F1 2021: How Red Bull won on Mercedes to ignite Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen fight

And that’s exactly how the F1 title fight began in 2021.

For seven years, Red Bull has tried to produce a competing Mercedes car at the beginning of a season, but fails – often so far from the pace that their hopes for a championship were over before they were ever really alive.

But when the Bahrain GP opened in 2021, Red Bull really justified the pre-season hype and – despite being denied a win by Lewis Hamilton’s brilliance – proved that they really got the new campaign off the ground.

And all after a few notable changes to the cars from last year when Mercedes was at its best.

That begs the question: how exactly did Red Bull do that?

Let’s start from the top. What were the changes in 2021 and why were they made?

In a sport that prides itself on vehicle innovation and constant profits, an off-season like the 2021s is rare.

Given the financial impact of the Covid-19 pandemic – with the main car and regulations revision pushed back from 2021 to 2022 – it was decided that there would be few major changes to cut costs in the final season of the current regulatory era.

The changes were more niche. And implemented for safety reasons, as F1 wanted to reduce the load on new tires, it hardly sounded critical.

The rear brake wings, the fences under the diffuser and the floor have been changed – in particular, blind-like slots have been removed, as has a thin slice of the rear part of the floor.

Doesn’t sound like a lot, does it?

However, as Mercedes Technical Director James Allison and Ted Kravitz of Sky Sports F1 explained, these subtle differences were enough to give the F1 teams a “screaming moment”.

“We have an adventurous series of rule changes,” he said last season. “They may not look adventurous, but for anyone on the aerodynamic side of auto development, they are enough to make you wake up in a cold sweat.”

What makes the changes so effective?

Removing the back of the floor – with an inwardly angled diagonal disc versus a cheese wedge from Ted on pre-season testing that is now evident – is believed to be hugely influential on downforce, and therefore lap time.

“The piece around the rear wheel is insanely sensitive,” said Allison. “That’s where a lot of the lap time comes from.

1:36 Ted Kravitz, Sebastian Vettel and a precise piece of Comte cheese in the opening edition of Ted’s Testing Notebook from Bahrain.

Ted Kravitz, Sebastian Vettel and a precise piece of Comte cheese in the opening edition of Ted’s Testing Notebook from Bahrain.

“If you’re forced to shed material from here, you’ve got a bleeding lap off the car.”

And that change of soil could also be a game changer in the pecking order …

Why did that help Red Bull get closer to Mercedes?

Simply put, the loss of downforce on the ground is believed to have been less detrimental to Red Bull’s car design, which was backed up by a new and improved Honda engine as early as 2021, Mercedes’.

How are they different? Well, Red Bull has long had a high-rake philosophy, which means that the rear of the car is higher than the front wheel, while the dominant hybrid-era cars from Mercedes were all low-rake, making their car back-to-back the front became more level at the back.

The different design philosophies of Red Bull and Mercedes for high and low rake cars

The higher rake and nose angle is usually considered more aggressive and increases downforce under the car, while the lower rake angle has a longer floor which usually makes the car more stable. These two designs have divided the field for the past few years and, in general, there hasn’t been much of an advantage from one to the other.

However, by 2021, much of the paddock believes that has changed.

High-raked cars like the Red Bull and AlphaTauri have impressed – the former has the fastest car on the grid by consensus and the latter has the fifth in Bahrain qualifying – while the only lower-raked vehicles are Mercedes and the Aston on the grid are Martin seems to have taken a relative step back.

“Even if it looks like a lecture car, there was still … I think we probably suffered more from the change in regulations than the cars with the higher rake,” said Mercedes boss Toto Wolff.

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Andrew Shovlin, chief engineer at the trackside added, “Have these regulations affected low-rake cars more than high-rake cars?” the case.

“I know Red Bull won the last race [of 2020] But in general we were up at the end of the year and that is not the case now.

“Either we hit the rules harder or they’ve had faster and better rates of development since they applied the changes to the rules.”

So, higher rake = faster car?

Of course, as Shovlin mentioned, it could simply be that Red Bull did a better job over the winter. Max Verstappen, who had achieved his pole position for 2020 on the opening weekend of 2021, certainly thought about it.

“It’s been our philosophy for a long time. I don’t think you can point it out,” said Verstappen of Red Bull’s high-rake car. “There were a few factors.

“We knew our weaknesses from last year which were not just about rakes. I think on the engine side, Honda worked really hard to improve their engine in general and I think they did a great job.”

However, Sky F1 expert Mark Hughes pointed out in his column for The Race that it is certainly a coincidence that Mercedes, Aston Martin and Haas (who are openly not focused on improving their car for 2021) are the only three Teams were that have apparently lost speed when comparing the gap to the Bahrain Pole last year and this year.

3:36 Sky F1’s Karun Chandhok analyzes the dramatic duel between Sir Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen in the closing stages of the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Sky F1’s Karun Chandhok analyzes the dramatic duel between Sir Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen in the closing stages of the Bahrain Grand Prix.

“It is a strong indication that the rake philosophy is the driving force behind the changing hierarchy of competition,” wrote Hughes.

Otmar Szafnauer, meanwhile, insisted that Aston Martin and Mercedes had come in for a “rude awakening”.

“The rule changes in winter obviously had a massive impact on the low-rake cars and none at all on the high-rake cars,” the Aston Martin team boss told Sky F1.

“We took a big step back because of the change in regulations. The others didn’t.”

Can’t the other teams just change the design?

No chance, according to Mercedes.

“We couldn’t repeat the concept of Red Bull and some of the other teams racing,” said Wolff. “It’s not physically possible. We couldn’t make our suspensions and adjustments the way Red Bull did. So we have to make the most of it and tune the car to what we have available.”

Shovlin emphasized: “What we certainly cannot do is suddenly say that we will raise the rear of our car 30mm and work with it, because that would write off the season.”

Did the new rules want to “tie back Mercedes”?

Hamilton was adamant after being beaten 0.4 seconds ahead of pole in Bahrain.

“I mean, it’s no secret that the changes … of course they were made to hold us back,” said the seven-time world champion, who compared the new rules to the changes in qualifying mode from last year.

Szafnauer, whose Racing Point was one of the outstanding teams of 2020 and even won a race, is also not happy. He claimed the low-rake runners pointed out last year that this would have a greater effect than it did on the high-rake runners. And we were right. “

16:27 Ahead of the Bahrain GP, ​​Sky F1’s Rachel Brookes spoke to seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton about life away from the track, including his heritage, creative accomplishments and his time at Mercedes.

Ahead of the Bahrain GP, ​​Sky F1’s Rachel Brookes spoke to seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton about life away from the track, including his heritage, creative accomplishments and his time at Mercedes.

Others, however, have insisted that no one really knew who the regulations would favor – such as Mercedes’ Allison, who was asked before cars hit the track in pre-season tests whether they would give the high-rake cars an edge could.

“That’s the million dollar question. Absolutely no one knows,” he said.

“Surely any team will be in a fog of paranoia thinking that this is definitely worse than us, and at the same time hoping that it is better for us than everyone else.”

The FIA ​​governing body, the FIA, has now made it clear that the rule changes for safety reasons – and not to change the pecking order – were introduced after races like the British GP last year when there were several flat tires, including for both Mercedes Cars.

The new rules could therefore be one of F1’s happiest coincidences.

A closer race at the top is now forecast for 2021 – That continues with the Emilia-Romagna GP this weekend live on Sky Sports F1.