Ask Gary Anderson: How do teams manage warring team-mates?

When a team says everything is fine between drivers, as Mercedes has said about its drivers, can that ever be true? What happens behind the PR?
Marcus Bates, via email

Marcus, the simple answer is no. In any team sport, the first person you have to prove yourself against is your team-mate. Drivers who are nice guys just don't make the grade.

That said, you also have to respect your team-mate and make sure you understand that the team is bigger than either of you. On some occasions survival is the best policy.

I still believe Lewis Hamilton was the one that could see the whole thing unfolding and could have done something about it a lot more easily than Nico Rosberg. Rosberg knew he had a power problem and - as any driver would do - knew he had to make his car as wide as possible. Also, the mirrors on an F1 car are pretty small and Hamilton was probably in Rosberg's blind spot.

You never want to air your dirty washing in public so the management will have had a fairly high level meeting with the drivers and explained how they see it. It will then be up to the drivers to make sure that in future they put the team before themselves.

What do you make of the Williams rear wing we saw testing at Barcelona - they say it is to understand the team's current weaknesses?
John Stokes, via email

If the team believes it is short of ultimate downforce and that is why performance is dropping off over a race stint, the only way to check out that theory is to add more downforce.

The regulations mean these current cars run at Barcelona with more or less maximum downforce, so the only way to test if more is better is to add something outside of what is allowed by the regulations.

These wings working on the outside of the wing endplate and over the tyre wake won't cause any damage to the current car's downforce producing devices, so the outcome is probably the most downforce with the least aerodynamic downside.

If it works and it solves all the problems, which I very much doubt, then Williams will have to go off and find ways of creating that extra downforce within the regulations. No easy task, but as other teams have proved it is possible.

There is a lot of debate about cockpit safety with halos or screens. Why isn't anyone talking about covering the wheels so we don't get the horrific accidents Dan Wheldon suffered?
Kristoffer Hjelm, via email

If you look at most formulas that have covered wheels like current IndyCars or even World Endurance Championship cars, the first thing that happens in an accident is that the wheel covers get ripped off exposing the wheels. So to cover them with a structural component strong enough to do the job would be very difficult and fairly heavy.

The wheel tethers used in F1 have done a good job of keeping wheels attached in an accident. This needs to be transferred across to all other formulas for the simple reason that more accidents happen in the lower formulas than happen in F1.

If you can do something that will help with head protection then you are protecting a vital part of the body from being injured by anything.

I'm more a fan of the aeroscreen than the halo as it will protect the head from smaller objects being thrown up by another car.

If you need proof of what can happen, Helmut Marko is a good example. He lost an eye from a stone being thrown up. Since then 'visor' protection has improved ten-fold but still a little more wouldn't do any harm.

What's the logic of a unit restriction in F1. Surely the costs for R&D hugely dwarf those of simply making the parts?
Amedeo Felix, via Twitter

I am actually a fan of car component unit restriction. If you just had one per cent of the cost of components that simply go in the bin because they didn't work on the circuit you would be a rich man.

The R&D cost will still exist, but by having a longer research time the component will actually be a better step. It will also reduce the fact that the bigger teams with larger budgets can introduce developments that might just work for each race and come armed with three or four cars' sets of these. They don't really care if they end up in the bin because if they work, great, and if they don't they can afford it.

The smaller teams just can't do this so the gap between those that have and those that don't have just gets bigger.

Sometimes you hear a driver say he got the best time possible out of the car. Do you believe them? Can someone achieve the perfect qualifying lap?
Aman Dhatt, via Facebook

When the driver says this, it is usually because they feel they didn't make any mistakes and everything was right on the limit. Do I believe them? Probably not.

Daniel Riccardo's Q3 lap from Barcelona was one of those laps. Actually, I think he would say he got more out of the car than he thought was possible.

What amazes me is how a driver can feel the grip level when the circuit and the tyres are constantly changing throughout the session and even during the lap.

On some circuits, and Barcelona is one of them, you need to look after the tyres for the first few corners to make sure they still have maximum grip for the last section of the lap.

At Barcelona, the last section is all slow corners so all you have for that section to give you the grip is the tyres.

I remember when F1 cars where the lithe whippets of the racing world. Why are they getting so heavy?
Peter Goodchild, via Twitter

I remember that as well and there was nothing as exciting as watching the car dancing around on a qualifying lap.

Actually, we used to be able to build the cars about 50 or 60kg under the weight limit then add ballast under the car. This served two purposes: it would lower the centre of gravity and also allow us to trim the weight distribution from circuit to circuit.

Max Mosley, then head of the FIA, was a big fan of keeping the cars' weight down as it reduced the energy that needed to be absorbed during an accident.

With the introduction of the current power units, which have a battery pack of something in the region of 25kg and a turbo that is not light, it was becoming just too expensive for the smaller teams to get down to the weight limit. So it was deemed that increasing the weight limit was the better of the two evils.

I have read in a book you said the long sidepods on the 1996 Jordan were a problem and for '97 you shortened the sidepods' leading edge/bodywork. What is the problem with long sidepods? Were long sidepoids even more of a problem with flat floor cars such as in 1994?
Peter Bukova, via email

As every year goes past we learn something new.

Managing the airflow coming off the front wing's trailing edge and going around the front tyre is one of the most important factors in creating downforce from both the front wing and the underfloor.

Having shorter sidepods means there is more room to manage this airflow. As a matter of fact, if it weren't for the side-impact requirements of a current F1 car regulations the sidepods would be even shorter than they are currently. You can see lumps on the Ferrari sidepods and these are simply to cover the side impact structure.

When we had ground effect cars to get the maximum overall downforce, the sidepods were long and this meant that the centre of pressure of the underfloor was so far forward the front wing was either very small or not required at all, so there was no real problem with the wake coming off the trailing edge.

I've read before that you worked in Indycar - did you ever work at Indianapolis for the month of May and, if so, what was that like? With all that practice time, how do you go about setting up a car there and how do conditions, wind, temperatures affect things?
David Barnes, via email

David, yes I have done the month of May at Indy and it is a great experience. Tough, for in reality the month seems to go on forever.

You are always chasing your tail. The slightest change in wind or temperature affects the balance of the cars dramatically. Even half-a-millimetre of ride height change alters the car's balance and if you are not careful it is very easy to lose yourself.

One of the biggest challenges is the difference between qualifying and the race. In qualifying, you run on your own so it just you and the weather elements on the day. But in the race the cars, 33 of them travelling in excess of 220mph, actually start to drag the air around with them.

This effectively creates a tail wind and with that the cars start losing downforce, especially at the rear. The last thing you need heading into a race at Indy is a car that is suffering from oversteer.

In the Berlin Formula E round, the Abt Audi Sport Formula E attempted to impose a team order. Daniel Abt attempted to let Lucas di Grassi past once, then held position. Both drivers managed their team-orders fallout very admirably and the team boss said he accepted the outcome. But in your experience, do you think drivers can hide that sort of frustration - and are teams ever really as sanguine about a rejected order as they make out?
John Crane, via email

As I said above with regard to the Hamilton/Rosberg situation, the team is bigger than either of its drivers. It doesn't matter if it's F1 or Formula E - as long as team orders are acceptable within the regulations the team needs to be able to call the tune and the drivers need to react to it.

The problem with the situation that you have highlighted is probably fairly simple: the team is Abt Audi Sport and one of its drivers is Daniel Abt, son of the boss.

The end result is the way it is and being sour faced, as we have seen Lewis Hamilton on many occasions on the podium when he didn't get what he wanted, won't change anything. So you are better just to live with it and over time the tables will turn and that is the time to remember it. Certainly, Lucas di Grassi didn't make anything of it.

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