Sublime_FA11C wrote:Actuallly Ferrari tend to be the worst at adapting to new regulations. Unless they have a brilliant person in the team such as Brawn or Schumacher and even then there's hiccups. Ever since 09 their cars have never quite been on the money and some were very poor. And in 09 it was Brawn that got it right out of the gate and Newey who had to work and refine before Red Bull ascended towards the end of the season.
But back when they managed to end their looong dry streak and win a title Ferrari did rewrite the book of F1 domination. Some Neweys cars during that time were not quite there but often McLaren was the team to chase the Ferrari, it's just that Ferrari galloped away early on and was untouchable by mid season. One of the people blamed for this was Newey because his machines could be "too fancy" or too tricky to get setup right in time despite having the pace in them. Somewhere.
I would suggest that part of the reason for that was that, whilst Newey may have concentrated on producing the outright fastest car possible, Byrne and his design team at Ferrari tended to concentrate on the fastest usable car that he could produce.
One example of that might be their attitude to exhaust placement - Ferrari were one of the earliest to switch to periscope exhausts, back in 1998, when they found that, although the inability to use the exhaust gasses to seal the diffuser resulted in a loss in downforce, the shorter exhausts could be tuned for improved engine performance and the much tighter rear bodywork that could be developed by routing the exhausts upwards offset the loss of downforce from exhaust blowing. There was also the advantage that the amount of downforce produced was not as throttle sensitive as in the blown diffuser scenario, so the driver would not have to deal with a shifting handling balance as the rear downforce fluctuated.
It wasn't until 2002 that Newey eventually followed suit, despite Hakkinen and Coulthard complaining for years that Newey's exhaust blowing scheme was upsetting the handling of the car and made it hard for them to maximise its potential. Even then, Newey only made the change because Mercedes-Ilmor had developed a new engine where it was no longer possible for him to blow the diffuser as the exhausts were now different.
As you say, at the moment Red Bull have structured their team in a way that allows Newey to develop the cars in the way he likes, and the design team is quite well rounded overall. That said, equally the team are a little lucky that their rivals have tended to screw up a little, such as with Mercedes's persistent tyre problems or McLaren's inability to produce a reliable, quick car right out of the box (either they develop into a strong car, but are having to chase a large deficit, or, as in 2012, they have a quick car to begin with but reliability and strategic errors wrecked their hopes).
Looking at 2014, though, Mercedes might be a slight threat to Red Bull because Pirelli have indicated that, due to the much higher torque output of the new turbo engines, the change in weight distribution and the need for the teams to adapt to the new regulations, that they intend to produce a much more conservative tyre for 2014. If that is the case, then Mercedes might no longer be quite so badly handicapped by tyre wear problems as they are now, although whether their aero package can be competitive enough (I assume that the Mercedes engine will still be reasonably competitive and not that much of a performance differentiator) remains to be seen.
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