Red Bull’s design guru Adrian Newey has admitted that the nose on the RB8, and many other cars for that matter, is far from attractive, but the outfit has done its best with the new regulations.
The new car, launched online, shows a stepped nose which has become the norm following five other launches, aside from McLaren who’ve managed to retain a smooth chassis.
“The restriction on nose height, which is a maximum height just in front of the front bulkhead hasn’t really changed the chassis shape very much,” explained Newey.
“We’ve kept more or less the same chassis shape, but had to drop the nose just in front of the front bulkhead, which, in common with many other teams, has led us to I think I’d probably say a slightly ugly looking nose. We’ve tried to style it as best we can, but it’s not a feature you would choose to put in were it not for the regulation.”
One of the more concerning changes for the team is the ban on exhaust blown diffusers, according to the 53-year-old.
“[The] RB7 was designed around the exhaust, this year knowing that the exhaust position from last year would be taken away, we’ve had to go back and look at how we developed the car through the last one and two years with the side exit exhaust and try and, if you like, make sure that the routes we had taken that were only suitable for that exhaust position we now had to re-evaluate.
“Probably one of the key things there is the rear ride height. The exhaust allowed us to run a high rear ride height, it’s much more difficult without that to sustain a high rear height so we have to go back down and have to redevelop the car around that lower ride height.”
