Max Verstappen stole another pole position under the nose of McLaren, because the Dutch must have wiped each last drop of performance of its RB21 under the lights of the street track Jeddah.
It is a circuit that requires that you live on an edge of the knife, which is made more difficult by the features of the Red Bull of this year, which the team works hard to compose but for which only light relief has apparently been found.
More on the way …
Red Bull would prepare to introduce a larger series of updates for the RB21 around Imola, but, in the meantime, they arrived in Saudi Arabia with a handful of new parts to help improve the capabilities of the RB21 around the difficult street circuit.
The first was to help increase temperatures, the team introducing an enlarged rear cooling outlet, as seen in the image above. They twinned this with the same large, more extreme and more extreme wuffped cooling panel on the engine cover that was used in Bahrain, both used as a means of controlling the temperatures of the electric unit and keeping its ancrats under control.
The other change announced in the car presentation document, before the planned race, was a revised arrangement of the beam wings with a single element. The element, which is attached to the side of the structure of the crash, has less chords and a reduced bodywork compared to the other options they have in their pool.
This may seem in disagreement compared to some of their rivals, which have chosen to introduce new lower rear wing solutions for the challenges posed by the Jeddah Street circuit. However, they had another thing in their round, which they did not need to announce, because it is more an ad hoc solution, with the modification made to the circuit, rather than requiring new parts.
The upper corner of the peak section on the RB21 was cut on the two cars, because the team assessed if it would increase performance and perhaps help balance the car in a more favorable way to their drivers.
The section in question has clearly been made in this spirit, because carbon fiber can be cut without exposing the internal structure, allowing the team a certain scope to reduce the aerodynamic production of the car, because there will be a tangible reduction in the support force and the drag due to the impact it has on the peak whirlwind.
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The relentless quest for performances also requires teams to go out of the beaten track when collecting information and data on car performance, the team having developed a single camera pods arrangement for use during free training sessions in Saudi Arabia.
The shape of the pods, mounted on each side of the air box, seem to position the cameras so that the front tires can be watched more effectively, whether with a high speed camera to better understand the deformation of the tires, or with an infrared camera to acquire new knowledge on how tire temperatures evolve during the course or a round or the relay.
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