Defending Champions Red Bull launch RB8

Red Bull launch the car they will be hoping will deliver them their third straight Drivers and Constructors Championship.



Here it is: The car everyone wants to beat this season - the Red Bull RB8. The defending Champions of both Championships have launched their car with pictures and videos online. There is no change at the most dominant team of the last 2 and a half years, Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber still drive, while Adrian Newey is still the Technical Director.



The RB8, featuring a stepped nose

 Newey said on the team's website of his latest masterpiece "The last few years have been really good, really successful; it’s been an incredible journey to get there. It’s the fourth evolution of the RB5 this year, so obviously the pressure is to try and stay there if we possibly can. It’s a difficult task, we have lost the exhaust technology with the restriction exhaust outlet position that we were able to develop and perhaps be ahead of the pack on in the last couple of years, that led to a big re think over the winter." He said of the ban on exhaust blown diffusers: "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." While Newey said of the stepped nose "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." It is interesting that the defending champions have adopted the stepped nose idea, with only McLaren not using it so far.

Red Bull will really be hoping that today they have launched the car which will win them their third consecutive world championship, while everyone else will be hoping that this is the year when they are beaten, as McLaren, Ferrari and mercedes attempt to chase down the Milton Keynes high flyers.

2011 Season Review: Red Bull

Keep with my blog for all the opinions, launches and testing updates throughout the winter, as we count down to the Australian Grand Prix.