Racing Bulls is one of the teams that brought the greatest number of updates to Barcelona, with innovations in six different areas of the car, including specific adaptations to the Spanish circuit and modifications aimed at improving the overall performance of the car.
Among the innovations introduced on Catalan soil there should also have been a newly designed rear wing with a view to having a unit suitable for multiple circuits. Compared to the wing used in Monaco, it was clearly a more unloaded configuration, also given the long straights of Barcelona and it had to act as a sort of intermediate step between the more loaded and medium-loaded alternatives used previously.
Basically, the idea was to create a rear wing that could be inserted among the other options available to the team, giving greater freedom of choice in terms of desired load, but without excessively sacrificing speed on the straights. In fact, at least on paper, this new wing should guarantee greater aerodynamic efficiency compared to other solutions, also working hand in hand with a new beam wing designed with the same dictates.
The new wing fitted to Ricciardo’s car during FP1
However, during the first free practice session, problems were immediately noticed, especially when opening the DRS, with the mobile flap continuing to present strong vibrations. Since there was no material time to change units during the session, the choice was to no longer use the DRS during the first free practice sessions. This pushed the engineers to take a step back in view of FP2, setting aside the new wing to return to a more loaded old specification, in order to have more concrete references.
“Today wasn’t the easiest day for us. We had a somewhat uncertain FP1, in which we had a problem with one of the cooling systems of Yuki’s car, which cost him some time on the track to fix it,” said Alan Permane, Racing Director of the Faenza team.
“We had a problem with the DRS of our new rear wing and this led us to race with the wing closed for the rest of FP1 to be conservative. Of course, this costs a lot of lap time and you can never understand the balance of the car if you don’t race in the correct conditions.”
“For FP2 we made some changes and went back to a previous wing specification, while the factory is carrying out a full analysis of the new one. We changed the set-up of both cars to try to calm the rear a bit, but it’s fair to say that even in FP2 neither driver was fully satisfied with the car.”
For FP2, Racing Bulls returned to a previously used specification
Foto di: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images
Despite the more loaded wing in FP2, in reality neither of the two drivers felt at ease with the car, in particular with the management of the rear, too slippery on exit, to which is added a chronic understeer in the center of the corner: a problem that seems to recall the one experienced by Red Bull during Friday’s free practice. This delicate balance had multiple consequences, starting from the fact that the riders had to desist from significantly loading the front due to this instability at the rear, which takes away confidence both when entering corners and when traction.
“We lack a bit of grip at the rear and we have some work to do overnight to improve the set-up and move up the timesheets to what we think we can achieve tomorrow. We are satisfied with the results obtained from the updates, everything works well and there are no problems. The focus will be on the mechanical aspect of the car and on improving the suspension set-up”, added Permane.
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