Ricciardo admits RB downgraded car with Spanish package

RB introduced a suite of new components for the Spanish Grand Prix where it endured a horrid weekend.

Ricciardo was the squad’s best-placed finisher in 15th while Yuki Tsunoda was only 19th at the chequered flag.

That contradicted the high hopes the team had for the new parts, which included a floor, rear wing, and engine cover.

With a tight turnaround between the Spanish and Austrian Grands Prix, RB engineers ran Ricciardo and Tsunoda in different spec machines at the Red Bull Ring in an attempt to get a handle on why the package didn’t deliver as expected.

That netted results, with the Australian finishing ninth in last Sunday’s race and confident his team has weeded out the troublesome components.

“For now, the experimenting is done and we have both cars on the same stuff this week. And honestly, it’s a mixture of new and old,” he explained.

One of the components that was questioned was the rear wing, which was seen to oscillate in Barcelona.

“That was one,” Ricciardo confessed of the issues the team identified.

“It wasn’t just that, but because we brought quite a bit to Barcelona, some good things, some not.

“I would say, honestly, it’s probably like half, like straight down the middle, of new and old, so we at least have more confidence coming into this weekend that we’ve got currently our best package.”

That aspects of the package failed to produce the expected outcome is a cause for concern.

With testing all but banned in F1, designers create new components using a combination of CFD (computational fluid dynamics) and wind tunnel testing before bolting the new part onto the car.

Work then goes in to validate the real-world result versus the expected outcome. A disconnect in that process typically signifies a correlation issue, which can quickly erode engineering confidence and compromise future development.

“It’s not unlikely to have some downgrades through the season, they’re not, unfortunately, all upgrades,” Ricciardo argued.

“But up until that point, I felt everything we were putting on the car worked and was giving us performance.

“It’s not that ‘Oh, it didn’t work,’ it’s also okay understanding why it didn’t work so that what we bring moving forward is going to benefit us.

“So yeah, a little bit of understanding to take place, but at least with what we have [we’re] confident that we now have currently the best parts on the car.”