A winter testing from hell, a disqualification in the opening race, an inability to keep up with Mercedes and their star driver leaving the team after getting thrashed by his teammate. The woes of Red Bull Racing have just been compounding despite three wins for Daniel Ricciardo this F1 season. To that list you can now add both cars being excluded from the qualifying classification at the season ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
Ricciardo and Sebastian Vettel - who qualified fifth and sixth, respectively and were thus the fastest non-Mercedes powered drivers - had their cars inspected by the FIA stewards after their technical delegate Jo Bauer noticed the front wings on the former F1 constructors champions' cars flexing too much under aero-load and therefore infringing the technical rule that bans movable aerodynamic devices.
In a statement the team claims that other F1 teams have been interpreting their cars' front wings the same way as them even though they will accept the stewards' decision.
The problem of flexing front wings is not a new one in F1 as teams push the limit in how much flex they can engineer into their aero components (to reduce drag) while keeping the cars legal.
Ferrari's machines were most noticeably displaying this characteristic at the 2011 Indian Grand Prix.
The end result of the disqualification will be that both Ricciardo and Vettel will start tomorrow's F1 season ending race from the pitlane.
While not an ideal state of affairs, it gives them the freedom to be flexible with their tyre strategy and also play around with gear ratios.
A charge through the field by the two will certainly liven things up regardless of how the title fight between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg will transpire.
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