Will Hamilton's woe continue in Canada?

As a die-hard Lewis Hamilton fan, I just wanted to know what went wrong on Lewis's car at Monaco. Is it just the set-up, or something else? Did Mercedes give him a different set-up to Bottas and could this affect the next race in Canada?
Rohan Devara, via Facebook

I am sure the engineers at Mercedes would also like to know what happened there! They will be trawling through the data trying to find whatever widget it was that wasn't widgeting correctly.

I'm pretty sure there would be at least subtle differences in the set-up between the two cars, but they should be easy to recognise. Remember, in FP3 both Mercedes cars were struggling a little bit. While Bottas got it together for qualifying, Hamilton didn't.

Since last month's post-Bahrain Grand Prix test, I don't think that Hamilton has been as comfortable with the car as Bottas has. They altered something on the set-up there to try to improve the tyre life and whatever it was seemed to affect Hamilton that little bit more.

Both of them drive quite differently. Hamilton likes to take his braking right into the apex of the corner, and for that you need rear-end stability on the brakes.

Bottas brakes more in a straight line, and is then fairly reactive with the steering wheel going through the corner. For that you need consistent front grip, while both need good traction.

Watching the car at the Barcelona test and again in the grand prix on television, I believe the Mercedes has inherent understeer. But around that understeer, the rear of the car is rotating so in effect the whole car is sliding.

I'm pretty sure it doesn't just lack grip, and if Mercedes tries to fix the understeer, the rear rotation will just get worse. If Mercedes tries to fix the rotation, the understeer will just get worse, so it's a Catch 22 situation. It also looks worse with softer tyres.

To me, the Ferrari doesn't show any of these characteristics no matter what tyre it's on.

Montreal is a whole different deal and I'm pretty sure Mercedes still has a little bit extra power over Ferrari. In Canada, that will be an advantage. But if the Ferrari chassis has a better balance, the team may just be able to aerodynamically trim it that little bit better. So I'm expecting the battle to continue.

What are the factors that decide how a car works its tyres? The Ferrari seems to get something out of all the compounds, but Mercedes struggles more with softer ones, so why is this the case?
David Holland, via email

Normally, it's the front tyre that causes the grief. It's relatively easy to get the rears working, but if the fronts don't offer any bite then it is very difficult to get them to load up and heat up.

As you go softer with the tyres, the rear picks up grip immediately. But because of this it becomes more and more difficult to get the fronts working. Long, fast corners load the tyres up nicely, but as you know Monaco just doesn't have any of those.

If you look at the Mercedes, especially at Monaco, the front suspension movement was considerable. I'm pretty sure there was a fair amount more than I saw on the Ferrari.

Having a stiffer suspension set-up gives the front tyre a bit more of a pounding, which induces heat into the tyre structure and in effect frees up the carcass. Think of a new tyre as like wearing a new pair of shoes; they hurt in places but when they get stretched that little bit and free up, they become comfortable. A tyre needs the same freeing up.

To try to get the fronts working immediately, some teams turn up the tyre blankets to what I would consider to be far too high a temperature and basically cook the tyre. It might give you that extra initial bite, but the overall grip potential will be reduced.

As I said above, the Mercedes appears to have inherent understeer, whereas the Ferrari doesn't. This will be a big part of how each team can bring the tyres into the operating window.

Do you think we'll ever have active aerodynamics in F1? They exist on modern hypercars like the LaFerrari. It might aid overtaking.
Chris Lawrence, via Facebook

It would be difficult to get enough extra downforce from active aerodynamics to influence overtaking. On a car like the LaFerrari, it is mainly about keeping the car stable and not actually increasing the quantity of the downforce.

With a Formula 1 car, you face a very different problem. On many circuits these cars are actually running fairly near the maximum downforce that can be produced by the available aerodynamic surfaces.

When one car gets close to another, the one following will lose around 20% of its overall downforce. Most of this is lost from the front, so not only does it lose grip, it also loses balance.

To have any aerodynamic surfaces available that could reproduce that 20% would be very difficult. And to have enough front wing-adjustment available to pull the balance to somewhere near what the driver wants would be impossible. It would be a very expensive challenge to set out to achieve, and I'm afraid one that would, in the long term, fail.

That doesn't mean the FIA isn't going to implement it. After all, the last few attempts it has had at creating a set of regulations that would improve overtaking have, if anything, made things worse.

Can a car be designed to suit a specific driver? There was talk of Ferrari building cars to Alonso's supposed preference, but was that ever true and can a car be designed specifically to understeer, for example?
Rick Hall, via Facebook

Every team will listen to its drivers' input and do the best it can to accommodate their driving styles. This is one of the reasons that the big teams want driver stability.

Most drivers just like a car with lots of downforce and a good, but more importantly stable, balance. They don't want surprises from corner to corner, so if the aerodynamics are too peaky the driver will soon lose his confidence.

If you take the Brawn car of 2009, for whatever reason it suited Jenson Button's driving style to a tee - or at least it did for the early part of the season. He drives an F1 car a bit like an F3 car, where it's vitally important to keep the corner speed up and, in effect, he makes the corner longer so he needs a car that has a good aerodynamic balance.

Other drivers like Hamilton brake into the apex, so need rear stability under braking.

For Turkey in 2009, Brawn changed its front wing from a three-element to a two-element one [pictured]. I'm sure the package increased the overall downforce level, but I'm also sure it was less consistent and after that race things became that little bit tougher for the team.

Yes, you can design in certain characteristics, but I think you should just go about the design to have as high a level of downforce as possible. But this should not be at the expense of stable aerodynamics.

Achieve that and you can alter the balance to suit your drivers' requirements. If you don't have stable aerodynamics, then you will always be compromised with the set-up.

DAMS is making good progress as the factory Renault team in Formula E. Could we see them enter F1 in the near future in a tie-up with Renault, like Ferrari has with Haas as a junior team?
Patrick Carney, via Facebook

Jean Paul Driot, who is co-founder of DAMS, has been around for a long time and been very successful in every formula he has entered. But he knows F1 is a slightly different kettle of fish.

It takes so much commitment and financial backing to get a team up and running, and even if it was going to be successful it could take five years to achieve that. With F1 now going through a transition period that could last for quite a few years, and with no guarantees of what the outcome will be, DAMS is probably better to keep pushing on with Formula E. After all, it did try to come into F1 and built a car in 1994, but it didn't work financially.

All that said, Renault as a works team appears to me to lack upper management, so bringing in Driot as team principal might not be such a bad idea. For him, that would be easier and he could just spend someone else's money.

Of all the drivers you've witnessed both as a spectator and from the pitwall, is there one performance that particularly stands out from any category you've been involved with or followed?
Derek Peters, via email

Good drivers are good drivers and, no matter what the formula, the guys at the front are normally the bee's knees.

Watching Tommy Byrne in F3 in the early 1980s, when he drove for Eddie Jordan, is probably the one I remember the best. He just had that commitment and belief in his ability and it stood out above all others.

Then there was Michael Schumacher when he first drove for us in 1991. We did a short test at the Silverstone South Circuit before heading off to Spa, and on his fourth lap he was faster than any of our other drivers had ever been around that circuit.

His commitment and car control was, if anything, frightening and from that day we knew he was going to be pretty good.

Ayrton Senna at Donington Park in 1993 in the wet was exceptional, but then in that same race so was Rubens Barrichello in our Jordan. It was his first year in F1 and in terrible conditions he drove with total commitment. But we let him down with a small fuelling error, otherwise third place was his for the taking.

I'm sure there's a few others. The one I think is out there right now is Italian Antonio Giovinazzi. He has done a little bit with Sauber and impressed me with his performances in GP2. If I were an F1 team owner, he would be high on my list.

Why were cars on grooved tyres more than a decade ago equally as fast as today's cars? We have wider cars, more tyre-contact patch and yet the cars are not radically faster. Is it the added weight, or the lack of tyre quality?
Sasha Salipanov, via email

Back in those days we had a tyre war between Bridgestone and Michelin and that led to some really good tyres.

Pirelli's initial directive was not to have the fastest tyres in the world, but tyres that would be difficult to manage from a driver's and team's point of view. It was hoped that this would lead to better racing with more inconsistent results.

The tyres have certainly achieved part of their objective, but as far as better racing is concerned - or inconsistent results - they have failed miserably. Personally, I think it's time for them to show us what they could do as far as out-and-out tyre performance is concerned.

To achieve this, the medium and hard compounds need to go in the bin immediately and Pirelli needs to build a new ultra-ultra soft. I should also do away with all this temperature sensitivity that the different compounds have, and build them all the same with a potential performance step of at least 0.5 seconds between compounds. In other words, make it more interesting for the viewer and spectator by making it simpler.

Also, the cars of a decade ago were pretty good at producing downforce; it was the era of all the gizmos and flicks that were banned for 2009. And the added weight, which is in the region of 100kg, accounts for about three seconds.

I'm pretty sure that one of today's cars on ultra-softs and 100kg lighter around Silverstone would be fairly impressive.

What are your thoughts on the first lap after the safety car at Monaco? I thought there is room for improvement on the side of the FIA. Considering the speed difference, do you think bringing in the safety car and giving the drivers a couple of laps under VSC at a faster pace would help improve the tyre and brake temperatures?
Rob Hitchens, via Facebook

It's always difficult to know when you are pampering these drivers too much. They all survived to fight another day and, on the way, they had to work for it.

We have blue flags for cars that are going to be lapped, we have DRS replacing a driver's overtaking skills, we have tyre blankets to assist with getting up to speed.

We want to see real racing and race-craft, where drivers need to plan a simple thing like passing lapped cars. David Coulthard sat behind Enrique Bernoldi for almost a complete Monaco GP in 2001. It spoiled his race, but it also showed that to be a complete driver you need to be able to pull these moves off. It shouldn't be mirror, signal, manoeuvre - it needs to be planned.

If a driver doesn't get any practice at passing lapped cars, then how on earth is he ever going to pass a driver he's racing with?

I want to see raw and hungry racing, and all this mollycoddling is not going to achieve that.