Red Bull has had a dream 2023 season so far, winning all 12 races leading up to the summer break According to Lewis Hamilton, one of the main reasons behind this dominance has been the RB19’s highly effective DRS system. However, Red Bull’s technical director Pierre Waché has made it clear that Hamilton is wrong and that the whole strength of the car lies in its aerodynamics.
Red Bull has been unstoppable this season, completely dominating the rest of the grid. Max Verstappen, their star driver has been winning races with humongous time gaps to the others. As for Verstappen’s teammate Sergio Perez, his overall pace during the races has been impressive, even though his qualifying performances have been a bit questionable recently.
Hamilton believes that this has been possible because of the DRS system of the car, which when open, adds about 7-9 mph of speed to the car on the straights. Apparently, Red Bull’s DRS system is able to maximize the use of this and thus gains more speed than others. However, Waché is adamant that Hamilton is wrong.
Lewis Hamilton has his claims refuted by Red Bull Technical Director
Lewis Hamilton had quite a bit of evidence to back up his claims. In Saudi Arabia, the speed of Verstappen’s Red Bull was 311.9 km/h at the start-finish line compared to 307.9 km/h for Hamilton. When compared at the speed trap, Red Bull clocked in at 337.5 km/h compared to Hamilton’s 329.7 km/h.
Things changed up quite a bit in Hungary as the speed of both the teams were nearly similar at both the start-finish line and the speed traps. This is what led Hamilton to claim that Red Bull might have lost some of it’s DRS advantage as the season progressed.
However, according to Waché, their speed has nothing to do with the DRS. Talking to french news outlet L’Equipe, as quoted by Formulapassion.it, Waché said, “There is no magic in our DRS. It doesn’t even open more than the other teams.”
He commented further, “Our strength is purely aerodynamic”. He explained that the aerodynamic agility of the car causes it to have less drag when the wing is closed. Therefore, when it is open, it seems like the car has gained a lot of speed.
What if Hamilton is right?
Even if Hamilton is correct and the main magic of the RB19 lay in it’s DRS, it hasn’t really affected Red Bull in any way. Verstappen won the Hungarian GP with a 33-second gap to Norris in P2. He followed it up in Belgium with a 22 second gap over his teammate Perez in P2.
Therefore, Red Bull are still stronger than ever. It could be it the DRS or the basic aerodynamics that is making all the difference. Nonetheless, there is a lot of work that the rival teams need to do if they want to stop the Milton-Keynes-based outfit from going undefeated this season and creating F1 history.
