This blog has now closed. Please visit my new blog, Stepreo.

Archive: traction-control

My name is Duncan, and I am a motorsport fan

23 October 2009 00:19

Categories: *, Current affairs, Sport, Technology, The Pod Delusion

This the accompanying article to my contribution to this week’s edition of The Pod Delusion. Here you can find videos and links if you want to delve further into the topic.

As you may guess from the title, this article is about motorsport. I do not normally write about motorsport on this website. That is reserved for my motorsport website, vee8. However, I have published it here as it is designed to be of interest to people who do not like motorsport.

You can listen to the full podcast below.

My name is Duncan, and I am a motorsport fan. Is it a bad thing? Am I evil? Do I need to join Petrolheads Anonymous?

This year’s Formula 1 World Championship is coming to an end. The Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships have been wrapped up by Jenson Button and Brawn-Mercedes respectively, and now we have one last race to enjoy before the sport takes a break for the winter.

This has not been an easy year to be an F1 fan. In terms of newsworthy stories, it’s the sport that keeps on giving. But even by F1′s standards, it has been an extraordinary year for scandals.

Bear in mind that in previous years Formula 1 has brought extraordinary enough stories. There was, for instance, the so-called “spying” scandal which led to the sport’s governing body, the FIA, handing the McLaren team a fine of ONE HUNDRED MEELION DOLLARS. Then there was the “German prisoner” sex scandal involving the FIA’s President Max Mosley.

This year cranked up the scandal ever-further. Even in the first race, a major scandal blew up when Lewis Hamilton and his McLaren team were caught lying to the race stewards.

It also emerged this year that the Renault team had colluded with its driver Nelsinho Piquet to deliberately crash his car to hand an advantage to his team mate Fernando Alonso in last year’s Singapore Grand Prix. This endangered the life of Piquet and of other drivers and spectators.

In the past year, two major manufacturers — Honda and BMW — have pulled out of the sport, with persistent rumours surrounding the commitment of the other manufacturers. Moreover, almost all of the teams threatened to break away from F1 to set up a rival championship, in protest at the way the sport is governed by Max Mosley and the FIA.

The governance of the sport may change this week, as Max Mosley is stepping down as FIA President. The election to replace him is taking place today, on Friday. This actually may have more widespread implications than many realise.

Even though during last year’s sex scandal Max Mosley was persistently described by the media as “F1 boss”, the job of FIA President goes much further than that. The FIA has significant sway over road safety issues and effectively represents car users on the world stage. If you are a member of the AA, the RAC or even the Camping and Caravanning Club, you are represented by the FIA.

Clearly, this year there has been a lot going on in the world of motorsport. While cynics point out that, for the sport’s commercial boss Bernie Ecclestone, any publicity is good publicity, this all served to further discredit a sport which isn’t exactly the most popular among some. Formula 1 is seen by many as a sport which is dangerous, environmentally unfriendly, the personification of greed — and perhaps even sexist.

No doubt there is an element of truth to some of these accusations. So, how does this sit with me? I am a massive fan of motorsport, but I have liberal political views and a concern for the environment. Do I lack principles? Is F1 a guilty pleasure for me?

I actually see no reason why it should be. Some motorsport fans are unapologetic about their passion, and they see no reason to dress it up as anything but an extravagant bit of fun. But I see motorsport as a positive force that has a lot to contribute to the world.

Yes, Formula 1 is dangerous. This year, one driver, Felipe Massa, had an horrific accident when he was struck on the head while travelling at 170mph by a spring as heavy as a bag of sugar which had fallen off another car and was bouncing around on the circuit. He was lucky to have suffered no long term damage. The spring destroyed his helmet, but if it had hit him at another point he could have lost his sight or even died.

Sadly, one Formula Two driver was not so lucky. Henry Surtees was killed when he was struck on the head by a tyre which was bouncing around on the circuit after it had detached from another car in another accident.

While a ticket to a grand prix states in large letters, “motor sport is dangerous”, such accidents are mercifully rare in top-line motorsport these days. Major injuries are rare, and the last fatality in Formula 1 was in 1994. Believe it or not, more than 2½ times as many people have died while competing in the Great North Run than have died in F1 since 1981, when the Great North Run began.

But this year’s events in motorsport show that complacency should never set in, which is why improvements in safety are always being pushed forward. Perhaps the real scandal though is that, despite the increasingly safe environment that professional racing drivers face, 1.3 million people still die on the world’s roads every year.

F1 technology can play a major role in reducing the number of accidents on public roads, and already has done. In 2007, one F1 driver, Robert Kubica, survived a 75g impact with nothing more than light concussion. The materials that make an F1 car so safe are exotic and expensive, meaning that the opportunities to help make road cars safer using F1 research are a bit limited.

But electronics such as ABS and traction control are commonplace on today’s road cars. Such technologies unquestionably save lives all the time, and their development was helped by early applications in racing cars.

The money that flows through F1, and the high-stakes nature of the competition, make it a great test bed for important technologies that improve our daily lives. F1 is an R&D powerhouse.

There is currently an exhibition in the Science Museum in London called Fast Forward, which showcases twenty instances of F1 technology improving the lives of others.

Included on display are high-tech tyre pressure indicators which alert drivers to a developing puncture before it becomes dangerous. Then there are F1 materials being used to help protect troops in Afghanistan from bullets and explosions. Slip-resistant boots based on F1 tyre technology for people who work in slippery environments, thereby reducing injuries in the workplace, are also on display.

A bit more down to earth is the gadget that can stop your central heating system from becoming clogged up with rust and sludge, thereby reducing energy consumption in the home. Hospitals have even analysed mechanics’ behaviour and procedures during pitstops in order to improve the speed and accuracy of medical teams.

But how about the environmental impact of this gas-guzzling sport? I must say that my view is that rather too much is made of this. That is not to say that Formula 1 does not a significant environmental impact — it does. But emissions from the F1 cars themselves are actually a drop in the ocean. The racing itself does little environmental damage.

What is really damaging is all the travelling that teams, the media and fans must do in order to attend the races. The good news on this front is that F1 is carbon neutral, and has been since 1997. The FIA Foundation, the charity arm of the FIA, has taken into account not only emissions from the F1 cars and the travel of the teams, but also the transport of the fans that attend the races.

But any activity that involves being somewhere requires travel. F1 is a global sport, so there is a lot of global travel involved. But otherwise the sport actually seems rather restrained. In just 17-or-so races, a World Champion driver emerges.

Compare this to another competition, say the English Premier League in football. To come up with a mere national league-winning club, 380 football matches must be played, with all the travel this entails too. In comparison, F1 looks positively restrained.

Maybe that is an apples-and-oranges comparsion. It is just as well, then, that F1 technology also looks set to pave the way towards a green future. Formula 1 has the potential to help greatly reduce energy consumption. Refuelling during races will be banned from next year, shifting the balance more towards fuel consumption rather than raw power.

Another major initiative is the Kinetic Energy Recovery System, or kers, which the FIA finally legalised for this season. Kers is a system which harvests the kinetic energy that is dissipated under braking and would otherwise be wasted, and re-deploys that energy into the powertrain.

This technology has had a rather troubled birth in F1. The systems have been too expensive for teams to develop in the current economic climate, and it looks as though kers may take a back seat for a few years. There is also scepticism over whether kers as it is applied in F1 is actually relevant to road cars.

But one team, Williams, is adamant that its flywheel system will find a large variety of applications in the real world. The team says that its energy recovery system could improve road cars, vehicles used in mining, rail systems and “anything that moves”.

(For more on this, I highly recommend the recording of a Q&A with the Technical Director of Williams, Sam Michael. I was lucky enough to be invited along to the Williams F1 factory earlier this year along with a number of other web journalists and bloggers. The excellent Brits on Pole website has fantastic coverage of the visit.)

Plans continue to gather pace on this front. On Wednesday, the FIA outlined its plans for a green future of F1 (PDF). This includes a plan to make motorsport a competition based more on efficiency than raw power, and a stronger focus on energy recovery technologies.

The FIA also plans to introduce its own carbon neutral scheme, including offsetting its regulatory presence. It may also make carbon offsetting a condition of involvement in a championship.

So there you have it. Motorsport is a force for good in the world. Not bad for something that is hugely enjoyable. My halo is in tact.

11 comments

End-of-season driver rankings: Top 5

22 December 2008 00:19

Categories: Opinion

The rest of the rankings came fairly easily to me. Perhaps that is because the spotlight is not on the lower positions so much. It doesn’t seem to matter so much whether I place Kazuki Nakajima 15th or 16th.

But the top five is really, really tough to get right. I keep on changing my mind, juggling the positions even as I write this post. Really, the number 1 position could be justified for all of these drivers. To put one of them fifth feels just wrong. But that is what I have to do.

5. Sebastian Vettel (11; 12)

I was very tempted to place Vettel higher than this, perhaps even in 2nd place. In the end, I think the young German still has more to prove before he can be that high. But there can be little doubt that Vettel will climb up these rankings next year.

In many ways, Sebastian Vettel’s first full season is just as impressive as Lewis Hamilton’s. After all, the Toro Rosso, while clearly a handy car in the right circumstances, is no McLaren. Mind you, it was an inauspicious start to the season, which saw him retire from four races on the trot, mostly as a result of accidents. But when the new Toro Rosso chassis started racing, things started to improve. Before long the car was well and truly in the groove, and Vettel rose to the occasion and performed magnificently on occasion.

The highlight was, of course, his unbelievable victory at the Italian Grand Prix. When he grabbed pole position in torrential conditions, it was a clear signal of his talent. But he floored the world by almost flawlessly taking practically a pole-to-flag victory in conditions that were far from easy.

Monza was a high watermark for the promising youngster, and it has to be said there were a few occasions where he didn’t shine nearly so brightly. But consistency will come with experience, and it is surely a matter of ‘when’, not ‘if’, Sebastian Vettel finds himself in with a shout of winning the Championship one day. Whether he will achieve that in next year’s Red Bull car is debatable, but there is no doubt that they have a major star on their hands.

4. Felipe Massa (5; 5)

I can scarcely believe that I have had to place a title contender in 4th position. What makes this all the more flabbergasting is the fact that Massa has undoubtedly raised his game, stepped up to the plate and shown that he is capable of performing at the sharp end of the grid more or less throughout the season. Few drivers can have improved their reputation so much in such a short period of time.

After a rather shaky start to the season that raised questions about the Brazilian’s ability to drive without traction control, Massa withstood the pressure and ultimately passed the test as convincingly as he could have.

Strong results at Bahrain, Spain and Turkey were perhaps not expected, but they did little to dissolve the widespread scepticism about his driving abilities. What impressed were his good drives at Monaco, France and Canada, where he pulled off one of the most amazing overtaking manoeuvres I have ever seen — an audacious double-move on Rubens Barrichello and Heikki Kovalainen.

The British Grand Prix was a major disappointment, with a decidedly sluggish pace at the back of the field complemented with no fewer than six spins. This cast doubts on Massa’s abilities in the wet, not helped by another mediocre result in damp Monza. However, in fairness, it appears as though the Ferrari was a particularly poor car for rainy conditions, as Räikkönen wasn’t exactly a star in the wet this year either. Aside from those wet races, Massa’s only other poor results came as a result of Ferrari foul-ups in Hungary and Singapore that cost him a sackful of points.

Massa was a true star of this season. He may not have had a perfect season, but no-one can really say that. His behaviour after the Brazilian Grand Prix was worth a championship in itself, and it is a shame that I am unable to place him higher than 4th.

3. Lewis Hamilton (3; 3)

Well, Lewis Hamilton did it. He won the Drivers’ Championship in only his second year, becoming the youngest ever World Champion. I wouldn’t doubt he deserved it. Overall, Hamilton did a great job this season, and a much more mature, conservative, restrained approach eventually helped deliver the goods — even though it almost looked like it was too conservative until the final corner!

However, a flawless year it was not. A number of lapses in concentration cost Hamilton dearly a few times during the season. There was the infamous crash with Fernando Alonso in Bahrain, when Hamilton got spooked as a result of being in the midfield. He was the main protagonist in the pitlane pile-up in Montreal, when he lost concentration and failed to notice a red light — an almost unforgivable error. Meanwhile, a highly erratic performance at Fuji raised question marks about the Brit’s ability to stay cool under pressure.

However, ultimately Hamilton was able to come up with the goods, and for that you have to take your hat off to him. A particularly strong point of the season was a dominant couple of races at Silverstone and Hockenheim. His drive at the British Grand Prix was among the most dominant I have seen since I started watching F1 in the mid-1990s. Meanwhile, his fightback from a compromised position in Germany as a result of a terrible strategy decision by McLaren was, dare I say it, Schumacher-esque. I wouldn’t say Hamilton is the rounded driver that Schumacher was, but with time that could well come.

2. Robert Kubica (1; 9)

Other drivers may have attracted spectators’ attention with glitzier, showier performances. Hamilton, Alonso and Vettel all shone in flamboyant ways. But Robert Kubica arguably did the most solid job of all the drivers in the entire grid.

Most of the other drivers on the grid also had a tendency to make mistakes. 2008 will be remembered for a lot of things, but flawless drives will not be one of them. However, Robert Kubica made very few mistakes throughout the season. Indeed, I cannot think of any real driver errors by Kubica, except for a spin in treacherous conditions at Silverstone.

In the process, he took a stunning — if slightly lucky — win at Montreal. And despite the fact that the BMW Sauber car clearly fell behind other cars in terms of development as the season went on, the Pole continued to punch above his weight. Most notably, Kubica started the Japanese Grand Prix extremely strongly until Fernando Alonso in the superior Renault car took him during the first round of pitstops.

Of course, at the end of the season the challenge of contending for the Championship proved too much for the Kubica-BMW combination. Fingers will always be pointed at the team’s decision to stop development of the car in order to focus on the 2009 effort. Only time will tell whether that was the right decision or not. But in the meantime, Kubica had a clutch of extremely strong results, but just one win. And even though he was always near the top, he never felt like a real Championship contender.

1. Fernando Alonso (8; 2)

I have long believed that Fernando Alonso is the best driver on the grid since Michael Schumacher retired. Beforehand, I may have been in a minority. People would have been more likely to cite Kimi Räikkönen or, latterly, Lewis Hamilton. However, I believe that the events of 2008 vindicate my belief, despite the fact that in terms of results 2008 was actually comparatively poor for the Spaniard.

The Renault car was clearly pretty poor when the season began. And as it became clear that Renault’s engine was falling behind in terms of development, things became even worse. It was difficult to see where improvement was going to come, and Alonso hit a mid-season slump. This was encapsulated by the fact that his team mate Nelsinho Piquet managed to grab an excellent 2nd place at Hockenheim. At that point, Alonso’s best result had been 4th at an attrition-hit Australian GP.

However, that very race was the turning point of Alonso’s season. From then on, he never finished lower than 4th, with the exception of the European Grand Prix at Valencia where Kazuki Nakajima put paid to his race before he had even completed a lap. In the last eight races of the season, Alonso scored more points than anyone else.

The Renault resurgence was completed with back-to-back wins in Singapore and Fuji. The Singapore victory did have an element of luck to it, but was no less remarkable for it. This was a sign that Renault and Alonso were back on the map. When it was followed up by a fluke-free victory in Fuji, we knew it was for real.

Alonso’s resurgence can partly be put down to Renault’s turnaround. Amazingly, Alonso seems to have avoided Renault’s worst season of recent years, 2007. Dare I say it, Renault are perhaps six tenths faster than last season. But even though the car has improved, Alonso has almost always retained his authority over his team mate Nelsinho Piquet. Alonso beat his “junior” team mate in all 18 qualifying sessions. No other driver on the grid can say that.

What a travesty that Alonso has missed out on the World Championship for two seasons in a row. The new regulations will mix things up a lot, but who is to say that Renault will be particularly disadvantaged? I think Alonso is overdue another title.

7 comments

Mid-season report: Top 11 drivers

15 July 2008 18:59

Categories: Opinion, Report

This is the second part of my mid-season report on the drivers’ performances so far. Read the first part here

11. Sebastian Vettel

Sebastian Vettel is now widely regarded as one of F1′s hottest young talents. While some still have their doubts, I am in the camp that fancies Vettel for at least some kind of moderate success. Time will tell whether he is the new Alonso. In the meantime he needs to get into a better car, fast.

The young German has endured some tough times at Toro Rosso. Although the chassis is effectively the same as Red Bull’s, and the lump is a Ferrari, obviously the team (formerly Minardi, remember) is not quite up to the job in terms of preparation. Also, the team raced with a year-old car for the first five races. So Vettel did well to qualify 9th in Australia. When he got his hands on the new car he did a great job to salvage what was a rotten weekend by finishing an excellent 5th at Monaco. Another highlight was qualifying 8th in Britain.

10. Rubens Barrichello

The most experienced F1 driver of all time still has some life in him yet. If anything, he seems to be on the up. His most recent result was a solid 3rd place in the treacherous conditions of Silverstone, which could well have been 2nd were it not for a pitlane blunder. That follows a pair of back-to-back points finishes in Monaco and Canada.

This season has not been without its faults. Notably, he threw away a decent race result in Australia by running through the red light in the pitlane and getting disqualified. However, he has amassed a haul of 11 points so far this season in what is generally considered to be a terrible car. Barrichello currently stands in a highly creditable 10th position in the championship.

9. Heikki Kovalainen

I have to admit that I have been disappointed in Kovalainen so far this season. It is true that he has had a horrendous, Webber-esque run of bad luck this season. You can mention the wheel problem in Spain which caused a horrific accident, the electrical glitch at Monaco, the puncture in Turkey and the Safety Car in Australia. All of these and more have thwarted Kovalainen this season.

And yet, when he has not had so much bad luck, he has not really looked on the pace. I still don’t understand why he was so far off the pace in Canada. And he simply could not cope with the wet conditions in Silverstone anything like Hamilton could. Yes, he took pole position in Silverstone. But I think the fact that people applaud him for grabbing pole position in the fastest car says it all.

Ron Dennis says Kovalainen needs to be re-built after his year at Renault. Let’s hope the process doesn’t take too long.

8. Fernando Alonso

For Alonso’s many fans in Spain, this season must be difficult to endure. It is painful to see such a great driver not have the equipment he needs to get results. The Renault is, by all accounts, a terrible car. Alonso should therefore be commended for grabbing the odd result here and there. 4th in Australia and 6th in Turkey and Britain are his highlights of the year. It looks like his chances of getting a podium this year, never mind a win, are very slim indeed.

I really like Alonso, so it’s sad to see him in this situation. I sense that Alonso is rather down in the dumps about this situation and is rather nonchalant about Renault ever improving. He has lapsed in concentration a couple of times this year. And when he’s been on the attack he has sometimes curiously lacked judgement, such as when he crashed into Heidfeld trying to overtake at the Grand Hotel hairpin — a move that was never going to stick in a month of Sundays.

7. Jarno Trulli

It is unusual for me to praise Jarno Trulli. I thought he was finished, really. But this season he has had some very strong results, outshining Timo Glock almost all of the time. He gained a podium in France completely on merit (McLaren penalties notwithstanding), and it could well have been 2nd if Kimi had been called in with that dangerous flapping exhaust like he should have.

Trulli’s season has not been error-free. In fact, he seems to be making a habit of spinning a lot. But that is during practice when it doesn’t matter. Come race day, he is prepared to pick up the points. He has only retired once all season, and that was in the first race and due to an electrical failure. Trulli is not the greatest of drivers, but he looks to be bang on form right at the moment despite his advancing age.

6. Nick Heidfeld

Nick Heidfeld has endured an unusually difficult season. His qualifying performances in particular have been off-colour, as he grapples with a sudden inability to get heat into his tyres properly. He has worked hard to sort out the problem though, and his latest qualifying session has seen an upswing when he qualified 5th (compared to an average grid position this season of 8.22). That was the first time all season he has out-qualified team-mate Robert Kubica.

Despite a generally disappointing season so far, Heidfeld has not been without his moments. A well-deserved 2nd place in Canada was ruined only by the fact that Kubica won the race. He finished second in the horrendous conditions at Silverstone, and another second place was amassed in Australia. He is a solid 5th place in the championship, just ten points behind Kubica — which is much less than you might think.

5. Felipe Massa

Massa had the worst possible start to the season when he spun in two races in a row. This prompted questions about his ability to drive without traction control. Commendably, under immense pressure, he turned up the wick at the Bahrain Grand Prix. This prompted a run of great results: two more wins, a 2nd and a 3rd. Only an errant 5th place in Canada ruined the run. That put him right back into contention, as he was able to capitalise on the mistakes and misfortunes of Räikkönen and Hamilton.

But his performance in Britain left a lot to be desired to say the least. Massa has never been the strongest of wet weather drivers, but he was positively embarrassing in Britain. When Webber spun, the Australian ploughed his way through the field. Massa just trundled round at the back. Massa went on to have four more spins.

Massa seems to be good enough when it’s all going his way. But if there is the slightest problem, he seems unable to cope with it.

4. Mark Webber

While his team-mate David Coulthard has been having a tough time of it in the midfield, Mark Webber has grabbed the (Red) Bull by the horns and collected serious handfuls of points. His bad luck has finally evaporated and the numbers say it all: five consecutive points finishes (a personal record), along with an extra one in France. A best result of 4th doesn’t top Coulthard’s podium, but Webber now has the consistency that Red Bull need to collect those precious championship points.

Webber is now the only driver of the midfield that you can reasonably expect to be battling for the points race-in, race-out. An awesome front row grid slot in Silverstone underlines the fact that Webber is in great form at the moment and can reasonably be described as the ‘best of the rest’ behind BMW.

3. Lewis Hamilton

It’s been a very topsy-turvy season for Hamilton. He has had some amazing high points — the unexpected win in Australia, and dominant wet-weather performances in the prestigious Monaco Grand Prix and his home race at Silverstone. But the low points have been very, very low. He suffered the world’s most embarrassing incidence of fat fingers in Bahrain and proceeded to crash into the back of Alonso, so impatient he was to make his way through the field. His crash in the pitlane in Canada was simply unforgivable. And a so-so performance in France led to the British media to heap the criticism on top of him.

This year Hamilton has a great chance of winning the championship. He just needs to cut out the silly errors and he will be unstoppable. He is finally showing the signs of maturity that demonstrate that he will be able to do this.

2. Kimi Räikkönen

Like Hamilton, Räikkönen has made his fair share of mistakes this season. He looked incredibly off-colour in the season opener in Australia and also in Monaco. This has led to yet more speculation about his future, as it is said his heart is no longer in Formula 1 and the motivation has gone.

Nonetheless, it is notable that even in Australia and Monaco he finished 8th and 9th. Some F1 drivers at the back would give their right arm for those positions to be their worst performances. His one and only retirement in Canada was not his fault, as it was caused by Hamilton crashing into the back of him in the pitlane. You also have to applaud him for bringing a very sick car home in 2nd in France. Räikkönen simply cannot be written off and he has a great shout of winning his second WDC in a row.

1. Robert Kubica

I think we should give this man a nickname: Robot Kubica. He is simply flawless! Well okay, not quite flawless. He spun off in the wet conditions in Silverstone. But many drivers did, and Kubica was effectively driving a car that he had never driven before.

Apart from that, his only DNF was in Australia where he was crashed into by Nakajima. His other worst performance is a 5th place in France where BMW struggled with set-up. He had an awesome win in Canada, the first time a non-Ferrari-or-McLaren car has won a race for almost two years. The record is topped with two 2nds and a third. He has outqualified his team-mate 7–1. In short, Robert Kubica is amazing. And he is the only driver who I can genuinely say would deserve to win the WDC on current form. What a shame he probably won’t manage it.

7 comments

Bluffer's guide — Part 2: rules and strategy

13 April 2008 19:15

Categories: Bluffer's guide

This is the second in a series of “bluffer’s guides“. The first part covered the basics of Formula 1. This second part goes deeper into the rulebook and also covers one of the most important aspects of a race weekend — strategy.

After Qualifying: parc fermé

After the Qualifying session is finished, cars are deemed to be under “parc fermé” conditions. Parc fermé is literally French for “closed park”. All the cars are kept in parc fermé overnight to prevent the teams from working on the cars.

No-one can touch the cars without the express permission of the stewards. Even then, work is usually limited to routine procedures carried out under the supervision of the FIA’s Technical Delegate and other scrutineers.

All cars that qualified 11th on the grid or lower may refuel, but cars in the top ten cannot. Tyres can be changed. Minor set-up alterations can be made in the event that weather conditions change between qualifying and the race.

But apart from that, cars are essentially the same in the race as they were during qualifying. In the past, some teams used specific qualifying-spec engines which were deemed by the FIA to be wasteful. Parc fermé prevents teams from doing this.

If a team needs to do more work on its car, it may opt to do so but the car will have to start the race from the pitlane. This means that the driver must wait at the end of the pitlane until all of the other cars have cleared the start / finish straight.

The start procedure

The pit lane is opened 30 minutes before the scheduled race start time. It is closed 15 minutes later. In this time, cars must make their way round the track and onto the starting grid.

15 seconds before the advertised race start time, all mechanics must leave the grid so that only the cars are left on the circuit. Then the green lights switch on, signifying the start of the formation lap.

The cars then make their way round the circuit. They will be seen weaving around as the drivers try to get their tyres up to racing temperature — warmer tyres have more grip. Similarly, drivers will often stamp on the brakes to get brake temperatures up. Check out this video from the 2008 Malaysian Grand Prix to see this in action.


Warm up from AC on Vimeo.

Overtaking is forbidden on the formation lap unless a car has a technical problem. In this event, cars may make up their positions again so that they can start from the correct grid slot. If the car is unable to start for good, marshals will push the car into the pitlane where mechanics can work on it. If a driver manages to re-start the car but all the drivers have moved off for the formation lap, he must join the queue at the back and will start from the back of the grid.

Once the drivers have all lined up again on the grid, the starting procedure proper commences. Five red lights will switch on one at a time at one second intervals. Then, after a random amount of time the lights will switch off. When this happens, the race has begun.

Tyres

Formula 1 now has one tyre supplier — Bridgestone. There are four kinds of tyres that are brought to each circuit. Two of these are different ‘compounds’: one is softer and the other is harder. The other two are wet tyres: intermediate and extreme wet weather. The intermediate is sometimes simply called ‘wet’ because the extreme wet is only used in truly atrocious conditions.

If the race is dry (as most races are), each car must use both the soft and the hard tyre at some point during the race. The softer tyre has a white stripe painted in one of the grooves of the tyre so that viewers can tell which tyre the driver is on. If the race is deemed to be wet at any point, teams are free to choose whatever tyres they want.

There are actually four dry compounds — super-soft, soft, medium and hard. But Bridgestone only take two of these to any race weekend and from there one is designated ‘soft’ and the other ‘hard’ for simplicity. The choices are made based on the characteristics of the circuit.

Soft tyres have more grip but wear out more quickly. A harder tyre is more durable but does not give the car the same speed.

During a race weekend, each team has access to seven sets of each of the dry compounds, four sets of intermediate tyres and three sets of extreme wets. Sets cannot be mixed. If the race starts behind the Safety Car, the use of extreme wets is compulsory.

Pitstop strategy

A number of aspects may play a role in race strategy. The two biggest factors are fuel and tyres.

As mentioned above, soft tyres wear out relatively quickly which might make a 2 or 3 stop strategy more viable. Meanwhile, hard tyres might be more suitable for a 1 stop strategy. Of course, nowadays both types of tyres must be used during the race, so it isn’t as simple as that any more.

Fuel levels also play a role. A team may choose to fill their car lightly, making the car speedy on the track but with the tradeoff that an extra pitstop must be made.

A typical pitstop may add 30 seconds to a normal race-speed lap time. But of course, this depends on the length of the pitlane as well. Circuits that have a short pitlane (such as Magny-Cours) lend themselves better to a 3 stop strategy.

Teams also try hard to arrange their pitstops so that their drivers will emerge from the pitlane in “clean air”, i.e. without any traffic. There is nothing worse than to have your race ruined because you came out behind a slow car after your pitstop.

Weather is also a big issue. If rain is predicted, a race can turn into a bit of a lottery as you need either the great skill (or the good luck!) to change to wet tyres just in time for the weather to turn for the worse.

The prospect of a Safety Car period also plays a huge role. Teams take into account the likelihood that the Safety Car will come out. Some circuits have more accidents than others. Teams will try to adapt their strategy to make the most of the Safety Car periods.

It is advantageous to make your pitstop while the Safety Car is out because the other drivers are not at racing speed. A driver can make his pitstop and rejoin the tail of the queue behind the Safety Car.

This was deemed to be dangerous, so now the pitlane is closed as soon as the Safety Car is brought out. This has annoyed the teams and drivers who have suffered the bad luck to run out of fuel while the Safety Car is out. In this case, cars may make their pitstop, but they will incur a 10 second stop–go penalty. This rule may be changed in the near future.

Pitstop strategies are criticised by many for neutering the on-track race. It is said that many drivers avoid the risk of overtaking on the circuit and instead rely on their strategy to effectively overtake cars in the pitlane.

Safety Car rules

When the Safety Car comes out, it picks up the leader and the rest of the field lines up in race order. Drivers must keep within a distance of 5 car lengths to each other. Drivers deemed to be driving erratically will be reported to the stewards.

As outlined above, the pitlane is closed as soon as the Safety Car comes out. A few laps later, race control will reopen the pitlane when they see fit.

When the pitlane is open, a red light will still be displayed at the end of the pitlane if the train of cars is still on the start / finish straight. Drivers who run through the red light will be disqualified.

After a number of laps, lapped cars will be allowed to overtake the train and make their way round again to gain back their lost laps. These cars must still drive at reduced speed and overtaking cars on the same lap is still forbidden. Takuma Sato took advantage of this in the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix when he unlapped himself under the Safety Car. When the race re-started he was in a position to overtake Fernando Alonso.

When the Safety Car is ready to come in, the orange lights on the Safety Car will switch off. From now on, the leader may dictate the pace and may fall back up to 10 car lengths behind the Safety Car.

The Safety Car driver is an unsung hero of Formula 1. He has a difficult job to do. Even though it is a reduced speed for Formula 1 cars, the Safety Car is on the limit. If the Safety Car was too slow, there is a risk that the Formula 1 cars would overheat.

It speaks volumes of the talent of current Safety Car driver Bernd Mayländer (who has been the Safety Car driver since 2000) that a Safety Car phase usually passes without event. Some quick thinking by Mayländer even prevented a potentially horrific accident in the 2007 European Grand Prix when Vitantonio Liuzzi lost control on the start / finish straight while the Safety Car was waiting to pick up the leader.

Engines and gearboxes

From 2008, engine development has been frozen and will be for the next five years. Teams will be unable to update their engines from now on due to homologation.

A single engine is expected to have a lifespan of two grand prix meetings. If a driver changes his engine before qualifying, he will be given a 10 place grid penalty. If he changes his engine after qualifying, he must start from the back of the grid. But the first engine change of the season will go unpunished.

Similar rules govern the use of gearboxes. A gearbox is expected to last for four race weekends. If the gearbox is changed a driver faces a five place grid penalty.

These engine and gearbox rules are a source of great frustration as even the most seasoned F1 followers find the rules too convoluted and impossible to keep track of.

Driver aids

From 2008 onwards, “driver aids” are banned. The most important of these driver aids are traction control and engine braking. In the past, these were allowed because they were deemed impossible to police. But in the interests of spicing up the race action, a standardised Electronic Control Unit has been introduced, making such aids impossible for teams to implement.

But teams can still use electronics to control engine map settings. But each change to these settings will take 90 seconds to take effect. This is what caught out Lewis Hamilton at the start of the 2008 Bahrain Grand Prix.

After the race: scrutineering

After the race — and often several times during the race weekend — cars are checked to make sure that they meet the various technical regulations. Among the most important is the weight limit. The minimum weight of a car including the driver at any one time is 600kg (605kg during qualifying). You will see the drivers and cars being weighed immediately after the race has finished before the podium ceremony.

Most of the technical regulations are quite detailed and I certainly am not in a position to digest them here. But an accessible guide to technical regulations is available on the official Formula 1 website.

7 comments

Don't write Massa off so quickly

25 March 2008 18:00

Categories: Opinion

Before the season began, a lot of people — myself included — were shining the spotlight on Felipe Massa. “Without traction control, he will never survive,” we said.

The first two races certainly appear to have vindicated that view. Certainly Massa’s spin in Australia was unequivocally down to his inability to feather the throttle while exiting turn 1. This led to much pointing and laughing, as can be seen below:

I can haz traction control back please?

Noooo they be stealin’ my driver aids!

FAIL

So when Massa had an off in Malaysia, predictably enough many people — again, myself included — lay the blame on Massa’s inability to drive sans traction control. Massa’s excuse seemed weak: “It had a strange behaviour on the rear.” Then moments later Ferrari landed him in it when they said they could see nothing on the telemetry indicating that there was a problem. Keith at F1Fanatic asked: “Has Felipe Massa been found out?”

But. There is a difference between amateur onlookers like me and seasoned F1 analysts like Martin Brundle.

I have a huge amount of respect for Martin Brundle and I trust what he says. Like everyone else, when he saw Massa in the gravel he suspected driver error. But when he saw the replay his reaction was immediate and unequivocal: what a strange place to go off — that was probably a mechanical failure. (If you need a reminder of how surprised Brundle was, ITV have a video of it.)

After Ferrari said there was no problem on the telemetry, Martin Brundle changed his tack a bit, saying that it looked like “ambition got ahead of adhesion”. But after the race, Mark Blundell was more sceptical, saying he’d be surprised if that was purely a driver error. But he shrugged his shoulders and said, “But we just have to take Ferrari’s word for it if they say there’s no mechanical problem.”

The thing is, we don’t have to take Ferrari’s word for it. They have form in this area, as has been pointed out at the excellent F1 Insight blog. Clive is another person whose word I have to trust. He has obviously been watching motor racing for decades now and is very wise when it comes to these things.

I do not usually find myself defending Felipe but, on this occasion, I think he may be getting a raw deal. His Ferrari flicked so suddenly and inexplicably to the left that it made me think immediately that something had broken at the rear. It was well before the apex of the corner, too, and if Massa caused the rear end to lose grip by accelerating too soon (as most are saying), he must have completely altered his technique for some reason – he had made it through the corner plenty of times before without a hint of trouble, after all.

But why would Ferrari land Massa in the brown stuff like they did?

Ferrari are saying that they can find no mechanical reason for the accident; but then they would, wouldn’t they? Part of the fun of watching F1 is in seeing the lengths Ferrari will go to in denying that anything ever goes wrong with their cars. Remember Raikkonen’s terrifying accident in Monza practice last year? Not mechanical failure, oh no…

Makes sense to me.

18 comments

Older posts »