Wednesday morning saw the launch of the eagerly anticipated Red Bull Racing RB6. As many F1 teams this year launch cars that bear more than a passing resemblance to the 2009 Red Bull chassis, all eyes were on Adrian Newey's masterpiece to see if he managed to develop his design yet further.
The Renault powered car was unveiled to the media at 8:30am local time (7:30am GMT), prior to taking to the track for today's F1 test in Jerez. As with previous launches this year, images of the new car leaked online in advance of the official launch.
Credit: Red Bull Racing
The new Red Bull RB6, featuring a heavily sculpted nose channel and revised front wing.
The car is being described by the team as an evolution of the RB5, and doesn't appear to offer anything out of the ordinary. Newey himself pointed out the team "have been able to design the rear suspension and gearbox with the double diffuser in mind".
Credit: Red Bull Racing
An alternate view of the new RB6.
Both Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber are sporting revised helmet designs for the new season. Webber's Arai helmet features largely similar colours to previous years, but adds an Australian emblem on the back. Vettel meanwhile has come out with a design that mimics the look of a can of Red Bull.
Credit: Red Bull Racing
Vettel's Red Bull can helmet, complete with list of ingredients and suggestions for recycling.
The styling of the helmet goes so far as to add a list of ingredients alongside a health warning. The top includes a large ring pull.
Credit: Red Bull Racing
The top of Sebastian Vettel's helmet shows lid of a Red Bull can including blue ring pull.
This post will be updated with pictures, video and information as it becomes available.
I have finally caught up with all the British GP podcasting goodness, but it has, in turn, made me a day behind on all things Wimbledon. Yesterday I watched a preview, today I hope to consume as much as possible to be back on track. Anyway, there are F1 things going on as well, you know:
The latest Paddock Life is available to read and as usual provides some great insight into what it's like being behind the scenes (BBC mole, please take note). I really like the recurrent use of the word "perhaps" when talking about Silverstone's last hurrah.
Bernie Ecclestone has come out with some fighting talk, suggesting that he's given so much of his life to F1, he won't let it fall apart. Quote: "My marriage broke up because of Formula 1, so I am not going to let things disintegrate over what is, in the end, basically nothing." Don't let FOTA hear you say it's nothing, though, eh?
Adrian Newey isn't letting his appearance on the podium on Sunday go to his head, stating that Red Bull had a good weekend but they quite as easily have a bad one next time round. Listen to the associated F1 Minute show here, and check out the Newey shaped F1 Big Picture as well.
Most of the other F1 news seems to be teams both hoping they'll make a big step forward and not getting their hopes up either. Can you really do both? Anyway, I will see you in the comments.
It's qualifying day at Le Mans, which means that today is a mini-Franck day (and anyone else who might be driving). Saturday/Sunday will be the big Franck weekend, so be prepared for some obsessive-ness over the weekend. For now, though, here's some F1 news to balance things out:
The Lotus company have come out and said they are not associated with the current entry for the 2010 season that is assuming the same name. They're contemplating legal proceedings, just like the Brabham family were as well. Why must people drag old names back to life if it is only going to cause problems? How about being a little creative and coming up with a new name?
Bernie Ecclestone has said he would also consider legal action against the manufacturers if they went ahead and started up their own breakaway series. Damon Hill has warned that if F1 went the same way as IRL, it would be a disaster. Will everyone involved sit up and take notice though?
Toro Rosso are to become the last team on the grid to bolt the double diffuser onto their car, although they suggest it is not as simple as that. Presumably, they could have just grabbed the info from Adrian Newey once he'd figured it out, so why has it taken them this long?
That'll do it for now. Please feel free to discuss your own thoughts and feelings in the daily post, that's what it's there for. I'll see you in the comments.
It's Free Practice day in Monaco today, and it's confusing me greatly, because I am not supposed to like Thursdays. Nevertheless, the action gets underway, and thank goodness for that! Here are some of the things we're talking about:
Red Bull have confirmed they will be running a new diffuser in Monaco, meaning that Adrian Newey has either been downing buckets of the energy drink, or he overstated things when he said it was going to be really tough to get on the car. Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing what effect it has on them.
Button has offered an insight into the differences between being at the front of the pack and the back, saying that now he's winning, it's all he thinks about and he's worried his girlfriend finds him boring. He says that when you're at the back, you want to get away from it all and do something interesting. I would have thought it was the other way round, so this fascinates me.
Jake Humphrey has given us some snippets of what's going to happen at the beginning of the Monaco coverage in his latest blog entry. He also says that waiting for Monaco is like waiting for Christmas Day for him.
That's all for now. Don't forget live commenting today, and pay attention so you can alter your Fantasy Racers teams tomorrow. I'll see you in the comments (in whichever thread we happen to be on at the time).
Yesterday was a surprising day in F1 land, as we saw Ferrari show improvements and make the same old mistakes. However, there were other things rumbling on outside of the Barcelona action that caught our eye:
We have now had Toyota, BMW and Raikkonen all suggest that if the 2010 regulations head they way they appear to be going then they might not make an appearance next season. Perhaps it is easy to say we could lose Kimi, as there are plenty of drivers waiting in the wings, but are there two big teams ready to step up to the budget cap plate?
Adrian Newey has spoken out again regarding the double decker diffuser and how hard it will be to get it to integrate with the Red Bull. Ollie has a great post about this over at Blog F1, although the title leaves little to the imagination!
We're still pondering the F1 Mole blog on the BBC, and how un-mole-ish it seems. Surely the idea of a mole-type blog is that one gets to the bottom of things, anonymously, and can therefore cover articles that other non-mole journalists cannot? This doesn't seem to bear any of those moley hallmarks, and we're wondering whether it should just be rebranded as another blog, rather than taking credit from the real moles.
That'll do it for today. We've got a race and much podcasting goodness to enjoy today, so hopefully we will see you at some point in the comments.
Welcome to F1 People - Series 2. This is the omnibus edition of the series, which was seven short shows originally released over seven consecutive days. Now they are all gathered up in one place for easy listening.
This is the first omnibus edition we've tried, the idea came from a suggestion on Facebook by Dave Monks. I'd love to have your feedback - is it useful to have the information presented this way, or is it just clogging up your feeds with the same shows twice? Also if you missed a mini series, do you think this would be a good way to catch up or are the seven separate shows easier?
Welcome to the penultimate episode of F1 People, a second series of seven short shows dedicated to profiling the important names in Formula 1. So far this series we’ve looked at both drivers, commentators, and the brains behind the car. Today we return to the latter subject, with Adrian Newey.
Adrian Newey was born on December 26th 1958 in Stratford-Upon-Avon, in the UK. He did not enjoy school, but worked hard enough to attend the University of Southampton. He gained a First Class honours degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics at the age of 22. His final thesis was on ground effects. Newey immediately joined the Fittipaldi Formula 1 team straight out of university and began working in motorsport. In 1981, he joined March and began to design the cars. His first was the March GTP sports car that won the GTP title two years in a row. Then he moved to March’s Indycar team, and worked on the 1984 car. Another successfully designed car took seven victories in its first year, and the title for the next two. Newey worked as both a designer and a race engineer, becoming close friends with his title winning driver Bobby Rahal.
Despite his success in the States, Newey wanted to return to F1, so he joined the FORCE team to try and revive their flagging prospects. The team withdrew at the end of 1986, and Newey returned to March as chief designer for their F1 team. He immediately began to innovate, finding the loopholes in the aerodynamic regulations, and striving for perfection across the car. When the March team became Leyton House, Newey was promoted to technical director, but relations did not stay so good for too long. Questions were asked whether his constant quest for complete aero efficiency was causing problems elsewhere, and whether this was the case or not, the team’s fortunes began to fall. They let Newey go in 1990.
He wasn’t out of work for long, however, as Patrick Head at Williams saw what a talent he was and signed him up. With many more resources available to him, and a like-minded technical partner in Patrick Head, the pairing flourished, and Williams became a success. They took two driver and constructors championships with Nigel Mansell and Alain Prost respectively.
In 1994, things started to go sour. The performance of the Williams dropped off and Benetton took full advantage to take the constructors lead, although they did eventually manage to pull back a third title. When the newly signed Ayrton Senna died that year, and legal investigations took place, the strain began to tell between Newey and his managers. He was ready to move on and be technical lead again, but the strong Williams/Head bond would never be broken. 1995 saw the team lose their consecutive title dominance, and by 1996, Newey was on gardening leave.
He joined McLaren the following year, and revived another old design to bring the team two titles over the next four years. He now had 10 titles from cars he had designed, and although the next few years saw dominance pass to Ferrari, no one questioned Newey’s abilities in the engineering field. In fact, his old friend Bobby Rahal, who was now managing the Jaguar F1 team, tried to persuade Newey to join them and turn around another struggling constructor. Newey was tempted, but ultimately stayed with Ron Dennis and McLaren. The embarrassment for Jaguar meant Rahal left the sport a few months later.
Towards the end of his career with McLaren, speculation mounted year on year over whether he would return to Williams or retire, but Newey signed with Red Bull Racing for 2006 – the team that used to be Jaguar. He remains there now, with the team a competitive mid-field runner.
Not content with being a mastermind in aerodynamics, Newey also likes to get behind the wheel. In 2007, he took part in the 24 Hours Le Mans race, finishing 22nd, but fourth in his class. Could do better, I suppose, but at least he can be happy in the knowledge that he’s one of the best designers in the sport.
Thanks for listening to today’s F1 People. We have only one more VIP to talk about but you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out who it is. Join me then for the last in this series of F1 People.
