F1 ‘Flexi-Clampdown’: A Game-Changer for Red Bull?
May 26 – Red Bull figures hope the team’s return to form gets back on track this weekend in Barcelona.
Team advisor Dr Helmut Marko headed to Monaco full of confidence, given the success of the upgrade package at Imola just days earlier.
After Sunday in Monaco, he admitted: “I was wrong.”
Max Verstappen started and finished P4, reporting afterwards that his car felt “slower than last year” on the twisty streets of Monaco.
He admitted, however, that Monaco is somewhat a bogey circuit for the DNA of Red Bull’s recent single seaters, and hopes that Barcelona this weekend will be better.
When asked if the car naturally suits the Spanish layout better, the quadruple world champion said: “Generally speaking, yes, but we’ll have to wait and see.”
What might make a significant difference are the new and much stricter rules against flexible front wings that debuts in Barcelona – with many seeing the dominant McLaren team as the one most severely affected.
“I hope it makes a tiny bit of difference,” Verstappen said. “But I don’t think it will turn the world upside down.
“If it comes our way a little bit, then I think that’s positive, but we’ll see.”
Team boss Christian Horner admits that every single team will need to make front wing tweaks to satisfy the new rules. “How it will affect individual teams is impossible to predict, but the front wing is a very important part of the car.
“Perhaps something unusual will happen,” he added. “For us, everything is still wide open. Hopefully, we can pick up the momentum from last weekend in Imola.
“Max is 25 points behind Oscar (Piastri). That’s one win, and there are still 16 races to go.”
Red Bull’s rivals are also unsure if the new front wings will affect the pecking order.
“It will have a certain influence,” said Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton. “It has an influence on the balance, for sure.
“But I don’t expect it to be a big difference.”
Hamilton’s team boss Frederic Vasseur added: “It’s always about comparison, not just pure performance. The field is very close together.
“We were a tenth behind pole here, and the cars behind us were only six-hundredths behind, so if you change the car’s potential by one or two tenths, that’s huge.”
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff commented: “It will be very interesting to see if anything has changed, if anyone is falling back or getting stronger.
“We have to use a different front wing, which is a bit stiffer. We’ll see what it actually changes.”
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Doubtful
we should have tire swap, driver swap and teammate swap to increase racing popularity…
Far more relevant things happening in F1 than wings, this is important
PepsiCo — the second-largest food and beverage business in the world — has announced that it will be Formula 1’s newest Official Partner, and that it will bring three of its key brands into the sport: Gatorate, Doritos, and Sting Energy.
“Sting will take center stage as the Official Energy Drink of Formula 1, Doritos will be the Official Savoury Snack Partner, delivering unique food experiences, and Gatorade will align with F1’s performance-driven story, as the Official Sports Drink Partner,” Adam Warner, PepsiCo VP of Global Sports & Entertainment Partnerships, told PlanetF1.com in an exclusive interview.
Fi the world of pop, crisps and betting, its a beautifull world
Re betting, are any drivers under investigation for deliberately slowing down in order to manipulate the results of the Monaco gp probably giving them time to eat a packet of Doritos while they slurp some Sting.
It’s a mad world.
An excellent thought, im sure the Chinese betting world thought about this exact scenario, , a lot of money could have been won on Williams x 2 and Racing bulls x 2 for the top ten, mind you as it was in Monaco, the online bets would have been flowing freely anyway,But the biggest odds were on Hannah Louise to see whether she could do a race without complaining/whining/moaning or playing the victim during a race, she didn’t disappoint the bookmakers
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