by the designers of the Scuderia, although the nose of a racing car does not apply to force elements and must absorb energy in collisions. But of course it shouldn’t deform along the way, so the experts immediately agreed that this strange effect is unintentional. It was soon confirmed that it was due to an error in the nose cone assembly – one of the screws was tightened incorrectly, but now everything is fixed.

The frames of the Mercedes on-board cameras clearly showed some abnormal coils of wire appearing in the cockpit behind the wheel – it appears they were related to additional equipment designed to measure the car’s behavior, and are specific longitudinal construction. Accelerometers measure the level of vibration transmitted to the handlebars, and this helps understand how the riders feel while steering.

The Red Bull Racing team didn’t allow anyone to see their new car until the morning photoshoot, and when the RB19 was first rolled out of the pits for all to see, the side pontoons of the new shape caught my eye: a sort of deep “tunnels” that extend down the side of the car all the way to her back.

The side pontoons of last year’s RB18 were already characteristically truncated, but the way they look on the team’s new car has experts associating them with old solutions that appeared in Formula 1 in previous years, when they became “double bottoms”. ” named.

The term first surfaced more than two decades ago, when Ferrari introduced the F92A car: special channels were made on it under the side pontoons. True, the design was not particularly successful. Something similar was also on the Toro Rosso car in 2011, which also did not differ in special speed.

This shape of the pontoons, seen on the RB19, helps to increase the intensity of airflow to the area between the rear wheels of the car, including the diffuser and the back of the underbody. More compact pontoons also suggest significant changes in cooling system layout.

In general, the body panels of the RB19 machine are distinguished by aggressive contours and a high degree of refinement of all details – this is the signature approach of Red Bull Racing’s aerodynamics department. Trained by Adrian Newey, the team’s specialists developed the concept that underpinned last year’s car, while many of their rivals tried to replicate the same ideas at their level, the effectiveness of which was confirmed by the success of Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez last year, who won 17 of the season’s 22 races.

Incidentally, we can already say that during the morning session in Bahrain it was Max who showed the highest maximum speed: 326 km/h.