Originally Posted by
ClaudiuCojo
I agree with the posts in here stating the RedBull made a massive leap with their chassis. If you look at the beginning of the year they were between 1-1.5s behind and I doubt that the Renault engine gained 1s over the year.
It's clear a lot of it came from aero & chassis and this shows that there is still a lot of time to be gained from the chassis & aero. Actually I think aero wise RedBull has the best car right now, they probably have around 0.5s deficit from engine alone and they are not that far away in the race so their chassis is superior this is the only logical conclusion.
The only redeming factor is that I doubt Renault will match Mercedes or Ferrari next year so we should still enjoy a healthy engine advantage next year, also this shows there is a lot more potential to be had from using a shorter wheelbase/high rake concept and this will probably be the focus next year also with Mercedes and since they have 0 experience designing such a car they may struggle at first which might be a big boost for us next year.
Of course this is pure speculation and Mercedes (a team with amazing talent and unlimited resources) might manage to dial their car from the get go and than it's gonna be about who get's it better, but I think RedBull will be a big threat next year and they might definitely be championship contenders so we need to raise our game big time both on the chassis but also on the PU side.
The priority should be the PU tough since I don't think we lag behind too much on the chassis (probably around ~ 0.2/0.3 tenths at best behind RedBull) while there is still quite a gap compared to the Mercedes PU (wild guess here but let's say where are probably behind by around 20 Hp from most sources). I think we need a big step over the winter to ensure we have equal tools to fight the Mercs next year - probably we need to gain somewhere in the vicinity of 40-50Hp (to account for whatever Mercedes improves over the winter as well) in order to have a realistic chance of engine parity next year.
Another interesting question is if Mercedes did indeed adhere to the new 0.9L oil burn limit with their latest spec engine or if they still use 1.2. If the latter is true then the gap is probably slightly inflated at the moment (since they will have to drop to 0.9 next year like everyone else) and this is probably the best case scenario for us but I'm not sure this is really the case.
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