Max Verstappen's dominant win at the Japanese Grand Prix showed that the F1 RB19's slump in Singapore a week earlier was only temporary, due to the track and chassis setup.
The 2023 Singapore Grand Prix marked the first time in 10 races that Verstappen did not win and Red Bull did not have a representative on the podium since the Brazilian Grand Prix - the penultimate round of F1 in the 2022 season. At the Marina Bay circuit on September 17, Verstappen finished fifth, while teammate Sergio Perez finished eighth, 21.441 seconds and 54.534 seconds behind the winner - Ferrari's Carlos Sainz.
Verstappen's RB19 on the Singapore street circuit on September 17. Photo: AP
But as the F1 world waited for a turning point, Red Bull restored order with Verstappen's convincing victory at the Japanese Grand Prix last weekend. At Suzuka, the reigning F1 champion showed the overwhelming power of the RB19 to win by 19.387 seconds over second-placed McLaren driver Lando Norris.
Red Bull's sudden decline in Singapore and subsequent spectacular comeback at Suzuka have shown how sensitive F1 cars are to their setup, especially their ride height. Current cars are taking advantage of the "Ground Effect" which accounts for a large proportion of the total downforce by lowering the lowest point of the floor as close to the ground as possible.
The ride height when the car is in the garage does not reflect the actual ride height on the track. Downforce is generally proportional to speed, as speed and downforce increase, the car’s suspension compresses and relaxes as speed decreases. In theory, engineers will set the ride height as low as possible to maximize downforce. But different tracks impose different limits on how low can be realistically achieved, depending on the design of the track.
There is also a significant restriction on ride height, in the form of underbody panels. This was introduced as part of the F1 safety revolution following Ayrton Senna’s fatal crash in 1994, to prevent teams from setting dangerously low ride heights.
According to the current technical regulations, the thickness of the underbody panels when measured perpendicularly must be 10 ± 0.2 mm. At the end of the race, the minimum accepted thickness of the panels is 9 mm due to wear and tear during the race. For most teams, the control by panels does not affect their minimum ground clearance, because to violate that level, even without the limiting panels, they would have encountered the unfavorable aerodynamic phenomenon "Porpoising".
Sketch of F1 car chassis seen from below.
The "Porpoising" phenomenon is an aerodynamic phenomenon that F1 cars begin to experience after applying the "Ground Effect" based on the Venturi tunnel effect. Accordingly, the air flow is sucked at high speed under the chassis when the car is running at high speed and creates a low pressure area that contributes to increasing downforce.
The problem is, as the car goes faster, the underbody tends to lose height. When the underbody gets too low, the airflow becomes congested and stagnant - meaning that the downforce, which is being created by the low-pressure area created by the air being sucked down, is reduced. The underbody then tends to move away from the ground. However, when the underbody is far enough away from the ground, the air rushes in and the car is pushed down again, and the process repeats itself. This phenomenon of uncontrolled downforce from the airflow under the car is humorously called the "dolphin effect" by racers.
At the start of the 2023 F1 season, the FIA revised the regulations by raising the minimum height from the floor to 15mm, after drivers complained that the "Porposing" phenomenon was too large and unsafe. At that time, Lewis Hamilton complained that he could not control the car when entering high-speed corners on the Baku circuit in Azerbaijan. Increasing the car's ground clearance has caused cars, especially Mercedes, to seriously reduce their downforce.
But Red Bull's RB19 operates differently to its rivals . Part of the RB19's aerodynamic advantage comes from taking full advantage of the Venturi effect with a suspension design that allows the RB19 to run lower than its rivals while still allowing the airflow under the car to stabilize and avoid "Porpoising".
At Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium, where the combination of high speed and downforce is greatest on the circuit at Eau Rouge, teams often have to set their cars higher than usual. Red Bull had to instruct Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez to slow down at the high-risk spots so that the underbody boards wouldn’t touch the ground too much. That way, they could keep the RB19 relatively low, and they ended up with a good time for the rest of the race.
The new floor design of the RB19 at Suzuka. Photo: F1.com
On the Baku and Monaco street circuits – where the rough surfaces require relatively high ground clearance – the Red Bull’s advantage over its rivals is less than on other circuits. Any track requiring high ground clearance will compromise the RB19’s power, making it difficult for the Red Bull to compete on short-corner circuits – as in most street circuits – as it puts the RB19 at a disadvantage due to overheating of the front tyres. As a result, Red Bull lost the starting position to Ferrari in Baku, while in Monaco Verstappen could only narrowly edge out Fernando Alonso in qualifying.
Coming to Singapore - considered the most fierce street race on the calendar, the high temperature and bumpy road surface forced Red Bull to set up the car with a softer suspension than usual to avoid disadvantages. In addition, the use of a new floor and diffuser design - which was not specifically researched for a race track like Singapore, caused more damage to the RB19.
In the pre-Singapore Grand Prix testing, the softer suspension proved to be incompatible with the new higher ride height, resulting in a poor RB19 lap time. In addition, to rule out the new floorpan, Red Bull reverted to the old floorpan and stiffened the suspension. With these two major changes, the RB19 was still 0.3 seconds behind Ferrari in the next test the day before the race.
In an attempt to move ahead in qualifying, Red Bull made further changes, including lowering the ride height. The changes proved disastrous, and both Red Bull drivers failed to qualify for third for the first time since the 2018 Russian Grand Prix.
The Red Bull seemed to lose a greater amount of downforce than the other cars as its ride height was forced to increase to accommodate the characteristics of the track. Just days after the Singapore Grand Prix, at Suzuka, a typically much flatter track, the Red Bull’s problems were quickly resolved and the RB19 was back to its usual form.
During the first test at Suzuka, Red Bull conducted a side-by-side test between two floor designs. Perez tested on the old floor that had been used at the official race in Singapore, and Verstappen on the new floor that had been temporarily scrapped after the first two tests in Singapore. Red Bull’s aim with this test was to confirm that the new floor was not the cause of the RB19’s poor performance in Singapore.
Verstappen won the Suzuka race on September 24. Photo: Red Bull
With the new floor, Verstappen quickly gained an advantage over his teammate in the first practice session at Suzuka. Therefore, the new floor was also installed on Perez's RB19 for the remaining time of the Japanese Grand Prix. The Mexican immediately achieved a significantly faster speed than when using the old floor. This fact confirmed that the RB19's decline in performance in Singapore was only temporary and related to the characteristics of the street track, but its inherent strength on the road is still intact.
The RB19's performance at Suzuka also proved that the TD18 and TD34 technical directives issued just before the Singapore Grand Prix did not reduce Red Bull's strength, but simply coincided with a track type that was not suitable for the RB19.
Minh Phuong
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