"McLaren and Toro Rosso a threat in 2016" - Newey

[Thomas Hinss]

Technical Chief of Red Bull Racing, Adrian Newey, expects the likes of McLaren and Toro Rosso to be more competitive next year, citing that they could well have a fight on their hands keeping the Woking and Faenza outfits behind them.

Throughout the 2015 season the team tried to land Mercedes, Ferrari or Honda engines for next season but were unable to as each engine supplier was not interested in working with the formerly dominant team. As these talks went on the Red Bull and Renault relationship soured as the French marque struggled to deliver a competitive power unit to take the fight to Mercedes and Ferrari. After a further fall in pace compared to its rivals in 2015, Newey says the team are bracing for a tough 2016 season as they rely on Renault to make progress with its power unit.

The strength of the team chassis’ has always been the cars main advantage, with there being some optimism that it could have more pace for next season. Newey is certainly aware that expecting big leaps forward from Renault as they develop their power unit for 2016 is too much. The strong possibility that Renault may struggle to keep up with the competition is what makes Newey fearful of the progress rivals such as Honda could make in 2016.

Speaking to Motorsport.com, Newey notes that,

"I think it is going to be an extremely difficult season for us frankly. If we start the engine with the same power as we have had throughout 2014 and 2015, which I think may well be the case, then we are going to be even further behind.

According to our own research we found some reasonable gains on the chassis side, but the works teams will of course all move forward. Mercedes and Ferrari will move forwards."​

Who to look out for in 2016?
As we now look toward the new season in the coming months with Mercedes and Ferrari expected to continue their form at the top of the field, Newey has singled out Toro Rosso and McLaren as teams that could perform better than the struggling Red Bull.

"Toro Rosso, our sister team by having a 2015 Ferrari, will be considerably ahead of this year's Renault power unit. I believe Honda, what we have seen, will make a good step. I think their internal combustion engine is a reasonable engine. Their problem this year has been that they made the recovery units on the turbo, the MGU-H, far too small. But that is an easy problem to address over the winter.

So, next year's going to be very difficult for us. It's really down to, I think, what happens next with the sport, for 2017 and beyond. Is there desire from the governing body to allow private teams such as ourselves to properly have competitive engines or not?"
​

Do you think that Red Bull will be challenged by their sister team and McLaren-Honda in 2016?

 

[dineontitan]

I don't think McLaren will be a title contender yet. It would take a huge effort from Honda to do so, and I don't see that happen yet. Toro Rosso on the other hand may well be, especially with the drivers they have got.

 

[ThatRacingGuy]

AN and CH really have 0% confidence in the new engine

 

[Torcano]

If Newey thinks McLaren and STR can potentially be a threat to them then who are we peasants to disagree. I for one am expecting a lot from Honda in the upcoming season, I gave them a benefit of the doubt and their powerplant with it's abysmal reliability a free pass this season given how they got f'ed over by the token system restricting development at the beginning. And I will be rooting for STR anyway because young talent/support for the next generation line up and all that jazz. Only time and testing shall tell.

 

[Turk]

I hope he's right about McLaren, if they could get into the mix, not even challenging for wins but up in the top ten, it would make races much more interesting. As long as you're not fixated on who's in first there was plenty of good racing between the lower down teams.

 

[Mark Aalberts]

AN and CH really have 0% confidence in the new engine

If you promise 100hp over the winter but instead only having engine failures due to chocolate pistons, and then almost in the final race of the year introduce an update from which GPS data showed that the engine was even poorer then the old one. In 2.5 years they drifted away and the only team that made some good progression on the engine part was Ferrari. It is not that strange that AN and CH are not having much confidence for next year.

Cant wait to see that Renault engine in the "Lotus" chassis, we will see how good that engine really is. RBR and Renault might be on the back end of the grid and maybe even face some difficulties with Haas/Sauber and perhaps even the Manors.

And for sure McLaren will make a nice step if Honda fixes their Hybrid system. I think we will have a big midfield next year. Going to be interesting for sure.

 

[Spinelli]

Tbe problem is the token system. You can be screwed from race 1 of the entire season depending on what problems you have or simply where you're lacking relative to other engines.

Set a lImit of (eg.) a maximum of 6 upgrades per season (from race 1 to final race) BUT allow full freedom to upgrade/modify however you like whether it's a new piston design, an entirely new engine, turbo, MGU-H, and MGU-K, or just a new nut-&-bolt.

Imagine, during the tyre war, you showed up to race 1 with inferior tyres and were extremely limited for the rest of the entire season with regards to how much you were "allowed" to improve your tyres? Or a bad front wing that you could only make tiny tweeks to rather than replace with a new redesign? Or a screwed-up diffuser which you severely limited in how much you could replace/upgrade? Or a suspension design that you figured out had slight wear problems relative to other teams' but you were severely limited for the entire season how much you could modify or redesign?

It would be a ridiculously bad joke to apply upgrade bans on any piece/area of the vehicle in Formula 1 but as of the mid-to-late 2000s it's "fine" as long as it applies to engines/PUs. What a joke.

 

[Turk]

I'm not against restrictions on the engineering side of things. F1 is as much an engineering competition as a racing competition, and competitions/sports need rules.

What engineers can achieve today is basically wizardry, look at what a company like Mercedes can achieve, even under the regulations. I'm sure these teams don't sit around twiddling their thumbs until they can do actual on track testing. They are doing all sorts of development behind the scenes that they just can't show us in testing, basically because they're not allowed too and have to be careful about which course they choose to go down. The problem would be if you let a company like Mercedes off the leash they could just disappear off into the distance, with no hope of anybody ever catching up to them any time soon.

But I think as this is a new era in F1 power units they need to do something to catch the other manufacturers up. They need to level the playing field for the integrity of the sport. Big teams and especially Mercedes won't like it, but the sport is suffering because of disparity and a leveling of the playing field would at least give a fair starting point for everybody now that we know what the craic is with these hybrid engines.