Red Bull Racing is jumping on board the F-duct bandwagon, team principal Christian Horner says.
And, as I suggested here, I have to wonder: Is that a wise move?
Autosport has the Q and A with Red Bull’s chief here. It covers a number of interesting items, but I think the F-duct is the big one at this point.
I just can’t help but think that the Red Bull ain’t broke, so why fix it?
The obvious answer is: As Ferrari and McLaren and Mercedes all perfect a version of the F-duct, perhaps Red Bull’s dominant form will fly away in the dirty air.
What I really would love to hear, if anyone feels they can make a stab at guessing, is whether adding an F-duct could wreck the precision of the Red Bull. I suppose, if it did, the team just wouldn’t use it. But… well, as Horner says, you only have so much money to go around:
We are aiming to have a look at it over the next couple of races. It will only be added to the car once it has earned its position on the car – so we will have a look at it in Turkey and see where it goes.
We made a decision prior to Barcelona that we would focus on the update rather than the F-duct because it does consume resources, and when you have a finite amount of resource in a team of our size, you do have to pick and choose what you want to focus on. We decided that in terms of priority we would get the Barcelona upgrade and then the next step would be the F-duct – and that is the way around we have tried to introduce it.
Speed TV in America during the Monaco Grand Priz essentially said that Mark Webber had signed a contract extension with the team. Horner doesn’t specifically dispute that, but his comments effectively deny it:
We are very happy with the way that Mark is performing. He is an important member of our team and he has got to a stage where, at 33 years of age, we said let’s take one year at a time – rather than signing some long-winded agreement.
It is all down to relationships and how he feels at the end of the day. He is driving fantastically well, he is a very valued member of the team, so when the time comes to sit down and talk about contracts I am sure it will be a very short conversation.
I know there are rumors of Webber heading to Ferrari… it’s hard to imagine his stock being any higher than it is now. Although, the way the Red Bull cars are at high speed tracks, maybe he still could get “hotter” after Turkey?
The intra-team battle between Webber and Sebastian Vettel is just on the verge of being the storyline for the rest of the season.
