Explaining the Red Bull dilemma

Sky Sports F1's Commentary Expert Mark Hughes on why the RB8 currently suits Mark Webber more than Sebastian Vettel - and what the current turnaround from last year reveals about both drivers' styles...

Mark Webber's qualifying advantage over Sebastian Vettel in the opening two races played a significant part in Vettel's decision to revert to the original-spec RB8 for China. Webber's qualifying advantage continued regardless. Although we've already got used to a Red Bull that is considerably less competitive than last year, it was still a shock to see the World Champion fail to make the Q3 top-10 run-off in qualifying. Webber fared a little better, seventh fastest in the run-off, the third time in three events that Mark has out-qualified Seb, totally against the play of last year. Ever since the RB8 first hit the track, both drivers have been struggling to get a balance between the car's low speed and high speed behaviour. In low-fuel, qualifying trim the rear tends to be a little unstable upon corner entry at low speed, yet the car is understeery through high-speed bends. Improving one aspect of those two limitations by changing the set-up makes the other worse, leaving the drivers in a qualifying limbo. In race conditions, as the more highly stressed rear tyres lose their new rubber grip faster than the fronts, the high-speed balance improves and the car becomes very competitive in race trim. Because it's the degrading rears that bring the balance in the race and the set up cannot be changed between qualifying and race, the compromise for Saturday - for this particular car in its current state of development - has to err towards slow corner instability, because any set up that would cure that aspect for Saturday would make the car an oversteering handful through fast corners on Sunday. What Vettel was exceptionally good at last year was using a little bit of oversteer in the initial part of a slow turn to help get the car pointed at the apex sooner - but the rear of the car needs to recover its grip quickly for that initial oversteer not to have too much momentum, building into a slide that costs time. The blown diffuser car was perfect for that, and as the car had that initial twitch of oversteer Seb would then stand on the throttle - giving the rear end even more exhaust-enhanced grip than when off-throttle - and the oversteer would vanish. In this way, Seb could get pointed early at the apex and be early on the power. It demanded a lot of sensitivity for the balancing point of the rear tyre. Furthermore, in the way you had to use the engine revs to get the correct balance between on-throttle and off-throttle grip at the appropriate part of the corner, it was counter-intuitive. It was certainly something that Webber could never get his head properly around. It also felt very unnatural to be considering applying more throttle to reduce oversteer. This year's car, although currently less competitive, is much more conventional in how it needs to be driven in the slow corners - and suddenly Webber can drive it better. There can occasionally be a disconnect between how a car feels to a driver and how quick it is - and last year's RB7 was that car for Webber. He didn't care for its feel - that slow corner pat head/rub tummy combination really didn't suit him - but it was fantastically fast, something that Vettel could show more convincingly than him. There is an echo of that disconnect this year in how Webber and Vettel respectively have reacted to the development of the RB8. When first introduced, the RB8 had an exhaust system as far rearwards as the 2012 regulations allow, blowing over the aero-