Red Bull face difficulty over new RB8 for season opener at Melbourne – Formula 1 news
Red Bull Racing, the defending champions, are facing problems with their new car and are considering taking the older version of the RB8 to the first Grand Prix of the forthcoming 2012 Formula 1 season going to be held at Albert Park in Melbourne, Australia
on March 18.
The contenders and the observers felt that the F1 champions of the last two seasons were in a dominant position for the upcoming season. However, during the last day of the final test held at Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona, the car was not able to cover
more laps as compared to its rivals on track during the test run and faced gearbox issues.
Auto Motor und Sport magazine has expressed that the champion team might be considering taking their Barcelona spec car minus the latest updates they applied on it for the final two days of the testing period.
The defending champion, Sebastian Vettel just completed 23 laps during the last day of the final test and said, “It wouldn’t be fair for me to judge the upgrades, so we have to rely on the data collected by Mark.”
Furthermore, the car was not quick on the track during the test run and Vettel set his best lap time of 1 minute 23.608 seconds and was the eleventh best time of the final day of the last test.
“When I watched Webber’s long run on Saturday afternoon,” said an engineer for a rival team. “It was nothing special – not the lap times nor the tyre wear.”
However, Mark Webber said that the changes which have been made to the car are not “massively different” as compared to the older version of RB8 while there are many other drivers who are in agreement with the assertion of Webber.
Moreover, an engineer of another contender team said that it was quite evident that the changes made by the team in the exhaust design of the new RB8 did not work out the way Red Bull would have wanted for their car “are not going where they (Red Bull) want
them to go.”
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