New wing 'was no silver bullet'
2012-10-09 08:14
FLYING WITH WING? This is Sebastian Vettel's car but he and the team say the new wing was not 'a silver bullet' at Suzuka. Image: AFP
Author: ALAN BALDWIN
SUZUKA, Japan - Red Bull's dominance over the 2012 Japanese Formula 1 weekend here was due to a range of things and not just a new aerodynamic device giving more speed on the straight.
That’s the word from team principal Christian Horner.
F1 World champion Sebastian Vettel won in Singapore and at Suzuka, an improvement that coincides with the fitting of a new 'double DRS' system on the rear wing.
'CHIPPING AWAY'
Horner told reporters after a race that saw Vettel move to four points behind Ferrari's championship leader Fernando Alonso: "As with all these things, there's never a silver bullet. It would be very difficult to say the car's Suzuka performance was purely down to a rear wing.”
"We've made progress in all areas - it's about chipping away at the detail."
Horner pointed to the fact that champion team Red Bull could claim the fastest pit stop of the race - 2.6sec for Vettel - but the team reckoning it was a shade faster.
"That’s just pushing in all the areas. I think it would be wrong to say that our upturn in performance is purely down to finding a few kilometres an hour on the straight.”
Red Bull tried the system in Singapore, where McLaren's Lewis Hamilton took pole but retired while leading when his gearbox failed.
Vettel took pole, fastest lap and the win at Suzuka with rivals trailing far behind. However he’d also held pole there in the three previous years and won twice.
'NOT REALLY USING IT'
The new Red Bull system, which seems less prone to problems than those tried by Mercedes and Lotus, should give a particular boost in qualifying. Lotus is still trying to get its 'device' to work properly and abandoned plans to run it in either of the previous two races.
"I wasn't really using DRS so it didn't really matter," Vettel said in the post-race Suzuka news conference after leading from pole to flag. "I think we've made improvements over the last couple of races.”
