How F1’s token spending helped boost Red Bull’s title boost

In a lengthy speech on the Red Bull podcast “Talking Bull”, the team’s Chief Technical Officer stated that there was a weakness in the 2020 challenger that needed to be addressed this season.

So if the teams hadn’t been able to make revisions over the winter, it would have been a bit on the back foot.

“We had the unique situation of homologating last year’s car to help F1 deal with the problems caused by COVID,” Newey explained.

“It limited our options to the tokens we were allowed to spend. We decided to spend ours on the gearbox, which also allowed us to change the rear suspension arrangement. That was the only thing I didn’t have.” worked very well on the RB16.

Red Bull RB16 and Mercedes W11

Red Bull had moved to a more rear-mounted suspension layout with the RB16, following in the footsteps of Mercedes, which had the rear of its suspension mounted to the rear of the case, which required a cutout in the crash structure that mounts on it is.

The RB16B layout continues in that direction, with the suspension adjusted accordingly. It couldn’t go quite as far as Mercedes, however, as it needed more tokens to modify the rear-end crash structure as well as the gearbox.

These changes not only seemed to have helped tame the car, which was quite difficult to drive at the beginning of 2020, but also gave the team more leeway to develop its aerodynamic concept, taking into account the changes made by the FIA, as noted by Newey .

“We had a moderate rule change over the winter on some aerodynamic restrictions on the floor and rear of the car. It wasn’t a big change, but it required some optimization of the car that went with it.”

Red Bull Racing RB16 floor

As an early adopter of the Z-shaped floor cutout, Red Bull has been most productive on the grid this season in terms of developments, with performance-based upgrades arriving at virtually every race so far to tweak the package.

This is interesting as it could be viewed as a hangover from its 2020 campaign when it discovered early on that there were issues with the developments that came through the pipeline, something Newey explained they actually did in the long run would help

“To go back a bit, when we switched from the RB15 to the RB16 last year, there were a few things about the car that we didn’t quite understand,” he explained.

“Even with the wind tunnel program and all of our simulation tools, there are still things that can stumble, and that is exactly what happened in early 2020.

“It took a while to understand these issues and get them under control. The advantage of this is – as is so often the case – that you learn things that you would not otherwise have learned.

“You make more of mistakes than of good things. I think that benefited us for what we did over the winter and these developments have brought us to where we are now.”

Red Bull Racing RB16 front wing

We know that the team had to reset an update on their nose during this time, with the narrow arrangement of the front wing pillars (V2) being pushed aside quite quickly as part of this discovery.

The team then set out to test, one at a time, other solutions that had come up during that period to understand where it had gone wrong, and set the wheels in motion to correct the errors.

This year can be seen as an entry year in many ways, with the restrictions imposed by the homologation and token system, the introduction of the budget cap and the imminent arrival of the brand new F1 car, which Newey is very aware of and needs help with managing

“I would say this is the biggest single rule change since the Ground Effect / Venturi car ban in late 1982. It really is a revolution. The only thing that has really remained the same is the engine. Everything else is different.

“The balancing act is that we have to develop this year’s car further because we have a chance at the title at the moment – and at the same time we cannot just concentrate on this year and ignore the future.

“We’re doing our best to juggle these two balls – and at the same time to cope with the cost ceiling, which, as is well known, has meant that we unfortunately had to downsize the team in certain areas.”