This post was contributed by Henk Ormel, who has been a much beloved member of our community at Wheel Sports and an incredibly insightful eye for feedback on technical matters.
The impression exists that the RB19 is an improved RB18. However the RB19 produces its downforce completely different to the RB18. At the RB18 started to appear rake after round 4, the Spanish GP. This was after the first major updates. During the season the rake got more pronounced. No other car had such a high ride height at the rear. At speed the rake disappeared and the underfloor stalled. It seemed the RB18 had a non-lineair progressive rear suspension. At speed the downforce produced by the rear wing and beamwing was sufficient to keep the car squatted down even with the DRS flap opened.
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The RB19 does something totally different. It sits stationary flat to the floor. When speed picks up the stance of the car does not change. In total it drops just a little just if the suspension pushes more firmly back at the downforce. This does look very odd actually it even looks like active suspension. What i think Red Bull is doing with the RB19 is gradually stalling the rear wing and beam wing with the increase in speed. The increase in downforce is in that case not square but almost lineair with the increase in speed. Almost the same is true for drag. A stalled aero surface does have drag but far less as an aero surface with attached airflow. This also explains the suspension compliance. The suspension doesn’t have to bear the total aero load (about 5 metric tonnes) with unstalled aero.
This is my opinion on what Mr. Newey came up with. The AMR23 does come out off the same mold as the RB18 aero-wise. The creator Dan Fallows did understand what Newey was doing last year. He did implement it in this year’s car.
