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2013 Team-by-Team Preview: Red Bull

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For a team that’s less than a decade old, Red Bull’s three straight Drivers and Constructors Championships courtesy of Sebastian Vettel is nothing short of a remarkable statistic and will cement the Milton Keynes-based outfit in the history books, the question is, however, can the team and Vettel deliver a fourth? Despite many questions and speculation over the sought-after knowledge of the current ‘pecking order’, only a fool or a hero would discount their chances over triumphing once again.

For Vettel, the 2012 Championship was his most hard-earned to date given that Red Bull were slow out of the blocks at the beginning of the season, suffering the most from the ban on blown exhausts. Vettel however, turning twenty-six in July, can only go from strength to strength and improve himself, last season for instance he demonstrated an improvement in his overtaking abilities as the season went on, previously a very grey area following on from collisions with his team-mate in Turkey and Jenson Button nearly three years ago.

Given his youth however, he is still prone to being a rather sore-loser when things are not going his way, even as recently as the Race of Champions prior to Christmas he crashed and stormed away from his car in a huff. More importantly, towards the end of last season in the closing races the German appeared to struggle with the pressure on his shoulders and the cool, calm, collected ‘mind games’ that Fernando Alonso was playing, despite the Spaniard’s Ferrari being vastly inferior. With the competition set to be as tight as ever, Vettel will need to keep his cool should he not find himself taking pole position after pole position, or leading from the front.

Up until the races following the British Grand Prix, Mark Webber was the man leading the Red Bull charge having won two races and scored consistent points finishes, however from this point onwards, where his contract was renewed for another season, the Australian’s fortunes took a nose-dive with various gearbox penalties and reliability gremlins. To top it all off, Webber came in for some heavy from the team’s infamous and outspoken Motorsport Chief Dr Helmut Marko, renown for making such clangers as comparing Vettel’s penalty for overtaking Jenson Button off-track in Germany with stealing cold chicken. Dr Marko’s comments over the winter were in the team’s own Red Bulletin magazine, wherein he claimed “Webber has on average two races per year where he is unbeatable” but “as soon as his prospects start to look good in the world championship, he has a little trouble with the pressure”. This is not the first time that Webber has been on the receiving end of Dr Marko’s bark, following on from Vettel colliding with him, whilst trying to overtake him for the lead, in Turkey back in 2010 the Australian was questionably blamed for the collision by Dr Marko. Webber however feels that this is simply because he isn’t part of his “agenda” in team, however his position is maintained thanks to his good relationship with Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz.

Naturally, Webber is a thick-skinned character and will be determined once again to get the measure of his triple World Champion team-mate, however you get the sense that no matter what he does, the cookie won’t crumble in his favour, even when he qualifies well he constantly bogs down at the start and ends up in the midfield, struggling to overtake cars quicker in a straight line. With the Australian approaching the age of thirty-seven, many pundits are speculating over Webber’s future and whether he will retire or be dropped in favour of either Toro Rosso driver or the rapidly ascending Antonio Felix Da Costa. With the drivers market silly season always in full swing these days, not only will these rumours persist season-long but it surely won’t be long before the rumours of Vettel joining Ferrari are re-ignited once again.

The new RB9 is an evolution of its Championship-winning predecessors, notwithstanding the ugly new splashes of purple on the sidepods that make it look like there was an accident in the paint shop involving a tin of purple paint, the noticeable differences between the new car and the RB8 is the inclusion of a partial vanity panel on the nose and a ‘letterbox opening’ on the step and the inclusion of a ‘monkey seat’ underneath the rear wing. With the start of the season just a week away the RB9 has continued to appear glued to the track in the quick corners and show excellent consistency in its longer runs, however it has been slowest of all in the speed trap set up along the start/finish straight at the Circuit de Catalunya. Whilst this is deliberate by Red Bull, with more time to be found in corners than down the straights, it could be their undoing this season with free usage of DRS now restricted in qualifying to just the DRS zones. This could potentially cost the team a vital tenth or two, meaning Vettel and Webber will be unable to exploit the car’s aerodynamic supremacy, opening up the DRS through the corners for a boost down the straights where they may have been able to in the past.

Whilst Mercedes were setting the lap charts alight at the final test, whether they were on fumes or not is an entirely different matter, you get the feeling that Red Bull weren’t in a rush or felt the need to show their hand at this stage, as they have often done in previous seasons, however they won’t have been the only team to not play their cards in the closing stages of the final test, however it’s only a matter of time before all the cards are shown, with less than a week to go until free practice gets underway in Australia.

References:

‘Mark Webber reacts to Red Bull chief Helmut Marko’s criticism’, Andrew Benson, BBC Sport, (29/01/2013, accessed: 10/03/2013),
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/21247141

‘New Red Bull slowest on the straight’, Editor, GP Today, (07/03/2013, accessed; 10/03/2013),
http://www.gptoday.com/full_story/view/443978/New_Red_Bull_slowest_on_the_straight/


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