Red Bull continues to be the dominant team in 2024, but its race performance was less convincing during last month’s Australian Grand Prix, in which Ferrari looked to take the lead.
The Melbourne race was marked by significant graining at the front, which would explain why Ferrari was so strong compared to Red Bull.
Max Verstappen’s early retirement meant it was much harder to make comparisons, but teammate Sergio Perez finished a distant fifth as Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc secured a one-two finish for the Scuderia.
Shanghai could be another place where Red Bull could find it more difficult to show the full potential of the RB20, with lower temperatures and uncertainty over the condition of the tarmac all factors that could see the tire graining phenomenon. to come back.
In the first sprint weekend of 2024, teams will only have one practice session to master their settings and will not have time to try all the tire compounds, so their understanding will be limited.
But Perez believes Melbourne’s experience means the Milton Keynes team are in a better position to mitigate the problem, which causes surface rubber to come loose and stick to the tread, causing a loss of grip .
“There’s so much uncertainty with the tarmac, it’s been five years since something happened here,” Perez said when asked whether or not graining could become an obstacle again for Red Bull.
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
“So it’ll be an interesting FP1 and we’ll see from there. Obviously it looks like a limited circuit up front, where we can potentially struggle a little bit more.”
“We learned a lot from Melbourne, we understand to some extent what we did there, so we have to stay optimistic.
“If we were to be in the same boat, I hope that with the things we’ve learned, we can have much better resilience to graining.”
Teammate Verstappen said Red Bull made setup changes before Melbourne qualifying that made his car feel better in the race, but his third-lap retirement prevented him from showing it.
However, he stressed that the technical layout in Shanghai is different enough from Albert Park to approach the weekend with too many preconceptions about Red Bull’s form.
“I think in Australia, Friday wasn’t ideal. Maybe Saturday morning wasn’t either, but we made a few changes to my car that I felt better with. Unfortunately, I couldn’t show it,” he said.
“I don’t think Australia is the same as here. Australia had much faster turns. Here there’s a little more low gear, so it’s a little different. We just have to wait and see, really.
Red Bull continues to be the dominant team in 2024, but its race performance was less convincing during last month’s Australian Grand Prix, in which Ferrari looked to take the lead.
The Melbourne race was marked by significant graining at the front, which would explain why Ferrari was so strong compared to Red Bull.
Max Verstappen’s early retirement meant it was much harder to make comparisons, but teammate Sergio Perez finished a distant fifth as Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc secured a one-two finish for the Scuderia.
Shanghai could be another place where Red Bull could find it more difficult to show the full potential of the RB20, with lower temperatures and uncertainty over the condition of the tarmac all factors that could see the tire graining phenomenon. to come back.
In the first sprint weekend of 2024, teams will only have one practice session to master their settings and will not have time to try all the tire compounds, so their understanding will be limited.
But Perez believes Melbourne’s experience means the Milton Keynes team are in a better position to mitigate the problem, which causes surface rubber to come loose and stick to the tread, causing a loss of grip .
“There’s so much uncertainty with the tarmac, it’s been five years since something happened here,” Perez said when asked whether or not graining could become an obstacle again for Red Bull.
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
“So it’ll be an interesting FP1 and we’ll see from there. Obviously it looks like a limited circuit up front, where we can potentially struggle a little bit more.”
“We learned a lot from Melbourne, we understand to some extent what we did there, so we have to stay optimistic.
“If we were to be in the same boat, I hope that with the things we’ve learned, we can have much better resilience to graining.”
Teammate Verstappen said Red Bull made setup changes before Melbourne qualifying that made his car feel better in the race, but his third-lap retirement prevented him from showing it.
However, he stressed that the technical layout in Shanghai is different enough from Albert Park to approach the weekend with too many preconceptions about Red Bull’s form.
“I think in Australia, Friday wasn’t ideal. Maybe Saturday morning wasn’t either, but we made a few changes to my car that I felt better with. Unfortunately, I couldn’t show it,” he said.
“I don’t think Australia is the same as here. Australia had much faster turns. Here there’s a little more low gear, so it’s a little different. We just have to wait and see, really.