Book Review: Red Bull Racing F1 Car Owner’s Workshop Manual by Haynes

I’ve been previously asked about whether the Haynes workshop manuals for F1 cars are any good and why I hadn’t posted up any reviews over the years – the honest answer is that I’ve (unconsciously) prioritised reviewing more “traditional” F1 books (including other great Haynes books like Formula 1 in Camera series and 1982) – but that’s probably unfair to the workshop books which are actually very good F1 books in their own right. Haynes are famous for their workshop manual books on various road cars as reference guides for mechanics and DIY repairers. Over the past decade, Haynes have expanded the book series to include planes, NASA rockets and fantasy vehicles (eg. Star Wars X-wing and Millennium Falcon). With Red Bull Racing recently celebrating their 300th GP milestone, I found myself re-looking over the Haynes RB6 manual last week and even though the book is almost 10 year old, this one is still really a Red Bull team book that also packs in a lot of the F1 technical content.

The 1st ten pages set out a brief introduction to the history of the Red Bull Racing team and their break through 2009 and 2010 seasons. The next chapter is a breakdown of the car from how the chassis is constructed, aero (front wing, sidepods, barge boards, floor, rear wing with good explanation of diffuser and 2009 F-duct), suspension rods, steering, brakes, Renault engine, transmission, wheels, tyres, electronics, hydraulics, seat and cockpit. This is deal with over 100 pages and it written in a very accessible way for most readers – there’s probably nothing in here that hard core technical engineers don’t already know. Other technical car books like Peter Wright’s Ferrari Formula One on the F2000 and Ian Bamsey’s Technical Appraisal books on McLaren MP4/4 and Auto Union contain a lot more raw technical data.

The remaining chapters cover the Red Bull design team including the design process, wind tunnel testing, track testing. There is a chapter dedicated to the race engineer’s role (setup) and one chapter covering the drivers’ perspective (including Mark Webber describing a lap of Silverstone overlaid with his data telemetry).

There’s plenty of technical computer CAD cut-away diagrams and parts photos. Obviously back in the time of publication, not all the closeup photos are included to giveaway any secret sauce that the other team’s won’t have been able to reverse engineer from photos themselves.

I have the older 2011 edition book which naturally is pre-KERS, DRS and pre-hybrid era engines — Haynes has released an updated edition with expanded content added to cover the Red Bull RB14 with Daniel Ricciardo, so the updated edition is definitely the copy to get if you can.

Most of these Haynes F1 owner manual books can be picked up at discounted prices (other than their Williams FW14B manual), so make good value read.

To Haynes, it’s probably time to publish a Owner’s Workshop Manual on the all conquering 2020 Mercedes AMG W11 turbo hybrid! Would make interesting reading…

Wow Factor/Money shot: Custom mechanics toolbox (pg 145)

Suitable for: Red Bull fans and technically interested F1 fans