“Red Bull is going so fast!” Each tongue says so. Mercedes is astonished, Wolff’s mind boggled; Hamilton could not beat Max Verstappen’s fastest RB19 with all the pushes he made. Aston Martin, who allegedly copied the Red Bull concept, thinks beating them is a monumental task. Ferrari lost its dream to win the championship as beating Red Bull is just not possible, at least till when they have a beast-like car RB19.
However, recently, team Mercedes found that there is something more in Red Bull’s fastest car that they are hiding. The British driver, George Russell, has claimed that the RB19 has more pace than it shows. The Austrian team has been accused of “Sandbagging” its pace. But why on earth would they do so? Instead of utilizing the full potential of the car, why is Red Bull hiding it?
Why Mercedes Accuses The Milton-Keynes-Based Squad Of Sandbagging Speed?
Perhaps because they are afraid that FIA will come to check on what’s the matter and curtail their speed. According to Mercedes, the logic behind sandbagging of Red Bull is that the Milton-Keynes-based team wants to avoid the intervention that FIA might impose in order to reduce the car’s speed so that fair competition would prevail.
No doubt, if, in any case, Red Bull is actually hiding their true potential, it must be doing so with the fear of getting a rule change by FIA. These past years have been haunting some of the teams as the governing constantly brings new sets of regulations. Adopting those takes time, experience, and risks. And in the past, Formula One has a history of similar situations, when FIA brought some rules with the aim of removing the dominant team from its position so that the competitiveness spirit remains in existence.
So yes, there are possibilities that FIA might come to shake Red Bull’s superiority. But if, with the accusations of Mercedes, FIA, in fact, finds that Red Bull is sandbagging, then the followings are examples of how they might bring different rules to shrink Red Bull’s mind-boggling speed.
This Is How FIA Can Bring Rules To Curtail The Dominative Pace Of Red Bull
In 2014, FIA banned the FRICS [Front and rear Interconnected Suspension] outrights as it was helping Mercedes to master itself in the turbo hybrid era. No other team was able to give a strong fight to Mercedes during that time. As a result of the ban, Red Bull paved the way to two GP wins.
In 2006 FIA banned the special device that team Renault developed, which made them win six of the initial races. The device that was established in the R25 by the team was called a mass damper fitted in the nosecone of the car.
In 2004 when it was the winning era of Ferrari. The team was completely dominating. No other team was even allowed by the Scuderais to come closer to victory. But FIA found that the aerodynamics part of the car is somehow greater than the demand. So, they put a ban to shake things up. That’s how the utter dominance of Ferrari ended.
Not only the above many other rule changes have taken place in Formula One just to make the final result uncertain. Otherwise, what’s the fun of watching a sport which already knows who the winner is? So it is BIG logic that Red Bull might adopt in terms of hiding the RB19’s true pace.
