Technical analysis: Red Bull RB11

Look beneath the squiggles of the Red Bull-Renault RB11's monochrome dazzle testing livery, and it's clear that the four-time champion team's new design is aggressive, especially with its nose treatment, sidepods and front brake ducts.

While Red Bull was the only team to deny Mercedes wins in 2014, outgoing technical director Adrian Newey estimated its peak power deficit was around 10 per cent, worth nearly six tenths of a second per lap. Windtunnel gains of the same magnitude are hard to come by, and Mercedes also gained ground in what is usually Red Bull's trump card area of aerodynamics last year. A big step is required for 2015.

Since 2009 Red Bull has set the bar for aerodynamic and chassis performance, and its four subsequent championships were all won with cars exploiting the Renault engine's exhaust gases to create downforce. With this advantage negated by 2014's new power unit and aero regulations, Red Bull was left with a huge loss in downforce, a lack of power, and unreliability.

It could be argued that the chassis was still the class of the 2014 field, although the team's usually svelte aerodynamics were harmed by a large cooler installation required to keep the Renault powerful and reliable.

This compromised qualifying performance and top speed; and so, without a clear track from the front row, Red Bull was trapped in an unvirtuous circle of having to run a low-drag set-up for overtaking speed in the race, which in turn hindered qualifying pace because parc ferme rules meant it was committed to that route from Saturday afternoon.

Renault's reliability issues often exacerbated these problems. Sebastian Vettel's car was forced to use more than the allocated number of power unit components, suffering grid-position drops for doing so.

The aim this year is to claw back the lost six to seven tenths per lap to Mercedes by increasing power, improving aerodynamic efficiency and ensuring reliability.

It's typical Red Bull style to push the car's development to the last weeks, if not days, before the first tests and races. This year was an extreme example of that methodology: the monocoque was late being completed, arriving at the race bays last Monday. The car passed the crash tests on Wednesday, and with the trip from Milton Keynes to Jerez there was little time to complete the car's build and be ready for the start of testing on Sunday.

Of course the team managed this, but in the rush the car's complex paint scheme could not be prepared, so Red Bull ran with a 'testing livery'.

Imaginatively this was not simply a vinyl wrap of the Infiniti Red Bull colours, but a monochrome dazzle scheme, designed to frustrate the eyes studying the detail of the car's shape.

This concept works to an extent, but we have been able to decipher details from under the white blocks and squiggles to reveal some interesting technology.

As with many teams at this stage, the front wing remains a 2014-specification part, there being no rule changes affecting this area. Above this, the nose takes a much more complex approach to the new rules than some other teams.

Red Bull's Rob Marshall admitted other concepts were prepared and went through R&D to ensure at least one solution could successfully pass the crash test. The solution that appeared on the car is quite a short nose, with the two new mandatory cross-sectional areas created by a thumb-like extension from the nose tip.

What appears to be quite a bulky nose tip is flanked by the front wing mounting pillars and these are extremely twisted in shape. The pylons and the flow structures they set up are partly guided back along the car by this tip as it extends below the nose's under-surface.

In keeping with previous generations of Newey Red Bulls, the nose features an S-duct, which is a system that catches air from under the nose and guides it back out of the top of the nose. This cleans up the airflows passing over and under the nose and raised chassis.

Front axles are surprisingly key to F1 cars' aerodynamics, and Red Bull and other teams are experimenting with the blown front axle concept.

All F1 cars' axles are hollow for strength and low weight. Typically they are closed off near the wheelnut with a point end fitting to aid the wheelgun engaging with the nut at pitstops. However the RB11, along with the new Ferrari and McLaren, keeps the axle open, and purposely ducts air through it for aerodynamic effect.

The brake duct scoops inside the wheel are intentionally larger - some of the air they catch is passed directly through the hollow axle, with no function for internal cooling, but purely for external aerodynamics.

As the powerful airflow exits the axle through the wheelnut, it works with the front wing endplate to create an outwash effect. This sends the tyre's dirty wake away from the rear of the car, which in turn improves the car's aerodynamic efficiency.

Conceptually this is the same sort of effect as the static wheel fairings that were a common sight on front wheels during 2008-09.

With the dazzle camouflage removed, the car's lines are apparent - and rather than the livery hiding detail complexity, the shaping turns out to be unusually smooth.

Unusually for a Newey car, the sidepods feature a square-edged cross section, rather than S-shaped curves.

The sidepods are the car's key feature. Last year's Renault power unit appeared to require a lot of cooling, particularly the charge air compressed by the turbocharger. If too hot, the engine suffered knocking and lost both power and reliability. So the 2014 car sported two huge intercoolers in each sidepod, as well as the other coolers for the power unit's oil and water systems.

This oversized cooling package cost aerodynamic efficiency, owing to a combination of the drag of the air passing through the radiators themselves and by the blockage created by large sidepods costing downforce from the rear end.

When asked if the RB11's new smaller sidepods were possible because Renault's cooling demands were reduced, Newey surprised by saying the power unit had the same cooling requirements.

Marshall later confirmed the sidepods' size is as a result of better internal aerodynamic packaging, rather than Renault or radiator technology changes.

The dramatic loss in sidepod volume does not come via re-located coolers, since unlike most of its competitors the RB11 does not draw cooling air from the rollhoop area, merely from the small sidepod inlets. There is a small inlet below the rollhoop, but this is typically for electronics cooling and not for the heat exchangers.

Again Red Bull produces its own gearbox, with the same internal cluster used in the Toro Rosso, but employing carbon-fibre casing as opposed to STR's aluminium one.

In shape the gear case retains Newey's preference for quite a tall, narrow design, this being good for stiffness and rear structure mounting, in contrast to the trend for low-line gearboxes elsewhere.

Geometrically the suspension is a refinement of the RB10's, sporting pushrods at the front and pullrods at the rear. Marshall wouldn't be drawn on whether the internals used conventional springing in the absence of FRIC, or more complex hydraulic springs, adding that he found advantages in both trading the complexity and reliability of metal springs for pitch and roll stiffness for the ease of packaging and tailoring hydraulic solutions.

The RB11's first day of running did include two technical issues, with a smoky engine and battery problem, neither of which were caused by cooling issues, suggesting the maladies affecting last year's maiden test have not been recreated in this year's design process.

How well the team will fare this year is dependent on the difference in power between Mercedes and Renault. The gap is too large to be closed from aero alone, but the RB11 has taken the right steps to be ready to take advantage of everything Renault can deliver.