Austria: The best and worst of F1

I keep bleating on about how Formula 1's technical and sporting regulations need to change if it's to attract a larger and more diverse audience.

We need to remember that you, the people reading this article, are the hardcore fans that will, like me, always watch it - good or bad - because we are addicted to most forms of sport that involve speed!

There's lots of talk about 'fan' surveys, but it's not the likes of us that the changes will be aimed at satisfying. Instead, it's the casual viewers that F1 needs to attract and keep. Until this is done, the viewing figures will keep on trailing away.

So in the wake of my plan last week to help F1 to escape from the doldrums (and part two is coming up soon!), I'd like to ask how many of you were confused by the grid penalties during the Austrian Grand Prix weekend?


I know I was. You can just imagine what it would be like for someone just tuning in to take a look at what F1 is all about; they'd turn off immediately.



To cap it all, the television commentators were all on about how rubbish these penalties are and how it should be done differently. We all have our own ideas about this - and rightly so - but rubbishing the regulations on air only serves to confuse the viewer even more.

McLaren's Alonso and Button landed 20- and 25-place grid penalties respectively © LAT


The TV companies pay a lot of money for the rights to show F1. To talk about how wrong it is seems like they're trying to reduce their own audience.



Anyway, that's my bleat for the week, now on to my main subject for this week's column: circuits.



Austria was, and still is, a fantastic circuit set in beautiful countryside. And it's very difficult to put in a perfect lap there.

This is because of the elevation changes and the way the track copes with these elevation changes on the transition through the corners.

With the cars braking at up to 5.5g there's a lot of weight transfer off the rear axle onto the front axle during braking. When you have uphill or downhill braking, this weight transfer varies.

The drivers have a braking-distribution-adjustment lever (front to rear axle) in the cockpit and this will have two or three available settings. So they will be altering it from corner to corner to try to optimise the braking for each corner.

As we saw over the weekend, this isn't easy. Into Turn 1, it's still very easy to lose the rear.

Into Turn 8, the car just doesn't slow down and it's very easy to run wide.

Up and downhill braking zones and camber changes make the Red Bull Ring a unique challenge © LAT

Again, in the corners, the surface transition means that the cars three-wheel a lot more than normal. This means that corner entry and exit becomes that bit more difficult.



If there is ever any hope of cars overtaking, circuits need a slow-speed corner, where aerodynamics are not so important, leading on to a long straight, with either an uphill or downhill braking area into, again, a low-speed corner.

Both of these corners need a small amount of banking so that the entry and/or exit racing line is not just one line. Basically, you can go through these corners on either part of the track and still achieve a good lap time or, more importantly, go side-by-side during an overtaking manoeuvre without really gaining or losing.

Side-by-side racing: that's what we all want.

Turn 2 at the Red Bull Ring offers the opportunity to do this. But looking back closely over the weekend, Sergio Perez was the only driver I saw actually using this consistently as a racing line.


If you use the wide line through this corner, you stand less chance of locking the right-front on corner entry when the tyre is unloaded.

Off the corner, the traction is better because the right-rear is not so unloaded when you want to apply the throttle.

Overall, the wide line will be more consistent, but that doesn't necessarily make it faster. The normal racing line will be the largest arc around the corner, so your mid-corner speed will be that little bit higher.

Of the modern circuits, Istanbul's sweeping Turn 8 was a driver favourite © LAT



My ideal circuit would combine three of these style of corners, with longish straights between them.

So, a Suzuka high-speed 'S', a Turn 8 from Turkey, an Eau Rouge, a Turn 3 from Barcelona and a few others selected from around the world to make up about a 16-or-so-corner circuit around five kilometres in length.



Back in the 1970s, what was then called the Osterreichring had more or less the same layout as today, but it was longer and overall a lot faster.

All of the corners were more or less flat out and it was incredibly hard on the tyres.

After the death of Mark Donohue in 1975, a chicane was added at Turn 1, but it still retained its high-speed, totally committed corners.



I remember when John Watson drove for us at McLaren; he came into the pits and said that when he turned into the corners he had to be very precise.

This was because when the chassis loaded up, the steering seized and he could do nothing about it except hope he was on the right line!

The original Osterreichring was a bigger and faster version of the modern circuit © LAT



When I built my first Formula 3 car in the early 80s, we went off to Austria to do our first F3 European championship race with an Austrian driver called Gero Zamagna.

We were using Yokohama tyres and they were very good, if a little fragile, for these fast corners. Basically, the left-front tyre could do about three quick laps and would then explode!



We qualified well but there was no way we could race with those tyres, so overnight I had a eureka moment. We had brought the car to Austria on a set of used Avon tyres from the British Championship, so on race morning we set up the car as best we could with an Avon tyre on the left-front and three Yokohamas.

The main problem was that the Avon tyre was about two inches larger in diameter. But with that can-do, or that must-do-otherwise-we-won't-get-paid-by-the-sponsor, attitude we did it.

Carlos Sainz Jr was among the drivers to find some rare gravel on the 2015 calendar © XPB

In the morning warm up, Gero said it didn't feel to bad so we went on to race it and finished fifth. The sponsor still owes me £14,000, but that's another story...

F1 needs to look closely at the Red Bull Ring. Even though it's a circuit that has been modernised from the original, fast, sweeping layout, it still offers a unique challenge.

And if you make mistakes, there are corners that really punish you because there are still some gravel traps. So enjoy that while you can because they won't be there forever; someday, someone will come up with a 'good idea' and have them made into concrete or asphalt run-off areas.

The mould for some of the existing circuits was created back in the early 1980s, when F1 went car-park racing in Las Vegas. That was literally the case, as the poor track was in the car park of the Caesars Palace Hotel!

So let's have more natural circuits like Suzuka, Spa, Monza, Monaco and the Red Bull Ring. They all challenge the driver and you can really see them earning their money.

And that's what the fans, both in the grandstands and watching at home, really want to see.