Max Verstappen and the Red Bull team will present the car with which they will defend the world title in Formula 1 on Wednesday. However, it is highly questionable how representative this is for the actual car that Verstappen will race with.
“The teams don’t want to give too much away,” explains L1’s Formula 1 analyst Xavier Maassen. “Even in the first days of testing, they try not to reveal the tricks they have found in the regulations to the other teams.”
Dimensions
After all, the Formula 1 regulations have undergone a significant overhaul, as a result of which the F1 cars of 2022 will differ considerably on the inside and the outside from the cars of 2021. For example, the dimensions of the wings, the air intakes and the tires.
stretch
Especially now that these parts have been redeveloped by every team, they want to prevent competitors from taking over their findings. “It is often difficult to copy things from another team, but some things are very easy to copy,” says Maassen. “And so the teams try to stretch everything as long as possible. As a rival you can get the inspiration from it to try things and see if it works in the wind tunnel.”
Surprising?
Therefore, there is a good chance that the cars presented in these weeks, such as the Red Bull on Wednesday, will not differ greatly from last season’s cars. On top of that, Verstappen’s team rarely changes drastically in appearance and color scheme. “If you see the cars from recent years, you know where the text ‘Red Bull’ and that bull are. Sometimes there are some surprises with other teams,” says Maassen.
It does happen that the F1 stables come up with a car with a special, one-off color scheme at a presentation. Red Bull has also done this regularly for promotional purposes.
Bahrain
The Formula 1 season will start in just over five weeks, on March 20, with the Bahrain GP. According to Maassen, we have to wait until that moment before any real conclusions can be drawn about the relationships between the teams on the track. “Normally you only see who has really got things in order and who has surrendered during qualifying for the first race.” In between, there are two more test weekends on the program.