Ask Gary Anderson: Why is Raikkonen stronger in race trim?

What are the major differences in qualifying pace versus race pace? We have generally seen Kimi Raikkonen qualify poorly and then his race pace is much better, whereas Lewis Hamilton is constantly on it whether it be qualifying or the race. Is it simply down to the car being less aggressive over a race distance and more manageable?
Steven Eaglesham, via email

For qualifying you need the tyres to give you the grip after only one warm-up lap. To achieve this is quite difficult, especially getting the fronts working.

If you don't get them working the car becomes unbalanced with lots of understeer. This is something that hurts Kimi more than most as he likes a car that's very responsive to his steering input.

For the race it's the other way around. You actually want the car to have mild understeer to help protect the rear tyres.

As far as Lewis versus Kimi is concerned, they are driving very different beasts and it looks to me like Mercedes is more able than Ferrari to set their car up to perform in both situations.

To sum up your question, the Mercedes is a car for all occasions and the team running it knows how to get the best from it. Ferrari seems to lack that bit on both accounts.

At Silverstone we were sitting in the stand at Copse B and noticed that Lewis Hamilton was the only driver with the red 'harvesting' light on from the exit of Copse to the start of Becketts. Most other drivers did not have the light on until the entry of Becketts. How is this controlled and does it explain the extra pace Lewis had through the second phase of the track?
Alan Stone, via email

This is one of the main reasons that the Mercedes is currently at the top of the pile as far as both chassis and power unit are concerned. It knows better than the others how to get the best lap-performance out of the package.

Sometimes you have to give up a little to get back a lot, and it's up to the team to set up the ERS to make sure it has the required energy in the battery pack for when it's most needed.

The gain in lap time by being faster on the run from Copse to the start of Becketts would be minimal and would probably be lost, but having to slow that little bit more on the entry to Becketts, where there is the extra energy in the battery pack for the run down to Club, would probably be very useful.

Basically, the team can set up the maps for when and how much the ERS recharges or dissipates its energy at any point on the circuit and the driver can then select which map is best at any given time.

Will the 2017 cars be as physically demanding for the drivers as the cars from the early 2000s?
Phil McWilliam, via Twitter

I don't think the cars will be any different physically for 2017 than they currently are. The systems on the cars, such as power steering, reduce the driver's physical input to a level that is probably lower than it has ever been.

If the cars are faster by five seconds, then that will get their attention and mental concentration will become a bigger factor.

I believe that one of the things Michael Schumacher brought to F1 was mental focus. Most of the drivers before him and during this period - with the exception of Jackie Stewart - were all very physically fit sportsmen, but most of them lacked mental fitness.

Michael brought that to F1 and showed that being able to concentrate 100% on everything that was happening from the lights going out to the chequered flag being waved could also bring you results.

He won many races in cars that were not the best and in situations that seemed impossible, but that extra mental sharpness meant he was ready, and could and would take any small advantage when it was available.

Stewart was another of those fully focused drivers. His problem was that he was just too far ahead of his time. He will tell you there were other drivers around him who were faster, but he had the mental capacity to beat them.

Is the bottom of the car still a wooden plank? And is it anything special or could one buy it from any DIY store?
Rachid Finge, via Twitter

Yes there is still a wooden plank. It's 30cm wide and stretches from the front-wheel centreline to the rear-wheel centreline, fastened to the bottom of the car.

But it's not just a simple piece of wood, it's a very high-density board that will stand up to minimal touching of the ground.

There are also titanium skids that hold it in place. This is what creates the sparks that you see when the car touches the ground.

It's there to protect the track surface. In the '80s and early '90s the cars were running very low to the ground and were actually cutting groves in the surface. Also when the cars hit the ground it didn't do the drivers' backs any good.

It was also put there to reduce the downforce created from the underside of the cars. In years gone by the objective was to contain the overall performance of the cars and that way track runoff areas wouldn't have to keep being modified in line with the cars being faster around corners.

This was always Max Mosley's philosophy when he was FIA president, one that seems to have changed dramatically since he stepped down.

Young guys like Daniel Ricciardo have shown talent, however the lack of testing should make them less perfect as drivers. What do you think?
@eggry, via Twitter

Talented young drivers will always rise to the top. But the lack of testing for a driver is very difficult to quantify. If a driver is good, they should be able to come to terms with a track in fewer than 10 laps and by being inexperienced it means they will be a little bit more exploratory in how they adapt to a given track.

The older professionals have their ways and on most occasions it's very difficult for the engineers to get them to adapt to suit the track or car operational changes.

The lack of testing has been more of a problem for the teams optimising their set-up.

The big teams have gone out and spent many millions on driver-in-the-loop simulators and the small teams have done the best they can with what they could afford. This has meant that the gap between the haves and the have-nots has got bigger.

Again, this is why the young and inexperienced drivers can do such a good job. The cars are now basically set up to the optimum by the teams from the information they get back from those simulators and it's just down to the driver to be fast.

Previously it was down to Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna and Nelson Piquet to come up with which direction the set-up needed to go and to then get the best from the car.

We often hear talk about tyre construction, but not so much about what the tyres are made of. Can you explain a little about what the construction of an F1 tyre is, how that has changed over the years and how that influences its performance?
David Catt, via email

I'm not a tyre expert, but I can give you some pointers on what a car requires from the construction of the tyre.

When the driver arrives at a corner, he wants to turn the steering wheel as aggressively as possible. But his senses are all feeling whether the rear of the car is secure.

If it's stable, he will turn in late and aggressively and get most of the change of direction achieved early in the corner, allowing him to get back on the throttle early.

If it's not, he will turn in early and gently and this will usually lead to some understeer, meaning that he will be much later on the throttle.

So for a quick lap time, you want the rear of the car to feel secure.

Tyre construction plays a big part in this. The front-tyre construction needs to be stiff enough to be responsive to the steering input and the rear needs to compliant enough to progressively pick up the cornering load.

If the rear tyre is not stiff enough, you will be waiting too long for the rear tyre to pick up the cornering load. If the rear-tyre construction is too stiff, it will be very peaky and difficult for the driver to find that optimum turn-in speed.

Tyre pressures can also play a big part in this. In the past the standard would be around 20psi for fronts and 16psi for rears for slow circuits, rising to 22psi for fronts and 18psi for rears for the faster tracks. One psi would make a big difference to the grip level.

I can sympathise with the teams and drivers having to run Pirelli's higher pressures, as this simply reduces the tyre's mechanical grip. But I suppose it's the same for everyone.

There were some experiments with four-wheel steering in Formula 1, the last one being Benetton at the end of 1993 before it was banned. What would the advantages of such a system be and how would it work?
Ben Frazer, via email

Ben, no one that I know of ever had independent four-wheel steering. If you did - and we at Jordan actually specced out a system in the '90s to go with active suspension - you could play tunes on each individual tyre to optimise its grip and slip angle.

It would be a fascinating engineering challenge and if F1 was an open-ended formula then it's the challenge that every engineer would love.

A basic set-up for a current car would have the front wheels toeing out slightly and the rear wheels toeing in slightly. That's fixed on each axle by the mechanical linkage between them.

The front will have a small change relative to each other, with varying steering-lock angles depending on what Ackerman levels teams design into their cars.

Rear-wheel steering, as has been used in the past, was really to help with achieving what the driver wants to feel from the car on corner entry. Basically, it helped with reaching what the driver wants to feel from the rear tyre, more or less in line with my answer on tyre construction above.

It also allowed for different rear-wheel angles between low-speed and high-speed corners and you could alter the toe on each wheel independently. This helped with getting a more consistent car balance over the wide variety of corner speeds that most circuits have.

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