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[bigpat]

Watched the cars from mid-high speed Turn 14 to slow turn 15, my usual place for the past 4 years.

Driver wise, the bravery award belonged to Schuey, Nico, and Vitaly, Kamui, and the Virgin and HRT boys, whose cars looked evil going around there....

The Red Bull is planted to the track, simple. Is is extremely stable, particularly on turn in. You can physical see (and hear) them getting off the bake a touch earlier and carrying higher apex speed. Their superior corner speed isn't as obvious as last year's rocket ship. Though it was very easy to pick Vettel's pole winning lap, it was phenomenal to watch as he went past....

The Saubers looked very consistent from lap to lap, and in general looked tidy. Same for Williams.

The 'black' Renaults were also impressive, as were the Mclarens. The Ferraris looked good under brakes, and appeared to have good mechanical grip. The traction among Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren, & Renault looked ( and sounded) similar, better corner speed of the RB7's was what set them apart.

With all the work on exhausts this year, there are very different sounding cars out there.

The most ear piercing note has to go to the 'green' Lotus Renaults. The black ones have a very crisp note, and have a distinctive gurgle at part throttle. The Mercedes have a very flat 'fart' noise on over-run, Mclarens not as distinct. Force India, have same engine, but normal sounding over-run.

Downforce is king in this game, and Virgin and HRT definitely lack it, as their drivers looked slower through T14, and when they looked to really lean on the car, they were clearly working the wheel very hard, and using ALL the kerb, to hustle through the corner.

Once again, Red Bull have a front wing that passes the FIA tests, but droops ( and pivots nose down) markedly on track. The do have some very clever composite engineers at Red Bull.....

[What's Burning?]

Once again, Red Bull have a front wing that passes the FIA tests, but droops ( and pivots nose down) markedly on track. The do have some very clever composite engineers at Red Bull.....

It's cool to get a first hand observation, especially of the back markers. I guess you can tell a lot about a car just by looking at it as compared to the competition simply as to how solid they look in a particularly important corner.

Spankyham posted something yesterday about the RB nose that I'm going to try and read a bit on now that I'm on a computer, but from the pic it looks like it's the nose flexing down instead of the actual wing flexing. The thing with that is that is seems that the difficulty in copying it is the compound used, once that's done I think Red Bull will go from 8 tenths back down to 4 tenths ahead in Qualifying.

[bigpat]

Agree when the rest find how its done, its game on. The hardest part unlike other changes is that you can't physically see what makes it different. I would think it has to due with the carbon cloth orientation in the layup.

I also have a suspicion Red Bull are exploiting how the wing is tested: 100 kg load on ONE SIDE AT A TIME. Would be interesting if it was applied to both at once. Of course the wing produces hundreds of kg more in downforce. I haven't put it all together in my head yet, but I think there is something in the interpretation......