Former Jordan and Jaguar technical director, Gary Anderson claims the aero testing penalty meted out to Red Bull for its breach of the budget cap will not have that much of an impact.
Other than the $7m fine, for its breach of the budget cap in 2021, Red Bull has a 12 month restriction on the amount of aero testing it can carry out.
Team boss, Christian Horner immediately reacted by calling the restriction "Draconian", while Helmut Marko said it would put the world champions at an enormous disadvantage.
"The penalty is tough," he told Sky Deutschland. "It's just about the limit where we believe we can be competitive in the years to come despite the restrictions in the hours dedicated to wind tunnel.
"It's an enormous competitive disadvantage," he insisted. "Our wind tunnel is one of the first to be built. In terms of the turnaround time and the sensitivity to heat, we need even longer before we can find the right temperature as it's not state of the art. We can't miss a shot. What we take into the wind tunnel has to work. We can't afford to make any mistakes."
"Fundamentally it means we are going to have less runs in a simulation tools, primarily the wind tunnel," said Horner. "That means that the funnel of ideas that you can apply to the development of your car is going to be much more restricted. "We are going to have to pick and choose what we want to test and what we want to run in the limited wind tunnel time that we have."
Gary Anderson, who designed cars for Jordan, Stewart and Jaguar, doesn't agree.
"The aero development penalty limits how many parts Red Bull can create using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) and then take to the wind tunnel for further optimisation as well as how many "runs" they have in the tunnel," he writes in the Daily Telegraph. "Although the use of wind tunnels and CFD in Formula One is nothing new, they have become increasingly important since the enormous reduction in on-track testing over the last two decades.
"The wind tunnel is the closest thing you have to simulate the track to try and make sure your aerodynamic developments go in the right direction," he adds. "The more time you have, the more you can evaluate and, ultimately, make the car quicker.
"Aerodynamic research starts with a team going through various ideas for a part, say a front wing, using CFD to try to understand how it will function. You might create ten iterations in CFD before "cutting any metal" as it were, and then pick and create the best two versions at 60 per cent scale to take to the wind tunnel.
"If time was unlimited you would probably make those ten different iterations of certain components - front wing end-plates with different turns and twists for instance - and evaluate all of them and try to get the right direction from it.
"But time is limited, even if your wind tunnel time is not restricted," he admits.
"For winning the championship this year, Red Bull will already be penalised. A sliding scale currently exists to help the worse performing teams and restrict the better ones. Each team gets a percentage of the theoretical average number of "runs'' in the tunnel and CFD items based on their finishing position. he winning constructor one year gets 70 per cent of this for the following year, whilst the team finishing last is allowed 115 per cent. That means, with their additional 10 per cent penalty applied, Red Bull next year will be on 63 per cent of the theoretical average in 2023.
"The way the allocation works is that, once the airspeed reaches more than five metres per second, it is classified as a run," says Anderson. "The number of runs is the thing that is limited, rather than the length of a run. But the more runs you can do, the more parts you can test.
"With their additional penalty applied, this means that Red Bull’s total number of wind tunnel runs has been reduced for 2023 from 224 to 201 or 202, and their CFD items total going from 1400 to 1260. For comparison, if Ferrari and Mercedes finish second and third behind Red Bull they will get 240 and 256 wind tunnel runs and 1500 and 1600 CFD items respectively. So it will affect Red Bull, certainly.
"Horner has said that this aero development penalty could cost them between 0.25sec and 0.5sec of lap time but it is his job to say that. In reality, working out what it will cost them is totally unquantifiable and the outcome could even be invisible.
"In any case, Red Bull are better placed than any team to absorb this. They have the cash to pay the fine and they have the talent in the company to absorb the aero penalty.
"The old school way in which Adrian Newey works also helps. He still draws everything on a drawing board in two dimensions, as opposed to most others who work in three dimensions on a Cad system. Doing it this way means you have to visualise and think in three dimensions - this is crucial for the entire understanding of how a part or your car in general works.
"Red Bull seem to have a better understanding of the aerodynamics of their car compared to their rivals," says Anderson. "The results over the season have shown us that. They already have the fastest car and the work for next year’s car will already be well advanced, so falling back next year should not be a huge concern.
"As much as they do not like it, REd Bull can plan for this with all their resources and knowledge. It is a big reduction in development time, but hardly unheard of. Ferrari, for instance, finished sixth in 2020 and third in 2021, which means their allocation went from 102.5 per cent to 80 per cent from one year to the next.
"Losing wind tunnel time is never good because you have less time to find better solutions, but it may force them into a situation where, if they use their time correctly, they will understand the car better. This will help them so that when they do make their wind tunnel development components there is a better chance of them functioning. Ultimately, they will need to think laterally about how they use their CFD items and wind tunnel time."
As for Horner's claim that the team's windtunnel is antiquated, again Anderson disagrees.
"When I was at Jaguar in the early 2000s we looked at this facility with a view to taking it over," he says. "We did not in the end but it was quite a good tunnel.
"It needed bringing up to date but Red Bull did this when they bought it. They did not just walk into this old aerospace building and fire it up. They spent time and a lot of money on it.
"The fact that it is a big and old building also makes it very good at heat control. Managing temperature is crucial in a wind tunnel if you are to understand your numbers.
"Although they are planning to build a new tunnel in Milton Keynes, it does not mean the current one is not up to scratch. They would not be using it if it was incapable of producing the quality of cars that Red Bull have in the past 15 years."
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