Gary Anderson on Red Bull’s technical innovations

Gary Anderson, former Formula 1 car designer and current technical expert for The Race, analyzed the first technical updates of the season that Red Bull introduced at the Japanese Grand Prix, where the team recorded its third victory double of the year.

The first major series of technical updates presented by Red Bull in Japan suggests that although the championship team has completely changed the concept of the chassis, the direction of modernization remains the same as in 2023.

At the time, Red Bull Racing sought to minimize efficiency losses associated with cooling system requirements, and on two occasions, in April in Baku and in July in Budapest, we saw that the team had improved the layout of the side pontoons.

This year the team is paying more attention to the same areas. The part of the airflow that is used to cool the car is useless in terms of creating downforce, but to solve this somehow it is not enough to simply change the size of the intake and exhaust holes on the surface of the bodywork. components.

To optimize the position of the air intake ports of the cooling system, it is necessary to find those surfaces that are subject to overpressure without too much impact on the main surfaces associated with the production of down force.

To optimize the position of the outlets, it is necessary to do the opposite, i.e. find an area of ​​low pressure that is either not involved in creating the overall airflow structure, or can even be used for these purposes, and it will also participate in this task.

But everything between the inlet and outlet openings must also be optimized. First of all, we are talking about the area where the radiator heat exchangers and air ducts are located. To ensure adequate airflow through these areas, the intake vents should be approximately 20% the size of the radiator coils and the exhaust vents approximately 30% the size.

If these areas meet these requirements and the air flow affecting the radiator heat exchangers is uniform in characteristics, sufficient air volume will flow through the cooling system. You can then experiment with the size of the exhaust ports to fine-tune cooling efficiency for different temperature conditions and specific routes.

It’s always difficult to get an accurate idea of ​​certain parts of the car from photos, but from the photos we have you can see that the new air intake vents on the side pontoons have elongated horizontally and narrowed vertically, allowing them to roughly are compared to the letterbox slot.

At the bottom of the body there are more holes through which air is directed to the radiators, and they have a vertical shape, but you can still make rough calculations and compare the dimensions of the intake holes on the version of the RB20 that was presented at the presentation and the updated version, which we saw in Japan. According to my calculations, if we assume a ratio of 20 percent of the dimensions of the inlet openings and heat exchangers, it turns out that the area of ​​​​the latter on each side of the machine will be approximately equal to 1050 square meters. meters. cm.

It seems that the new holes have become noticeably smaller in area, so this had to be compensated for in some other way. In particular, Red Bull has raised the lower, vertical section of the cooling system’s intake section – probably as a result, a greater volume of air now flows through the side pontoons. In addition, if all these areas are managed correctly, you can achieve increased stability of the aerodynamic elements along the edges of the car’s underside.

In addition, it appears that Red Bull has been able to increase the efficiency of the cooling system without losing downforce through areas located on the sides of the headrest. There appeared an additional hole through which air is supplied to the radiators, the size of which is such that thanks to this solution alone it was possible to compensate for more than half of the losses associated with the reduction in the area of ​​​​the inlet holes on the side pontoons.

All these solutions together, in combination with the upper air intake, in which the roll bar is mounted, provide sufficient air to the radiators, ensuring effective cooling of all vehicle systems.

But I wonder if we will see the next phase in the modernization process of these areas of the Red Bull Racing car, as was the case in 2023 in Hungary? .. When you look at other teams’ cars I’m afraid you have to admit that compared to the RB20 they look narrower, somewhat unmodern. It is not a fact that this affects their speed, but everyone knows that the stopwatch never lies.