David Coulthard takes his first podium for Red Bull!

[NarendZORCE]

Super David

"Local Hotelier On Podium At Monaco GP" might have been a good newspaper headline for David's third place finish at the weekend, but most of the papers concentrated on his Superman connection. As true Red Bull Racing fans you probably already regard him as Super which was certainly a fitting description of his and the whole team's performance.

In a few days it will be time for ours and DC's home race, the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Can we expect another strong Red Bull Racing showing on this technical track or was the Monaco podium down to the often cited opinion that the street circuit is all about the driver rather than the car?

"It is a circuit that can highlight a driver's ability," agrees our technical director, Mark Smith. "However, if you think about what is required from the package for Monaco, you certainly need a car in which the driver has confidence. He must quickly be able to be confident that every time he comes to the same corner, he can place the car accurately to make use of the circuit's maximum width at that point and consequently be close to the barriers. Therefore that speaks volumes about the consistency and mechanical integrity of our car. You need a balanced car at Monaco, so its role is still important."

This week, we are testing at Barcelona and if you believe what you might have read on some of the F1 web sites, we will be turning up at Silverstone with a brand new car, or at the very least a full bodywork update! Not true.
"In Barcelona this week, we are focussing heavily on a few things that we intend to take to Silverstone," says our more truthful technical director. "We have a front wing development - not a completely new front wing assembly, but it has features that constitute a development and that is also the case for the rear wing. We have also made progress with the transmission system and we have a new front suspension system. It's definitely not a bodywork update!"

The good news is that all these updates are performance related, even those concerning the transmission. From the outside it might seem that the gearbox and its associated components have been something of an Achilles heel this season, but actually, some of our issues have been software related. "I would not want to say we have now left the reliability issues behind and can concentrate fully on developing performance because you can never afford to take your eye off those things, adds Mark. "The cars are complex and are packaged together so tightly that this can always lead to heat related problems. Also there are so many hydraulic lines and loom runs, that anyone of these can trip you up at any time. So you really need to keep on the ball."

Mark also believes the last two tests have seen the team make progress in how RB2 wants to behave in terms of set-up. Sounds strange that a group of highly trained race engineers working with some of the best drivers in the world cannot understand exactly how the car is behaving in set-up terms Mark? "You have to accept that the tyres are constantly evolving on a race by race basis, so if you do come up with something that works perfectly well, the chances are that, come the next race, you will have a different set of conditions to deal with. But honestly, you cannot say it is just down to tyres. Our team has expanded rapidly and we have several engineers who are now working together for the first time and it takes a little while for that to gel. But over the past couple of races, it is beginning to work quite well. People are working better together and that is a natural part of making progress.

"Those elements will take us forward and all we can hope for is that we end up having made more progress than our competitors. We can't say anymore than that until all the cars go out on track together at Silverstone."