Red Bull’s technical chief Adrian Newey says Red Bull can maintain its dominance in 2012 – Formula 1
Red Bull’s technical chief Adrian Newey says that the team has still room to raise the bar even higher in the 2012 season.
Red Bull enjoyed a very dominant 2011 season as Sebastian Vettel cruised to 11 wins for the season and helped his team secure the constructors’ title 3 races before the end of the season and in the process secured his world championship title four races
before the end of the season.
Red Bull was helped by an innovative front facing exhaust design which allowed the car to blow gases even when the car was off the throttle. The only other team successful in emulating that was McLaren. The innovation faced criticism from the teams as FIA
decided to place a ban on it. The FIA banned it during the Grand Prix at Silverstone, but reverted the ban after the race.
The new regulations for the 2012 season means that the off-throttle blown diffuser is banned and teams will no longer use it. That is another reason it is being speculated that the 2012 will feature a very competitive season as no one team will be dominant
like in 2011.
Newey still believes that Red Bull can further enhance the performance and become even more dominant.
“All we can do is try and look at our own weaknesses from this year, and try and improve on them,” Newey told Autosport. “We still had some areas that could be improved upon, but as always it is going to be the development race through the winter. We have
got some regulation changes - primarily the restriction of exhaust exit position and mapping - which means that the exhaust effect is almost zero now.”
“So, everybody will be working to try and recover that lost down-force, and whoever comes up with the best solutions will probably be the winners next year,” he added.
Newey said that the team that can best adapt to the new exhaust in accordance to the new regulations will be in a stronger position to take the honours in 2012.
The teams will test their new cars for the upcoming season in February during the pre-season testing.
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