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RB11 looks good, but does it
have the engine to match?
Red Bull
Starts: 184
First GP: Australia 2005
Wins: 50
Poles: 57
Fastest laps: 44
2014 championship position: 2nd
“The car looks good enough, but F1 has
now become a power-unit formula, so will
the latest Renault engine be up to it?”
SEASON
he Red Bull is definitely a decent car,
but the engine package is still a worry.
During testing the car has looked solid
enough, but nothing special, so the
question is: what can Renault do?
It doesn’t seem that Renault is
completely confident that the winter
developments have paid off as they
should have done. It’s holding back some of its
upgrade tokens for use during the season, so I
can see Red Bull suffering for five or six races
while Renault makes up its mind. We don’t know
exactly when we will see the definitive 2015
specification, and that means you would expect
Red Bull to get stronger as the year goes on. While
that’s good in some ways, it also means that the
early months of the season will be very tough.
It’s hard to know what to make of Red Bull’s
direction though. After the years of winning
race after race with Sebastian Vettel, things went
wrong early last year, mainly with the Renault
engine. The car looks good enough, but F1 has
now become a power-unit formula, so will the
latest version of the Renault unit be up to it?
There’s been a lot of change at Red Bull. The
loss of Sebastian Vettel puts the spotlight more
onto Daniel Ricciardo, while Adrian Newey has
moved into a more part-time role with the F1
team. Well, you're either working for an F1 team
every second of the day, or you might as well not
be doing it at all. It’s clear that he’s not excited by
the narrow regulations or making the tiny changes
to front-wing endplates that count as development
today, so it could be bad news for the team.
Expect Red Bull to do well but, given the
power deficit, even matching last year’s three
wins could be quite a difficult task.
53
Red Bull-Renault RB11
Renault has worked hard
to catch Mercedes rivals
DANIEL RICCIARDO
3
25
Age:
Starts:
69
First GP:Great Britain 2011
Wins:
3
Best qualifying position: 2nd
Fastest laps:
1
2014 position:
3rd
DANIIL KVYAT
26
Age:
20
Starts:
19
First GP:
Australia 2014
Best finish:
9th
Best qualifying position: 5th
Fastest laps:
0
2014 position:
15th
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S BLOXHAM/LAT
PREVIEW
T
Horner is putting his
faith in the two Dans
He had a great 2014, but sometimes
it’s easier to perform well when there
isn’t the same level of expectation. He
started the year as a support act to a
four-time champion, but now Ricciardo
has to be the main man at a team that
expects to win. That doesn’t mean he
won’t have another great year, just that
the challenge he faces is different.
I thought Kvyat was very good last year.
Toro Rosso drivers are always difficult
to assess because the team has never
been very consistent, but there’s no
reason to doubt that he can do the
kind of job Ricciardo did. Kvyat is very
focused and knows when he’s done a
good job or a bad job; the question is
how he deals with the pressure.
MARCH 5 2015 AUTOSPORT.COM 53