Formula 1: How the evolution fever Ferrari F1-75 and Red Bull RB18 will develop

Ferrari and Red Bull Racing followed a different strategy before matching their marginally similar performance at the last Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, where RBR’s Max Ferstappen’s win over Bahrain premiere winner Charleroi was counted by half a second reached.

Ferrari has chosen not to make any upgrades to the F1-75 from the moment it is presented until the third race of the season, as the top priority is to fully understand its new car and consequently make the best possible adjustment to bring it to the surface as much as possible of its dynamics. The only change was the slightly modified rear wing – with a slightly more sweep in the center – that he used on the Jeddah.

Instead, on the final day of winter testing (3/12) in Bahrain, RBR unveiled a high-performance upgrade package for the RB18 that made it significantly faster without presenting the Milton Keynes engineering team with any adjustment puzzles.

At the Australian Grand Prix, the 3rd round of this year in Formula 1, in the next three days (April 8th to 10th) neither team will present a significant upgrade of their car. RBR will certainly bring many important new components to Imola’s next Easter race, while the Scuderia – through its director Matthias Binotto – says the development of the F1-75 will be based on wise cost management, based on this year’s budget ($140 million Dollar). imposed on every sports team.

“It’s not a question of when we’ll be done, it’s a question of the budget limit. We have to make sure we don’t spend all our moneyus in the first races”stressed Binoto. “We don’t expect any significant improvements at the next race in Melbourne, but as soon as we can bring something, we will do it. We have to make sure we’re using the right tactics, because that can completely change the facts of the evolution battle.”

However, the Italian estimates that Ferrari is now as well-equipped for the evolutionary battle as RBR and Mercedes: “It’s a challenge to have a great year to stay at this level, not just for us but for all the teams. It is true that our competitors have a very strong pace of development. In 2017 and 18 we lost some ground. But since then we’ve improved our wind tunnel, our technologies, our processes and our simulations for car design, so today I’m much better prepared than I used to be to do a good job developing the car.he said.

As for Red Bull Racing, it seemed unable to match the pace of the Ferrari races at the first race of the year in Bahrain – performance issues notwithstanding, which forced it to double surrender in the last two laps.

At Jeddah, the British team successfully solved the reliability issues and by using lower aerodynamic settings – using the appropriate rear wings, as was the norm last year – gained a narrow but enough lead over Ferrari to win.

RBR has not indicated that Max Ferstappen and Sergio Perez will have some significant improvements to their cars in Melbourne, but that will change in the next race at Imola (24/4). For the first European race of the year, the team is looking to solve much of its main problem this year: weight.

Specifically, a new floor will be fitted to the RB18 – made lighter by a complete structural redesign – as well as modified suspension and body panels to allow the car to be presented at the Emilia Romagna circuit by 8 kg lighter. This reduction is said to give an F1 about 0.25 seconds per lap. And that’s just the beginning for the two teams clinching this year’s Formula 1 title.