These are difficult months for Red Bull, as the team has had to come to terms with the realization that after an extraordinary 2023 Formula 1 season, they are now facing a major performance crisis that will likely prevent them from defending the constructors’ championship against a McLaren that has now become the grid’s benchmark. Red Bull in Milton Keynes hopes to overcome this situation with the updates coming to the United States Grand Prix in Austin, designed to revive the RB20. The difficulties, as is well known, stem from a development path (since the first third of the season) that followed the wrong direction, with a lack of correlation between the track data and the wind tunnel results.
This is undoubtedly a serious problem for the future, especially as it’s hard to trace the causes of this data misalignment between simulated and real conditions, as Red Bull’s team principal Christian Horner admitted in a recent interview. This is largely due to the age of Red Bull’s wind tunnel, which is one of the oldest in use today and is not located in Milton Keynes but in Bedford, about an hour away from the team’s headquarters. This distance requires additional organization and travel to test new components quickly and efficiently.
“The balance is disconnected front and rear. We see it in the data. It doesn’t show up in our wind tunnel, but it does on the track data. This is something we need to understand because when there’s a problem like this, it means you can’t trust your own tools. You have to go back to the track data and past experience.”
And it seems the time has come for the reigning world champion team to invest in the wind tunnel, following the lead of other teams that have done so recently. Aston Martin, for instance, is ready to debut a wind tunnel equipped with the most advanced sensors currently on the market, and it is also directly connected to the composites department in Silverstone, reducing the technicians’ working time. This necessity was also highlighted by team consultant Helmut Marko, who pointed out several factors limiting the engineers’ work in their tight battle with McLaren.
“A more modern wind tunnel would help. Our tunnel is a post-war model built by the British Army. It has its drawbacks: external temperature, long distances, heating time, and all the rest. At this point, we’re quite behind in this area.”
Thus, the current wind tunnel is outdated, penalizing Red Bull both in terms of data correlation and in the optimal management of wind tunnel hours, which each team is allotted based on the previous year’s constructors’ standings. As champions, Red Bull had less time than other teams to develop the RB20, making it crucial to be efficient and make the most of the allotted hours. As a result, the team has already allocated funds for the construction of a new wind tunnel, no longer in Bedford but close to the Milton Keynes headquarters (following the lead of Racing Bulls, who decided to move from Bicester to Milton Keynes, where their engineers can take advantage of the new facilities being built by Red Bull). The project, approved last year, is already under construction, though it has long timelines, and the new wind tunnel won’t be operational for the 2024 or even the 2026 car. Realistically, as Marko explained, the hope is that the new wind tunnel will be functional by early 2026, in time to help with the development of the car under the new technical regulations.
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