NOW THAT WAS A CAR
The Red Bull RB6 took Sebastian Vettel to his first title, in 2010
NOW THAT WAS A CAR No. 60
During periods of regulatory stability, each new Formula 1 car tends to be a simple evolution of its predecessor. The Red Bull RB5 was the quickest machine in the second half of 2009, so the RB6 was naturally very similar. But there were two crucial differences.
The first stemmed from the ban on in-race refuelling for 2010. A much larger fuel tank, with a capacity of around 220 litres (compared to 90 litres in 2009), resulted in an increased wheelbase. And as Red Bull’s technical director Adrian Newey explained at the car’s launch, its influence was felt everywhere: “There’s more to it than simply putting a bigger fuel tank in the car,” he said. “It puts more load on the brakes, so the cooling has to cope with that. You also have to consider the effect that extra fuel will have on tyre degradation early in the race and if there’s anything we should change mechanically to cope with that.”
The second major change was that the RB5 hadn’t been penned with a double diffuser, so the team had been forced to retro-fit one to respond to the success of Brawn BGP 001. Things were very different over the winter of 2009/10, and Red Bull put a huge amount of focus on designing this specific area of the car. So much so, that the team ended up choosing to miss the first pre-season test at Valencia to give themselves an extra week working on the car in the factory.
When the RB6 was tested for the first time at Jerez, it was powered, like the RB5, by a Renault RS27 engine. But this had been by no means a given. The team had chased a deal to switch to Mercedes engines, only to have the move blocked by Mercedes partner Mclaren, who were able to veto any expansion of supply by the manufacturer.
By the third pre-season test, the car was proving to be seriously fast, with Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel both topping the timesheets for a day. There now lay ahead the very real prospect of a first Red Bull title. Pole position for Vettel at the season-opener in Bahrain added to that optimism.
Vettel missed out on the win when his pace was eroded by a spark plug problem; he limped home in fourth, with Webber eighth. Yet the true speed of the RB6 was never in question, and Newey admitted the car was a titan. “It was probably the car with the most downforce in the history of F1,” he said, “more even than the legendary spoiler cars of the 1980s. We
NOW THAT WAS A CAR No. 60