tamalon55 wrote:
I'm not saying this is wrong, but several recent posts in a couple of threads got me thinking. Forgive me Lunatic, I'm not calling you out specifically but wanted to tie in my response with this line of thinking.
Many say that a car (not just Red Bull) is designed around a particular driver. As in: "Driver 1 isn't going fast enough so we're going to design it to make Driver 1 faster, no matter what happens to Driver 2." I think there is more to it than that. I'll use RBR and their two drivers as an example:
Let's say that a perfect laptime for the base car (RB8) is 1:30:00.
If the engineers decide to make a change (RB8 version B) that suits Webber , he might run a 1:29:50 compared to Vettel's 1:29:70. Webber is faster than his teammate by 2 tenths, and 5 tenths faster than the base car.
If the engineers make a different change (RB8 version C) that suits Vettel, he might run a 1:29:00 versus Webber's 1:29:20. Vettel is 2 tenths faster than his teammate, and more importantly 1 full second faster than the base car.
Why would the team choose to use the slower overall option? All other things being equal (reliability, etc), if they are chasing faster cars at the beginning of the season, why would they not choose the setup (RB8-C) that made their car 1 second a lap faster in one of their driver's hands? Overall both their cars are faster, so they are thinking as constructors, yes?
They would go for the RB8-C IMO going by that logic. When you think about it, the car for Red Bull will always be head towards Vettel's direction because that's where Red Bull will get most of their downforce - the blown diffuser - which in turn will always favor Vettel due to his driving style. CH has said multiple times before a season they will build the car around Vettel but that's not unexpected.
The problem with Webber as I mentioned in another thread is that even though he was a match for Vettel in qualifying this year, his problem is consistency on Sundays and this has always been his problem. If he fixes this, he will be a genuine title contender each year. He is always be behind because:
a) poor starts
b) tilke tracks
c) reliability problems throughout the weekend (how many times do you hear the radio, mark you have no kers)
d) poor strategy
e) webber's driving style being harder on the tires
f) just a general lack of pace
IMO Webber is a better driving during the re-fueling/Bridgestone era. He was just unlucky because:
a) the change in regulations didn't suit him
b) he had a faster team-mate in all the years he has been in f1
When you think about it, opinions would be completely different if Webber won the WDC in 2010 and ended up retiring while Vettel went on to win 2 WDCs afterwards. Webber's legacy could be an awesome WDC but now it's more considered a #2 in terms of Massa/Rubens (though I reckon Webber is faster than both). How times change...