Red Bull expects its 2022 F1 car to be “a lot quicker” in a straight-line

With its 2022 F1 car, the RB18, Red Bull no longer expects to suffer from one of its key weaknesses in recent years – straight-line speed. The team’s technical director Pierre Waché believes the new cars will be much faster on the straights, courtesy of lesser overbody drag compared to the outgoing generation.

Speaking in a post-season interview with F1insider, the Frenchman said:

“This generation of downforce is quite efficient, and this type of car should be a lot quicker on the straight at these levels of downforce. What they wanted to do is clearly to create and generate the downforce from the ground compared to before - where it was generated by the ground but also mainly by the front wing, rear wing and the body work.”

Since the start of the turbo-hybrid era, Red Bull has suffered from a significant deficit in straight-line speed compared to its major rivals, due to the lack of a powerful power unit.

While Honda has been able to somewhat bridge the gap in recent years, Mercedes still reigned supreme much of the time, as evidenced by Lewis Hamilton’s dominant performance in Brazil last year.

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New regs could negate Red Bull’s traditional power deficit to Mercedes

The new technical regulations are some of the biggest generational overhauls in F1 history and mainly focus on aerodynamics. Deliberately crafted by the FOM’s technical arm in close co-operation with the FIA, the regulations prioritize the cars' ability to closely follow each other at all speeds over everything else.

To ensure that, the new regs ban almost every overbody aero device that can be used to create significant downforce, and instead forces teams to generate the vast majority of downforce from the car’s underside using “ground-effect”.

This means the new cars should be capable of better and closer racing compared to the last few generations of F1 cars, which have had a reputation for being unable to overtake without external assists such as DRS (Drag Reduction System).

But more importantly, it should also mean that the new cars are significantly less draggy compared to last generation, potentially negating the marginal power differences between manufacturers.

Therefore, considering the imminent power unit freeze, more power deficit manufacturers such as Renault and Red Bull Powertrains/Honda won’t have significant disadvantage compared to the dominant Mercedes, or even Ferrari.