Originally Posted by Assa2:
“Not wishing to re-open old wounds but I did say I would be slightly suspicious but not surprised if the RB came back strong after the summer break, and despite both circuits since then being better suited to the Mclaren and Ferraris, looks what's happened!
I won't be surprised to see the big teams roll out a number of new car packages over the last few races ahead of next season. The big problem is that with no major changes in the regulations they will be running pretty much the same cars as this year which means RB will still be ahead. Mclaren and Ferrari need to find a huge amount of speed just to catch up, meanwhile RB will be looking for another advance. I hope I'm wrong but I think RB will have to do something monumentally stupid to lose next season. They could probably run the same car as right now and still be very much in the hunt.”
Fair comment about the summer break.
I don't think they're closed for the entire 4 weeks though, are they?
I thought it was just 2 weeks shut-down.
RBR fielded an entirely new front wing at Monza (one that bears a lot of similarities to the McLaren one) so that had to get built
somehow.
As Ted Kravitz pointed out, it's nice to see that RBR are copying others too cos that means they're not ahead of other teams in every respect.
I fear next season will be another RBR whitewash due to all the malarkey about diffusers.
Seems that RBR are simply blowing exhaust gasses across their diffuser whereas Mclaren and some of the others are actually pumping extra fuel through the exhaust on the over-run and igniting it.
The mid-season palava at Silverstone proved the ban on blown diffusers will hurt McLaren more than almost every other team on the grid.
Given that will be entirely banned I suspect that RBR will attempt to evolve their current design whereas teams like McLaren will be forced to, basically, start again with a whole new design so they'll either come up with something utterly amazing or (more likely) something that'll take another couple of years to develop.
Also, FWIW, I should point out that Ferrari is already experimenting with channeling other heat sources (engine, brakes, KERS etc) into the diffuser instead of exhaust gasses so it seems the philosophy is still going to be to blow hot air through the diffuser, just not exhaust gasses.