In the round-up: Red Bull’s chief technical officer Adrian Newey says the team can be proud it produced its most dominant car ever for 2022 despite the close championship fight it was in the year before.
RaceFans operates thanks in part to the support of its readers. In order to help fund the development and growth of the site please consider becoming a RaceFans Supporter.
For just £1 per month/£12 per year you will also be upgraded to an ad-free account. Sign up and find out more below:
In brief
RB18 ‘statistically our best car’ – Newey
Newey said the machine which won 17 of this year’s 22 races has to be regarded as Red Bull’s greatest so far, particularly given the circumstances of its development during 2021.
“Statistically, obviously, RB18 has been our best car,” he said in a video produced by the team. “It’s a car I think we can be very proud of in as much as we had a tight championship battle through ’21, obviously, so we kept developing the car well into the season.
“Of course, when you have limited resources, then if you’re putting research and development into that car, then that research and development you’re not putting into this brand new, very new car for the new regulations, which we knew were coming, obviously.”
Red Bull was later found to have exceeded the budget cap during the 2021 season, but the team has denied gaining any benefit by doing so.
Newey said they faced a “difficult balancing act” in prioritising the development of their current and new cars during 2021. “We focused on trying to get the fundamentals right, trying to get the package in the way that would including front and rear suspension, the layouts of the monocoque, the layouts of the radiators and so forth. So that we would have a package that hopefully, even if it didn’t start out as the quickest car, we could develop through the season.”
The team quickly got to grips with its initial problems with the car, he said. “In the pre-season testing, we were a little bit worried before we got there. We had already done a little bit of research and knew roughly what we need to do to improve it.
“So when we put the race one package on in Bahrain just before the race, then that catapulted us from definitely behind Ferrari to broadly level, let’s say. The car definitely had some weaknesses in the first half of the season, we still have some weaknesses of course, but we reduced those weaknesses, and certainly by the second half we had a fully competitive package.”
Horner ‘turned down Ferrari role’
Ferrari approached Christian Horner when it was seeking a replacement for Mattia Binotto as team principal for 2023, according to the Daily Mail.
The long-time team principal of Red Bull guided his team to both world championship titles in Formula 1 this year, bringing his total trophy haul with the team to 11 titles and 92 race wins.
Horner turned down Ferrari’s interest and the Scuderia instead opted for Frederic Vasseur, who will leave the equivalent position at Alfa Romeo to join Ferrari.
Before Vasseur was announced as Binotto’s replacement, Horner played down suggestions Ferrari had made an approach to him. “My commitment is very much with the Red Bull team,” he said. “I’ve been there since the beginning and we obviously have a very close attachment.”
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Maserati continue to lead Formula E testing
Single-seater returnee Maserati repeated their day one performance by topping both sessions on the second day of Formula E pre-season testing at Valencia.
Maximilian Guenther was fastest for the team by 0.359 seconds in the morning, heading DS Penske’s reigning champion Stoffel Vandoorne and Jaguar’s Mitch Evans.
It was the same top two in the afternoon, with a gap of 0.263s between Guenther and Vandoorne, with Nissan’s Norman Nato in third place.
Envision Racing’s Sebastien Buemi had a tricky day, only completing five laps in the morning and not setting a recorded lap time in the afternoon. NIO 333’s Dan Ticktum also failed to set a lap in the afternoon.
During the second session, a 24-lap race simulation took place.
FIA court rejects ACI’s appeal over Beganovic
The Automobile Club d’Italia has lost an appeal before the FIA’s International Court of Appeal (ICA) centred around the disqualification of Ferrari Driver Academy member Dino Beganovic from a race in June. The Prema racer went on to win the Formula Regional European championship despite being thrown out of the second race at Paul Ricard in June after his car failed post-race technical checks.
The disqualification was later overturned when Prema successfully appealed the penalty in the national court of appeal on September 9th, with the decision shared on September 30th. ACI, which organises FREC, notified the ICA 10 days later that it wanted to appeal that decision and so Beganovic was provisionally disqualified again until the court hearing.
But ACI was deemed to have not filed its intention to appeal in time, so the case was rejected by the ICA on procedural grounds. It ordered that ACI pay Prema’s legal fees and ruled that “the competent Sporting Authority to draw, as appropriate, the consequences of this ruling.
Beganovic is now set to regain the 18 points lost to the Paul Ricard penalty. His disqualification had no impact on the title fight as he he had already beaten Gabriele Mini to the crown by 40 points.