No F-Duct for the rest of the GP at Red Bull

Red Bull Racing has decided not to race with its F-Duct for the remainder of the Grand Prix weekend in Turkey.

The team ran with its version of the rear wing stall device for the first time during the Friday morning practice session. Initial indications show there is a performance gain in the pace of Mark Webber’s and Sebastian Vettel’s RB6.

The team wanted to wait for the data analysis after the day’s session reports to decide if it was relevant to stick with the F-Duct system.

Following these meetings on Friday evening, the official decision was made not to race with the F-Duct for the rest of the weekend. It is very likely that this process will reappear during free practice for the next race in Canada.

For Red Bull, it is evident that the F-Duct provides an advantage on the straight with increased V-max, but compromises had to be made for the car’s aerodynamic downforce. Thus, in the rear wing configuration with a stalling device, the overall functioning of the car was not consistent enough to take the risk of racing with it in qualifying and the race.

Red Bull Racing is one of the major favorites for victory in Turkey, with or without the F-Duct. The advantage that the RB6’s downforce offers the drivers over their rivals will likely still be the surest way to overcome the straight-line speed deficit, particularly against the McLarens.

The team principal, Christian Horner, clearly explains Red Bull’s perspective because it is essential for the cars designed by Adrian Newey to be in the best conditions:

The priority is to be ahead of the others, McLaren and the Mercedes engines seem very strong here, especially on the hill in the last sector… So, we take nothing for granted…. So far, the F-Duct seems to be working very well. It appears to reproduce what we have managed to do in the wind tunnel and with our simulation tools, so we have a lot of data to analyze tonight, then we’ll have to make a decision on whether it might be a bit premature to race with it here. What is certain is that we have a lot of very valuable data to get it working here or fine-tune it all for Montreal.

It should be noted that after using its F-Duct in Spain, Ferrari acknowledged that its version of the system did not perform optimally on the car, but improvements were made in Turkey to better meet the needs of Alonso and Massa.