| door Shanna Lutgert
Giedo van der Garde and Tom Coronel see the different noses of Red Bull Racing and Ferrari during the Thursday morning of the winter tests. For example, the RB19 has a hole in the front of the nose, and Ferrari has that too. In addition, it could be seen that the Red Bull car turns in very sharply, but the Viaplayanalysts no problem.
It was of course to be expected that the RB19 would look very different from the presentation in New York on February 3. The car of the team of Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez now has many other details and it could be seen that the car turns in very sharply. ‘At the front of the nose we can clearly see that there is a hole in it’, Coronel begins Viaplay. ‘We see that they work with four parts at the front. The flow goes under it, so you take that surface with you,’ explains the Dakar driver. “We saw the same thing at Ferrari, the nose doesn’t go all the way forward, so that’s clearly different from what we were used to.”
In addition to the Red Bull front wing, it was noticeable that the RB19 was slightly unstable entering the corners at the Bahrain International Circuit. ‘He wants the front a little sharper, we saw that when entering. He (Verstappen, ed.) had to correct him something’, Coronel continues. ‘It’s a thing that Max pushed for’, Van der Garde takes over. “When you turn in you see that the RB19 is a bit too sharp, then the rear comes under,” the driver continues. ‘Rather a too strong rear that you can fine-tune, then the car will be in balance later. This is good for the first day of testing, you can go in enough directions with it.’
Dimpling Ferrari nose: ‘That’s looking for the limit’
Before winter testing, many expected the concept of the RB18, the 2022 World Cup car, to be copied by several teams. However, that has not happened as much as expected. ‘Everyone has their own philosophy, but some other front wings are very different. You see this at Alpine, for example, they have a much wider front wing, which brings more downforce. Last year they were very fast on the straight’, Van der Garde analyses. “Mercedes has brought a very narrow nose to cope with the drag to do better. They have a lot of carbon on that car to save kilos.’
What the gentlemen of Viaplay have not missed, of course, is Ferrari’s dimpled nose. The SF-23 showed that the nose depressed a bit under high pressure, and then it ‘popped’ back, as it were. ‘That nose is very bizarre,’ says Van der Garde. “They have certain crash tests, of course. Under that nose they have the normal nose, and if you go that fast, the material dents, “the driver continues. That material is so thin. You sometimes see that with the touring cars, that the windscreen is in a flash arc at high speeds. That is pushing the limit’, says Coronel.
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