The Red Bull Myth

Edited by Massa, 08 April 2011 - 19:08.

Edited by korzeniow, 08 April 2011 - 19:08.

At no point did Lewis match Vettels' pace,

Edited by hunnylander, 08 April 2011 - 19:26.

I guess it's a myth they led every single lap, got pole, and won.

Lewis was constantly closing the gap on the majority of the first stint!

Clearly Vettel wanted to gather and keep a safety margin ahead of the pit stops but he couldn't and destroyed his tyres earlier (alas the earlier tyre change saved his ass).

The RB7 is the fastest of the field, was in Melbourne, but they are overhyped by the pundits, 'experts' and a big segment of the fans. It's just trendy 'safe bet' to sing in the chorus.

Edited by Kvothe, 08 April 2011 - 19:57.

Shame we don't have any psychologists on board. There must be a nice technical term (no, not defeatism) for this phenomenon where people intentionally delude themselves into believing that an entity or object is more powerful than it truly is.

Everybody's a sadist/masochist at heart. What we're seeing this season is a sort of get-together and collective lament party for fans of rival teams and drivers. It's fashionable to wildly exaggerate Red Bull's true margin over the rest (or at least make it sound insurmountable) and everyone has a different reason for joining in. To some it's a ready excuse to explain away Vettel's performances or their favoured team/driver's poor showing,

Edited by MrAerodynamicist, 08 April 2011 - 20:01.

Shame we don't have any psychologists on board. There must be a nice technical term (no, not defeatism) for this phenomenon where people intentionally delude themselves into believing that an entity or object is more powerful than it truly is.

Vettel grew all of his lead with two very fast opening laps.

It's fashionable to wildly exaggerate Red Bull's true margin over the rest (or at least make it sound insurmountable) and everyone has a different reason for joining in.

Edited by freya, 08 April 2011 - 21:20.

Lewis didn't match Vettel's pace. Sometimes it was close because Vettel let him, Vettel had win in his pocket and race totally under his control.

A problem in F1 is that most of the followers seem to have short memories. There were so many races where people had won with 30-35 second margin, yet didn't win championships; I am talking about 2000s, not too far back.

Look at the media... "Vettel DOMINATES Melbourne".... really? I don't know if these people watched the same race as I did or not... Either I have a false definition of dominition or being 8-9 second in front of the next guy for most of the race while he has a piece of metal sticking out of the bottom of the car just is not dominating. It's simply winning, like 90% of all other F1 races.

Yes, people like to hype RBR, hype newey or hype vettel. That's why I really would like to see FIA get on the top of their game and do some proper testing. The hype and the resulting arrogance is just unbearable.

In the end we all know that they are just a drinks company.

I personally don't think it's any kind of masochism at all. I think it's just excuse making for people's favorite drivers.

Hamilton and Alonso made almost unbelievable numbers of mistakes last year. I personally can't recall the last season a driver was able to win the WDC despite a quantity of driving errors equal to Alonso's and Hamilton's last year. But no one wants to say "my driver sucked last season".

Instead, it's much nicer and more comforting to think "No driver could have won against Red Bull last season". It's just human nature from where I see things.

There is some truth in all of this. I can't count how many times I've seen the RB6 referred to as a second-a-lap (or more) quicker than the opposition last year on internet forums, but at the majority of races that simply was not true. From memory, they had that sort of gap at Barcelona, Silverstone, Hungary and Suzuka - thats only 4 races out of 19. Its almost like some sort of self-flagellation from fans of other teams to believe that Red Bull are always that far ahead. And to be honest, I think fans of certain drivers use it to justify why their guys couldn't win the WDC and why they are definitely much better than Vettel and/or Webber. Which I'm not saying is definitely untrue, but the reasoning for it is way exaggerated.

In the end we all know that they are just a drinks company.

In the end we all know that they are just a drinks company.

Well, I think that Hamilton, Alonso and Vettel all did approx same amount of mistakes, but Webber outdid them all, and yet he almost won the title. So, yeah, RBR was the best car of last season, and in my opinion most dominant car in F1 since Renault in 2005.

Edited by flyer121, 08 April 2011 - 23:00.

Really ,, webber ,,, mistakes ??
Can you pass me that joint!

Australia, Korea, Valencia

Is this the denial thread for Red BUll being the best car (as it has been since mid-2009)?

Red Bull is faster. No myth involved douchebags.

in melbourne it was obvious sebastian was controlling race and lewis was not once in position to attack him.

If Alonso/Hamilton win it'll be like 'ZOMG! (Insert driver here) have amazing superhuman powers to be able to drag that truck ahead of the Fastest Car Ever Made™ with it's Cheating Flexy Wing®...'

Since 2009 especially, we have seen car performance being very track dependent - so quite apart from the FP times, people need to take into account the track characteristics too. Indeed RBR may well be superquick on a track like Malaysia/Barcelona/Hungary but they generally come back to the field on others.

Also - considering where Mclaren was in testing and where they are now - Mclaren fans should be more optimistic when you take into account how relatively close they appear to be despite chasing the wrong development path wrt the 'octopus'. IMO they have quite a bit of potential to unlock. And Ferrari might be struggling a bit now, but they will surely improve as the season goes on...

I think the issue is not that the Red Bull is faster, but that it isn't light years faster as some people make it out to be...

But well even if it's "only" 0,5s per lap that's still almost a lightyear in F1

light-year   
[lahyt-yeer, -yeer] Show IPA
–noun
1.
Astronomy . the distance traversed by light in one mean solar year, about 5.88 trillion mi. (9.46 trillion km): used as a unit in measuring stellar distances. Abbreviation: lt-yr

Some ppl just can't handle the fact that a team/driver does better than those they back up, so they create these myths.

Yeah, and this "just" drink company beats teams with long motorsport history third year in a row. Think about that....

It's a bit sad to tell you the truth. Most supporters of teams other than Red Bull think there cheating. The front wing saga has been absolutely flogged to death for 18 months but finally this week Ross Brawn has acknowledged that, yes Red Bull have a great car, the wing is legal because it has passed every test and maybe the rest of us need to pull our finger out and catch up.