As I previously said, all eyes were focused on Red Bull and Lotus . Both teams have attracted attention, Red Bull for their lack of reliability, the E22 for its unique design. During the break between the first test in Jerez and the second one in Bahrain, there were many rumours indicating Newey had redesigned the RB10 to better adapt it to the Renault V6 cooling needs, nothing could be more wrong.

Indeed the RB10 showed in Sakhir, was basically the same we saw in Jerez, those who expected to see a “blown-up” rear end would had been disappointed as Newey kept the same aggressive coke bottle design, clearly not wanting to give up to RB10 efficiency aerodynamic.

To see how much more aggressive Red Bull design is, we can compare its rear end with another Renault powered car, the Lotus E22:

Picture 3 - E22 vs Rb10 Rear End comparison
E22 vs RB10 Rear End comparison

From the picture above it’s easy to see the reason that the RB10 lack reliability does not only lie with the Renault V6 design, but it also depends on a very aggressive package made by the World Champion team from Milton Keynes. Little improvements has been made, but it’s not enough , especially if we consider that Melbourne is less than a month away and after February 28, engines will be homologated and Renault will not be able to make any additional changes. It’s a race against time, Renault engineers are working very hard at Viry Chatillon to fix the issues found until now.