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Red Bull Racing driver Sebastian Vettel is quick. Too quick. The three-time Formula 1 champion dominated the Singapore Grand Prix, leaving his closest competitor 32.6 seconds behind as he took his eighth win of the season.
In F1, where teams battle it out for tenths of a second, that's a massive margin. And the secret to his speed is turning into one of the greatest conspiracy theories in modern racing.
Ever since the Montreal Grand Prix in June, rumors began to circulate that the Red Bull team was using some form of traction control. The system allows drivers to get off the line quicker and get on the power earlier out of corners as the computer optimizes the engine's output based on the amount of grip at the tires. But traction control has been banned in F1 since 2008, and every race car uses the same engine control unit (ECU), all of which are inspected by F1 management at every race. It would be impossible for Red Bull to slip some kind of traction control system under the nose of the FIA, the governing body of F1.
The secret to his speed is turning into one of the greatest conspiracy theories in modern racing.That's where the engineering conspiracy theories begin.
The leading speculation, posited by Racecar Engineering, is that Red Bull has managed to link the suspension in Vettel's RB9 to the hybrid Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) onboard. KERS has been around for a few years and gives drivers a power boost in short bursts, and because it's an electric motor, the torque output can be tweaked on-the-fly – just like a traditional traction control system.
By linking the suspension to KERS, when the pressure in the shocks changes while going through a corner or over a bump, the RB9 could limit power when compressed and boost power when expanded, all without interacting with the ECU and running afoul of the FIA's regulations.
But there's a tell. A very loud one, in fact.
Former F1 team owner Giancarlo Minardi was at the race in Singapore and noticed something odd when Vettel's car would accelerate out of the first set of tight turns on the street circuit. On his site, Minardi says, "The thing that surprised me the most was the RB1 engine’s output sound." It was different than every other car going through the same section, with a low-end grinding noise emanating from the car.
Our friends at Jalopnik dug up video of Vettel's car going through the turn.
And Minardi stated in his post, "That sound was similar to the sound made by the engine when the traction control system got into action in the past seasons." Again, Jalopnik points to a video recorded during the 2007 season when traction control was still allowed.
Sound familiar?
Naturally, Red Bull Racing's head Christian Horner isn't saying much, only pointing out that it would be impossible for the team to sneak traction control into the car without the FIA's knowledge.
"The electronic controls on the car are so tightly governed," Horner said after the Singapore race. "It's a standard unit which all of the teams are using. Any suggestion of traction control is either purely mischievous on behalf of the others, or wishful thinking."
Lewis Hamilton, racing for Mercedes, said after the race that "the last time I was able to put the pedal down that quick was 2007 when we had traction control." Although he insists he wasn't suggesting that Red Bull was cheating, he certainly doesn't understand how his Mercedes could be so far off pace compared to Vettel's Red Bull.
But just as intriguing as this secret system Red Bull is employing is why Vettel's teammate, Mark Webber, driving a supposedly identical car, doesn't have the same speed – or the same sound.
Check the first video again and you'll hear Webber's Red Bull running through the same set of turns. He's the fourth car around and doesn't make the same grinding noise. So why not equip both cars with the same technology and utterly dominate F1 with a series of one-two wins?
Ego. And money.
Webber, Vettel, and Red Bull haven't been on the greatest of terms for some time. Vettel took a win from Webber earlier this year in Malaysia, in direct defiance of team orders, and had similar issues with his teammate last season. Webber is on his way out, headed to compete in the World Endurance Championship in Porsche's bid to dominate Le Mans in 2014. There's no reason to tip off a disgruntled racer to a new technology on the way out, no matter how thick the NDA is.
But the other reason is that more wins will cost them more money.
According to new rules set out by the FIA, the winning team from the previous season has to pay more money to race in the new season. Because Red Bull took the constructors' championship in 2012, it was required to pay the standard $500,000 entry price to race this year, plus $6,000 for each point it gained in the 2012 World Constructors’ Championship. The rest of the field only had to pay $5,000 for each point it scored in 2012.
Considering Vettel has a 77 point lead in the 2013 season – 272 points compared to Fernando Alonso's 195 – having two cars, with two drivers racking up the wins could cost a mint. And then some. So with the season nearly clinched, there's no reason point in incurring even more fees by adding another competitor in the mix.
The use of traction control and the points penalty theory are both pure speculation at this point. But Vettel, speaking after his dominant performance in Singapore, tilted his hand when asked whether the accusations of traction control use bothered him.
"We were playing around quite a lot with it in practice, but the first time it worked was in the race," Vettel said. "I was quite confident other people would never figure out how we did it. We are pretty proud of the system we have because other people will never figure out how we’ve done it."
All photos courtesy of Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
