Okay, so, I got really into this whole “zero sidepod” thing after seeing some stuff about the new Red Bull car. You know, the RB20? It’s wild. The way they’re messing with the sidepods is insane. I heard that the car is set to look even more similar to Mercedes’ failed zero sidepod design as the 2024 season gets going.
I started by just digging around online, reading whatever I could find. Like this one piece from some site that said Red Bull’s been playing with this idea for a while. They mentioned it was making waves in pre-season testing. That’s when I knew I had to try to understand this whole thing better.
So I started looking at the car itself, focusing on the sidepods. I tried to compare the RB20 to some older cars, trying to see how the design was actually changing. I wanted to figure out what it meant, you know?
- I spent hours just staring at pictures, trying to figure out how the airflow might be working. I kept seeing the inlets are really narrow.
- I found out that Red Bull is trying to make the inlets as small as possible.
- They’re trying to use it to push the air to the diffuser.
Next, I tried to make a simple model. Not like a 3D printed thing, just a rough idea of what was happening. I used some cardboard to represent the car body and to represent the sidepods. And I used a fan to see how the air might move. I drew arrows on paper to show where the air would go. It was super basic, but it helped me visualize things.
Honestly, I got pretty obsessed with this whole thing. I spent days just thinking about sidepods. Like, what if they tried this angle? Or what if they made them even smaller? It was like a puzzle that I couldn’t stop thinking about.
Conclusion
In the end, I realized that this “zero sidepod” thing is way more complicated than I initially thought. But messing around with my cardboard model and reading a bunch of stuff online, I feel like I get it a little better now. It’s all about how you manage the airflow, and Red Bull is really pushing the limits. I can’t wait to see how it plays out on the track this season.
