With Red Bull revealing very little about their new car, our Technical Analyst is delaying judgement...
Our Technical Analyst Mark Hughes is frustrated by how little we can see of the RB8.
Although Adrian Newey's latest creation will take to the track for the first time on Tuesday morning, the Red Bull team have revealed very little of the RB8 through their online release - leaving plenty of questions still to be answered about their new car.
"Yes, they've opted for the stepped nose solution rather than the low nose of McLaren and reportedly Marussia. It doesn't look quite as bad as on others, partly because the paint job disguises it, partly because the step incorporates a scoop," Mark told
Sky Sports.
"It's visibly from the design lineage of R5/6/7, with a lot of emphasis on getting airflow through to the underbody and on internal aerodynamics - through the radiators to the rear outlets in the most efficient way possible.
"But beyond that, we can't really say much more at the moment. Wait and see - all will be revealed on Tuesday."
However, although the team have not revealed very much pictorially, designer Adrian Newey has disclosed some fascinating details about how the RB8 will run next season. Yet, as Mark explains, it's wholly unclear whether the team will be harmed or hindered by the ban imposed by the FIA outlawing exhaust blowing because Red Bull are both potentially the team most affected by the new regulations as well as the one most able to cope with the change.
"Adrian has admitted that the loss of exhaust blowing means they will not be able to run the extreme rake of before - because they cannot use the exhaust to minimise the airflow leakage from the bottom of the diffuser when you run it with bigger ride heights," Mark explained.
"This in turn means the front wing cannot be run so close to the ground and this compromises its efficiency. The car can no longer be used so much as one big wing, with the front wing and floor very close to the ground and deriving downforce without much penalty in drag.
"Red Bull was definitely doing this better than anyone else. So the question is now: relative to the others, will the loss of the exhaust blowing benefits have been offset by better exploiting the newly-defined demands? What becomes the new big differentiators?
"But bear in mind that long before we had the exhaust blowing fashion, we had the first iteration of this design, the RB5. And even in single diffuser form it was comparably fast with the twin diffuser Brawn - and when it was fully updated to twin diffuser spec it was the fastest car. So it has profound aero qualities inherent and the exhaust blowing was just an add-on to that."
