Red Bull off to a good start... Think again

[Toronto]

This isn't a news update, so don't think the team got robbed of 40,000,000 or somthing.

It is just that all my friends and people around me are saying that red bull is doing so well, and will be above mid-pack.

I just have to say, they will be mid-pack or bottom of the list. In the first race MS was out, one merc, one bmw, and a bar. add them up and you got 4 spots down that red bull can drop in a race.

Was it luck, or are they a good team?
anyone has any other ideas?

[antonioledesma]

ok.... ferrari undoubtely will be at the top with renault, williams, bar and mclaren (I wish), so those teams fill up the first 5 places.
as always minardi will be competing with jordan for the last place
that leaves us with toyota, RB and sauber (I wrote all the teams?)
and these will compete for the midpack. Sauber has the 2005 ferrari (or I'm wrong?) and will be a very quick car not counting the aeropack from sauber

toyota with it's huge budget must be getting something right now. And RB... I don't know, they showed something and the cosworth engine was always a rather good engine.
maybe it's time for me to sleep...
:|

[saadie]

umm .. i would say they were lucky ... so was fisichella in a way ....
i guess because of the new pathetic trye, qualifying, and the car change rule .. the teams didnt really get used to them ... so the weaker teams took advantage of it .. thats why the positions were unexpected ...

[Sydbom]

the new tyre rules and this track that is hard to overtake on made the race this way. no one want to take to big chances on the first race they need the info from this race to know how much they can push the next time.
and barrichello was up there and so will MS be next race.
it was just that rain that stopped him, but sure, usually if MS starts in the back he will pass 90% of the field before the race is over but this time the track and tyres stopped him. and why did he do that stupid manouver to heidfeld? it just shows that his disrespect for other drivers is still there after all these years and that others shouldnt dare trying overtaking HIM, because then they will pay for it...

well i really hope Kimi and montoya kicks ass this season!

[T5]

This is a dificult question....
But i don´t think Red Bull can aspire to be above mid-pack,because drivers in F1 depend on car and the car is not that good in my opinion...:|
Let´s wait and see what happens.

[ZfrkS62]

i think the only luck in the RB team fell on DC. I think the lower point paying places is about where we can expect to see this team if they make it above mid-field.

[mindgam3]

They have got real pace and have shown it....

They'll have their moments but mid field is where they will be at the end of the season.... No doubt its definately a improved car over last years jag though and ford will be shooting themselves for not continuing

[tekwar]

They benefitted from the lottery weather qualifying. Not taking back anything from David. But they were clearly slower than the top runners and just holding them up. And being that the Melbourne circuit is so hard to overtake, it helped them a lot. David did do a good job though no doubt, but I do not see this happening often. They will be scoring a few points at best in my opinion in each race.

[irrational_i]

I do not fully agree. I agree that they are definitely midfield but I do not quite agree that BMW and BAR are superior.
Usually a careful look at the in-car shots will show how unstable a car is. Just look at Minardi and Jordan.

I thought the Red Bull looked very stable and smooth. It is definitely an improvement in the Jaguar! That said - Coulthard's eperience should count, but he was fighting with Webber all the way. The Cosworth engine power helped a lot. I am not convinced that they are worse than Sauber or even BAR. I think they will definitely beat sauber.

Another thing that seemed to be ignored by many people is how well the Toyota kept up with the Renault initially. We now know it suffered from blisters. So they seem to have improved to strong midfield too (from weak midfield).

All in all I think Red Bull can expect points but not often more than 6th place unless something strange happens.

So team wise I think the teams in rough order currently are (Group 1)Mclaren, Renault, Ferrari,(Group 2)Williams, BAR, Red Bull, Toyota,Sauber,(Group 3)Jordan, Minardi. Similar to end last year with somewhat rough group edges.

And remember I am not taking drivers into account - I am talking about the cars themselves.

On another note - this makes an interesting read http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_news_item.php?fes_art_id=23731

[possessed_beaver]

my take on it was redbull will need to replace it's engine next race, because it was used to hard in australia.

all the other teams were being more conservative with there engine use.
so they would go better with the next race.. should be intresting..

atleast Ferrari diden't win

[coombsie66]

IMO Cosworth has had to develop 'reliable' engines (more long term than other high budget engine manufacturers) for many of the teams they have supplied for some time. They have managed to increase thier power outputs too. I can see that other engines on the grid have been de-tuned to allow them to last the two race weekends meaning that the cossie power plant is now proving competitive.
And how the hell anyone can say that the red bull performance was a fluke is beyond me.
Coulthard was lapping dead on the pace for the majority of the race, he had a good start yes, but he was setting a competitive pace all the race. That doesnt suddenly go away, i hope they continue to develop the car as will the other teams, so they remain competitive this year, i see no reason that they wont with the large budget available now.

[tekwar]

There many times in the race where both the red bull cars were holding up a train of cars behind them. The first part of the race before the pits coulthard had behind him webber, montoya and rubens. The same with klien who had cars packed in neatly behind him as well. Now no doubt the cosworth is no pushover, but my opinion is that they are just fast enough not to be overtaken. Its all about track position in melbourne. Thats my two cents.

[phantomfocus]

You can't deny the excellent drive put forth by Coulthard. If you compare it to that of Klein, there was no comparison. Unfortounatly I think this race was a bad guage of how the season will truly unfold. Because of Friday's quailifing session, everything was out of place. Not taking anything away from Giancarlo, he drove a fantastic race. But with the way Coulthard has consistantly shown he inability to lay down a quick lap on the one lap qualifying runs, I don't see the Red Bulls starting as high as they did in Melbourne, unless we encounter similar circumstances. With passing as difficult as it is now, Coulthard was able to hold on for a great deal of time. (He wasn't exactly running away from Webber) I think they have the potential to be an upper middle team, especially when you can most likely expect better efforts from BAR. It's going to be difficult for them to consistaly score points, espicallly with both cars.

[ZfrkS62]

Not taking anything away from Giancarlo, he drove a fantastic race


He drove a Superb race. If Flavio can get him to focus and get himself organised for the whole season, i think Giancarlo might be able to single handedly make Ferrari sweat bullets :wink: But that just depends on wether he can remain focused

[SPEEDCORE]

They have plenty of money to spend. My hotel was across the water from the redbull launch party, they spent $2mill!! we werent invited :cry:

I dont see them doing any better then what they did as Jag, they were just lucky during qualifying. Still the ITV 2005 Review showed DC is having fun at the team. These new rules with engines should be interesting with relibility and I can see teams like RedBull getting stuck.

[zondaland]

I at first thought that the Red Bull were doing an amazing job. However over the last couple of days I have started to think about just how impressive they have been. I would say that they have just finally had the reliability that they should have had in 03 and 04. For both of these seasons the car showed tremendous pace in the early race however also showed horrendous reliability, obviously the team learnt from this. This could be seen by the very early introduction of the new rear end for the team to do as much testing on it as possible. I expect that in the upcoming races they will drop off, also as Webber has now left (I'm not a biased Aussie at all) they will move further backwards. The loss of Pitchforth is a major blow for the team imo.

However they do now have their new wind tunnel on line, potentially this will lead to a major improvement, I also understand that they can start doing transient aero testing with this tunnel. While in the long term this will be an advantage there is the potential for them to lose their way badly in the short term.

It will be interesting to see how much development they can do on the car through the year. With an increased budget hopefully they can keep their pace up through the year.

[zondaland]

Compared to what Jaguar did last year Red Bull has done an amazing job. Remember that they really didn't do much development to the car, so we can maybe expect results only starting next year.

My understanding is that even through all the uncertainty with future ownership the team continued to go through their normal program of development for the new car. As such I dont think you can say that they are very far behind where Jaguar would be if they were competing this year (in terms of development time and resources).