Just reading about Alonso's on off penalty. One site I read say that Race Control notified the Stewards on lap 50 that they thought Alonso didn't carry out the 5 second penalty correctly. Am I right in thinking after the farce of 2021 the teams where banned from directly taking to Race Control? If so, I think that I was wrong of me to assume Merc reported Alonso's pit stop penalty to Race Control! So maybe it was just the new Race Control remote control room looking at the footage? If it was then why oh why did it take them so long (something like 25 laps) to report their suspicion to the Stewards? Surely the Race Control remote control room was setup in part to speed these decisions up?
Worth remembering that Red Bull only had the equal fastest car before the FIA introduced TD39 midway through last year and crippled Ferrari. If something else gets introduced that slows RBR they can't cry too much. That doesn't really excuse Ferrari and Mercedes going backwards over the winter, but I do understand why they made the error of sticking with their concepts. Copying Red Bull might get you closer but it's hard to actually beat them that way. Aston Martin can do that because 2nd for them is a great result.
I suspect the FIA may have used Adrian Newey's knowledge in coming up with these regs. In so doing he was best placed to get the most from them.
Red bull were fast last year, ferrari were better out of corners and in the acceleration zone. the red bull was the highest top speed and killing ferrari at the high speed stuff. this season is just a continuation of this. i do not believe the red bull has any more power than anyone else. its all about drag and stability. the red bull is more stable than any other car. it runs a higher rake than the others and this helps massively with set up and bouncing. the thing was slammed to the floor here in jeddah at high speed. this also played into the td39 rules. once cars were "forced" to run higher red bull just shrugged thinking so what and the rest went oh ****. the faster the redbull goes the more it just hunkers down and scrapes the gorund without any stalling out. Its generating the ground effect with no bouncing, not instability and just loves the higher speeds. the suspension is not like a rock like some cars and its high enough to absorb the bad tracks with bumps with ease. red bull run a pull rod front suspension with the front wheels pushed forward to get more air down the floor and every part of it is driving air to power that key zone. . they have a pushrod rear end. the ferrari seems to be a complete and utter rock hard suspsension that just chews the tyres and it sees to be higher drag/the stalling out of ground effect happens quicket. whatever people are hinting at with the rear wing and drag I think the reality is more of the redbull downforce is coming from ground effect and they are simply running less draggy wings. the car is that predictable with the floor, it doesn't stall out and is super happy at speed to just hunker down and go. once that drs opens they get the boost like everyone else but they are already catching up before the wing opens. we could see at the safety car that perez just drove away and verstappen just sailed up to whenever he liked until drs came back. the thing is, at jeddah the numbers were in line with 2022, the speed traps and telemetry showed that red bull where 4mph faster into the final corner but ferrari were faster coming out of the corner. The red bull should not be as quick in melbourne. my guess at pole is 1:17.1
