How F1 can bring back underdog shocks

It seems that in the past we were more likely to see spectacular, against-all-odds performances from midfield teams on a given day. Will we ever see things like that happen again in modern F1? How is it that a midfield car, that doesn't fight for the win in any other race in the season, is able to pull a win with fantastic performance?
Marcelo Kanno, via email

The void between those that have and those that haven't has just got bigger. Manufacturers or works teams have got much bigger budgets so can afford more people, do more research, produce more components, have better analytical tools to help understand which direction to develop in, use better simulation. Basically, those extra tens of millions can be spent on doing more things better.

Shocks can still happen, and it is one of the things that keeps me watching Formula 1, but now it needs a miracle whereas in the past it was just about getting everything right when others tripped up over themselves. But I must say it was very satisfying when you could get one over the big boys.

I don't think we will see a change until the regulations are readdressed to reduce the benefit of a bigger budget. You will never eliminate its effect on performance, but it can very easily be reduced.

A budget cap is not the way forward, it needs to be component control very similar to the gearbox usage regulation. I wouldn't want grid penalties, if you couldn't comply you would just receive a points penalty as this doesn't make any difference to the viewer watching an event.

In recent times, I think Pastor Maldonado winning in Spain in 2012 is still the one that most people look back at and wonder how that happened because he actually beat good teams and drivers and was there from beginning to end. Sebastian Vettel was again just on it in the 2008 Italian Grand Prix and as he has shown is a pretty capable driver.

I was involved in a couple of underdog triumphs and I suppose you could say luck played a big part in the end results, but on the way a few quick decisions put us in a competitive position. After all, you need the circumstances of the race to present you with an opportunity, but it's up to you to make the right calls to capitalise.

I see these futuristic concepts from Red Bull like the X2010, which can lap circuits a good 30 seconds faster than current F1 cars. Will this ever happen in real life?
Christopher Patajac, via Facebook

If it does, no matter where it is happening, I will be there to see it! But I doubt it will happen in my lifetime.

Circuit safety is only required if something breaks or the driver gets it wrong, so if you want to take the gamble there is no reason why you can't go to a current circuit and test at whatever speed you want to.

You are correct that up until the new regulations for 2017, the emphasis for many years was to contain speeds, mainly on safety grounds and the fact that altering all the circuits would be a very expensive proposition.

All that went out of the window for 2017 and the cars were, on average, 4.5 seconds faster than in 2015 (the aim was to be 4-5s faster than two years earlier). For 2018, the gap should continue to grow but it will still be far away from the 30 seconds you mention. For that to happen, it would require the game to be changed dramatically.

The drivers have their fancy simulators to practice their trade - but how do the mechanics keep on top of maintaining a car that is upgraded and therefore probably fits together differently every other weekend?
@RGibbFan, via Twitter

Mechanics are aware of updates and changes long before they are introduced, and there will be a specification sheet with each new or modified component with assembly instructions, torque settings etc.

Those working on the cars also have a lot of experience built up over the years to rely on. Unless an experienced mechanic comes in from another team, a new addition will normally start as number three mechanic on a car. When they have the experience and inclination, they will get promoted to number two and in the end become a number one. But it doesn't just happen automatically, you have to want it and that means total commitment.

Nothing is taken for granted. They are all very experienced and committed people working in these teams and on many occasions they will identify potential reliability problems and bring it to the attention of the people that need to do something about it with a design change.

The Barcelona circuit has been resurfaced for MotoGP. How much quicker/slower will laptimes be?
@motorace_addict, via Twitter

That all depends on the surface that they have put down. As it was at the request of MotoGP, I'm pretty sure it will be a reasonable grip level surface so for Formula 1 cars it should be faster. How much is really just a guess, but in the past when we have had new grippy surfaces a couple of seconds wasn't out of the question.

I know that the MotoGP riders were complaining about the bumps, especially in the braking areas so I'm pretty sure this was the reason for the resurfacing. For an F1 car that will also make a big difference.

These cars, on average, brake at around the 100-metre board and are pulling something like 6G during the initial braking phase. So with the weight of the current cars, plus a little fuel that is putting a horizontal shear load on the asphalt surface, something like five tonnes is distributed over the four tyres.

What this load does is move the surface and form ripples. As the bikes brake a lot earlier, these ripples are late into the braking area for them and at a time when the riders are trying to get the confidence to lean the bike into the corner so it can be pretty disturbing if the bike is bouncing around. So a new surface will help them a lot.

For an F1 car, in the beginning it will probably offer a little more grip but the negative will be that it will change fairly dramatically over the first few days or even weeks of running and this will mean that it is not easy to get a handle on Pirelli's new tyre range. If you pick a tyre that performs well on low fuel running, by the time you get to doing a proper race run later in the week the track will have changed and it could be for the better or worse - so it's introducing another unknown.

Magny-Cours resurfaced its track back in 1989 and we went there testing a Formula 3000 car just afterwards. It was great in the dry, but then it rained and it was impossible to drive on. I'm not joking, no matter how slow you drove there was just no grip and in the end they had to resurface it! Hopefully that won't happen at Barcelona.

Really interesting insight into usable tyre tread depth in your last Ask Gary. Does this mean the other parts of the tyre is the same across all tyres and only the tread separates different softness between tyres?
@acolourbrown, via Twitter

The tyre companies keep that sort of detailed information close to their chests, so I don't know exactly what the current tyres' construction is.

The sidewalls and the corner of the tyre where the sidewall meets the tread are the critical areas of any tyre and will be slightly different for each compound. If this area is not designed to work in harmony with the varying compounds then it would be very easy to build a range of different compounds of tyres that had very little or no difference in lap time performance between them - mainly because the driver just wouldn't be able to use the extra grip.

If you take the medium tyre as the reference, going softer with the compound gives more grip but sometimes gives the driver a feeling that the tyre is moving around more. A slightly stiffer sidewall construction will reduce this feeling allowing them to use the extra grip and get more response from the tyre. This feeling can also be altered with tyre pressures but Pirelli also requires minimum tyre pressures so that tuning device has been taken away.

Getting more performance out of a tyre is about getting a faster response from the tyre, and that is mainly down to the construction. The compound gives more grip when the car is loaded up in the corner, but the initial commitment to corner speed comes from the response from both front and rear tyres.

What is the most important automotive tool mechanics use in Formula 1?
@HeamarCompany, via Twitter

A big hammer!

There will be all the normal stuff: sockets, spanners, screwdrivers, Allen keys etc but these cars are so complicated that most of the tools will be dedicated one-offs to allow the mechanics to perform the surgery required more efficiently.

I suppose the most important tool would be a high-quality torque wrench, everything on the car will have a specification sheet and on that will be torque setting for every nut and bolt. A specification sheet is by no means a bible but if everything is installed and fastened as specified and something goes wrong then you know it wasn't down to a case of butterfingers and something needs to be redesigned.

Back in the 1970s, the cars were a lot simpler and mainly built from off-the-shelf fasteners so normal tools were adequate. But now part of the component design is to come up with a tool that allows the mechanic to assemble to components.

In a conventional racing car, camber, caster and toe-in are all important - but how do they work together and what effects can they achieve? And are they just as important in F1?
David Allen, via email

Yes, they are all just as important in Formula 1. Unfortunately, some teams compromise suspension components and set-up more than others in an effort to optimise the aerodynamics, but if you do that it is very easy to suffer from tyre warm-up problems, tyre degradation or even both.

So, let's go through your list: camber, caster, toes and, adding a couple of others, king pin inclination (KPI) and Ackerman, looking at them one at a time.

Camber

Looking from the front of the car, camber is the angle that the wheel sits at. If the wheel is angled inwards at the top, that's negative camber and normally you run more of that on the front than the rear.

The front camber angle is optimised to give the biggest tyre contact patch when the car is loaded up mid-corner at high-speed. Too much front camber makes the front tyre contact patch smaller during braking, which can lead to locking up.

On the rear, it is a compromise between the camber required to to give the biggest contact patch mid-corner at high speed and the biggest contact patch at low and medium speed for traction. Traction usually dominates this equation.

Caster

Looking from the side of the car, the caster is the pivot intersection line created by the top and bottom wishbone outer spherical joints. This pivot intersection line then extends through to where the tyre contact patch sits on the ground. Caster gives the car straightline stability, but too much caster leads to a heavy steering.

KPI

Looking from the front of the car, the KPI is the pivot intersection line created by the top and bottom wishbone outer spherical joints. This pivot intersection line then extends through to where the tyre contact patch sits on the ground. This can intersect the ground in front or behind the contact patch giving a leading or trailing contact patch - again this can alter the steering loads.

The combination of the KPI and the caster intersection lines can create changing cambers with steering lock. It can be advantageous to reduce camber with steering lock. Increased steering lock normally means slower corners and reducing the camber will increase the tyre contact patch at slow speed.

Toe

Toe is very important and can be altered depending on the characteristics of the car.

If you run the car with toe-in on both the front and rear axles, sometimes the front tyre can be to responsive and this makes the front of the car very pointy on corner entry.

Normally, these cars will run with toe-out on the front and toe-in on the rear. This is to slow down the initial reaction of the front tyre, allowing the rear tyre to pick up the load.

The driver's aggressiveness on corner entry is all down to the response time of the tyres. If the car is too pointy, he won't be as aggressive, and if it is too lazy, he will end up with more mid-corner understeer. The variation on toe can alter these characteristics significantly.

Ackerman

Looking down from the top of the car, Ackerman is the theoretical pivot line created by the front top and bottom wishbone outer spherical joints intersected by a line from the steering arm which is mounted on the front upright somewhere between the two.

Theoretical zero Ackerman is defined by this line going through the centre of the car intersecting with the centre line of the rear axle.

However, where this line intersects with the car centre line can be altered and this will mean that the relative toe angle between the two front wheels will alter as steering lock is applied.

Normally, you want to increase the toe-in with more steering lock because the outer front wheel more or less dictates the cornering radius the car is going to take and because of the lateral force mid corner the inner front wheel has a lot less load on it. So if you increase the toe-in, you get less sliding of the inner front tyre so you induce less surface temperature.

We endlessly read about new loopholes being found in the aero rules. Surely a simple, cheap and easier-to-police regulation for aerodynamic elements would be to just fix the total number of square millimeters of all aero aids? This could exclude the front and rear wings which would be separately described and restricted. Or allow cars with bigger wings but no aero aids, or visa versa?
Guy Dormehl, via email

Guy, every surface on a current F1 car is basically an aerodynamic surface, so I think your proposal would be impossible to police.

As for the T-wing and the fact the teams seem to have found another place to mount something, I think this will always happen. You have a few people coming up with these regulations and a few hundred, if not thousands, trying to find ways around them so it is inevitable that someone will find those grey areas.

Williams ran a T-wing in the lower position last year. We have to assume that the outcome of this was positive otherwise it wouldn't have done it. It was on full view to everyone, so if someone wanted to ban it then they had the chance when the upper T- wing was eliminated.

I don't think it hurts the car aesthetically, and it does give the engineers something to challenge their inventive minds.

But I would go down the race homologation route as you can add as many components to that list as you want to so it would cover things like the lower T-wing. Design one if you want, but it would stay the same for 'x' races.