ERS Limitation in Honda engine is keeping Red Bull inferior to Mercedes; Max Verstappen conceded the second position to Valtteri Bottas.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen had an intense battle with Valtteri Bottas during the Styrian GP, but in the end, conceded his lead to the latter in the straight run.
According to the analysis published by the Formula 1 website, Red Bull’s weaker ERS is holding them back against the rivals Mercedes, who are leading the charts with another win in Austria.
The circuit is Austria demands highly from the ERS system, since there are long straight stretches without too many turns, the energy of breaking is not absorbed, thus it is not possible to charge the ERS continuously.
Therefore, it is not possible to use it throughout the lap, which could have given more horsepower. In this case, the Honda engine had the exact limitation in the race.
Whereas, Mercedes’ ERS is touted to be much more efficient in this respect, which means that the engine keeps going while the Honda engine runs into the max in terms of available capacity.
Hence, in the speed traps, Mercedes was having an advantage over Verstappen, which made him settle in the third position. Luckily, there are only a few circuits in the season, where ERS plays such a crucial factor.
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Other factors apart from ERS
Reportedly, Red Bull has deliberately not allowed its cars to continuously use ERS, whereas Mercedes has given more allowance. But the Austrian outfit compensates for it with less downforce, which is there to compensate the above-mentioned deficit.
Apart from this, Verstappen took damage aero damage with the front being loose and a DRS advantage also gave crucial pace to Bottas to surpass the Dutch driver.
