How pre-season plays out inside an F1 team

Pre-season testing for the latest batch of Formula 1 cars is just around the corner. Since this is the second season of more-or-less stable technical regulations, we can expect the car concepts to converge.

The aerodynamic and tyre changes for 2017 were fairly dramatic and they brought roughly what was predicted in terms of lap time improvement. This year, optimising that package will be the order of the day.

During the season, there is always a fair of amount of development and most teams will try to bring around one-tenth of a second of improvement to every race. That should add up to a two-second gain over the season.

That, combined with the introduction of new chassis for 2018 with all the developments it wasn't possible to add to last year's cars, means that at pre-season testing the cars should be three seconds faster than they were last year. It'll be very interesting to see which teams achieve that - and I'll be there at the first test to bring daily updates on who's hot and who's not.

Most of the big teams have the infrastructure to manufacture components in a much shorter time than was possible a few years ago. This is what some have concentrated on, because once a drawing is printed or a machine is fired up to make a part, that component is already out of date. The later in the build schedule everything comes together, the more time it allows for development.

Since testing gets under way later in the year than it did in the past, teams will have had some extra time to be designing, optimising and manufacturing components. But the start of February will have been D-Day for final assembly of the 2018 test package.

Before this, hopefully the chassis will have passed all the FIA crash tests. These are high-pressure moments and during my time they gave me a few grey hairs. You want to build everything as light and efficient as possible while still meeting the strength and stiffness requirements. One failure can set a team back dramatically.

Recovery from a failure will either mean a redesign and remanufacture of the chassis itself, which will take time, or the remanufacture of components by adding weight. Neither solution is easy or optimum and it will mean that everything moves closer to when the cars have to be shipped to Australia.

Every component on the suspension side of things will also go through strength and durability tests. So again, any setbacks here can mean delays that will really interfere with the build schedule.

The front and rear wings will also be tested by loading them up with hydraulic actuators. This is, first of all, to simulate the FIA deflection tests to ensure these components are stiff enough to comply. They will then be loaded up to potentially their maximum load to see if they will withstand that force.

There will also be a safety factor of something like 20%. When you consider that a front wing at high speed will produce something in the region of 600-700kg of load, this is no easy task. Combined with some aerodynamic stall characteristics, which will potentially introduce fatigue load, and the problem is doubled.

Many teams, including Mercedes (pictured) and Haas, have had problems in the past few years with front wings falling off. There is nothing that gets the driver's attention quicker than bouncing over his own front wing, so you want to err on the side of safety with the first batch of components!

In the old days we used 25kg sandbags to simulate the aero load. Since that load is distributed across the wing surface, sandbags gave a fairly even coverage and you could just keep piling them on as required.

Many of these tests can be completed and signed off back in the workshop before testing begins, but there's no substitute for circuit mileage. There the car will get real use bouncing across kerbs, being subject to instantaneous changes of forces on all the suspension and steering components, and real-time engine and gearbox transient load fluctuations.

The first running is what is normally called a 'shakedown'. This is just to make sure that all the systems work as planned and that the sensors are supplying the correct data. Normally, a new car will be built with a few extra sensors to help understand the water, oil, fuel and hydraulic systems better.

The first thing you want to get under control is simply being able to get the car started and for it to leave the garage at the pre-set time. It's amazing how many times that doesn't happen

Sometimes this shakedown happens in parallel with the launch of the car. The launch and the time the marketing side of the company requires eats into running time and can sometimes be very frustrating.

But worse still is when a team has an independent launch somewhere with a bit more glitz and glamour. This can really impact the car build programme and normally the car ends up at the launch in a less-than-finished state.

Neither solution is very productive, but for the marketing side of the company and the sponsors it's important, so it's something that the engineers have to live with.

Once a team is happy with the results of the shakedown, they do a fuel pick-up test again to make sure they can run very low fuel levels. They will also do this with the oil level again to make sure there are no oil pick-up problems that could lose them an engine.

Both of these tests will be carried out again once testing gets underway at racing and qualifying speeds. These are just initial tests to reduce the risk of embarrassment when testing starts seriously.

So how do you go about getting the best performance and durability from the new car package?

It's a lot easier than it was. Now the simulators are so refined, teams can test many different combinations of setup before they actually hit the track.

It's the same for reliability. All the test rigs mean that some of the reliability issues will be addressed before the car runs on the rack. But there is no substitute for real-world mileage.

The first thing you want to get under control is simply being able to get the car started and for it to leave the garage at the pre-set time. It's amazing how often that doesn't happen for one reason or another. Everyone needs to be ready at the same time, from the tyre man to the control system engineer to the driver.

After that, it comes down to piling on the miles and making sure that you don't stop testing until the chequered flag comes down at the end of the day. It's normally the little things that bite you - something getting too hot or wires or pipes chafing on something, or bodywork fastenings coming undone. Whatever it is, pre-season testing is when you want to find out about it.

The other thing a team will want to test is what happens if certain sensors fail. There will be plenty of default parameters within the control system strategy which will hopefully identify a failed sensor. This could be clutch position, gear position, throttle position, oil pressure, or any number of temperature sensors. Normally, the strategy is to use two or three inputs from other sensors to check if it's an actual failure or a sensor problem.

This all has to be done in milliseconds, otherwise there could be engine or gearbox parts spread all over the track. They also need to be proven as a potential backup that can get a driver to the chequered flag if necessary.

Instead of heading into the first test with your fingers crossed that everything works as planned, you now have a fair idea of how the car functions with different setup changes and what its performance profile really looks like. However, running on the track will always throw up questions that need answering.

As we often say, the driver feels the car through the seat of his pants, so the first thing is to make sure he is comfortable and can get those feelings without any distortion. If so, he will know very quickly if the car is doing what the team has been telling him it should do.

Lap time is always confirmation, but within a couple of reasonably quick laps he will know if the braking stability is there, if the car continues to load up progressively as he applies steering lock, and if the traction is consistent coming off the corner. If not, he will also have a feeling if the negative impressions he is getting are within setup parameters or if there is something fundamentally wrong.

The experienced drivers have all been here before, and they're as enthusiastic to get the feeling of those first few laps as anyone. They will know very quickly if it's going to be a long, hard season.

No matter what the first feelings are, the teams will have a test schedule to try to get more from the package, understand it that little bit more, or see how the car responds to setup changes.

This will consist of a suspension stiffness sweep around the set-up that their simulations have predicted as best. This will be something like +/-5% vertical stiffness change, then a +/-5% roll stiffness change. If either direction improves the performance then they will pursue that with another step of around the same magnitude.

Around the suspension stiffness test, they will also experiment with ride height changes. There was quite a difference in the ride height that Red Bull ran relative to most other teams last year, and I expect this to converge in 2018, but still teams will want to confirm that their development direction is the correct one.

When it comes to the aerodynamic package, basically they are looking for confirmation of the loads predicted by the windtunnel and CFD. This is vitally important to allow a team to continue with its development direction.

To understand this, the teams will do a lot of aero runs. These consist of running at a fixed speed in two directions to weed out variances caused by wind. Barcelona is pretty good for this since there are two almost parallel straights running in different directions.

Most teams will do this at the end of each timed run, and from that they can compare timed lap aero data and driver feedback with the straightline aero data. Downforce is not vitally important on the straight but it is around the corners, so this is used to identify any transient or mid-corner losses of downforce induced with steering angle, yaw or roll.

They will also carry out a front-and-rear-wing sweep to confirm the changes that are predicted are there in reality. When the front wings run close to the ground, they are prone to aerodynamic stall.

Confirmation of the characteristics of this stall is important to allow the teams to understand how to go about balancing the car aerodynamically. Also vitally important is that the rear wing recovers instantly after using the DRS and the airflow re-attaches to give you the downforce back. If not, then the initial braking area can become a bit of a nightmare and they will be forced to close the DRS early, losing end-of-straight top speed.

There is just under a month from the start of testing until the cars will head out of the pitlane at Albert Park, so not much time to recover if you have major problems

A team will normally carry out these back-to-back chassis tests on what they would classify as the middle tyre compound. But with Pirelli introducing a new range for 2018, some initial running will need to be done to define which that tyre might be.

This will be complicated by the fact that the Barcelona circuit has been resurfaced. The aim is for it to be similar to the old one, but a new surface takes time to bed in, and for the first few days in particular it will evolve a lot.

Gathering all this data on a soft or hard compound tyre could very easily take you down the wrong set-up path, but you still need confirmation that the car can be balanced on these extremes of tyre compound and teams will normally run softer compounds in line with lower fuel sometime during each day of the test.

When you get to the point of having what you believe is a reasonable setup, you will have to start race runs to understand where the tyre degradation starts to kick in. Normally a team will try to simulate a race weekend, practice and set-up changes in the morning. Then they'll have a bite of lunch and three qualifying runs before a two-stop race distance in the afternoon using two tyre compounds, as required at a normal grand prix.

When you consider that all this running is being done in temperatures that are much cooler at least than the average will be at most of the race weekends during the season, car performance needs to be viewed with some scepticism.

Normally, hotter ambient and track temperatures lose you downforce, but it also brings the requirement for extra cooling which again costs downforce, so with a 20C increase in temperatures you could be looking at a downforce loss of something like 5%. That doesn't come back by fiddling with the set-up, but luckily it is more or less the same for everyone.

The other thing that happens with increased ambient, but mainly increased track temperature, is that the aerodynamic stall characteristics of anything running near the ground alters. A full understanding of this characteristic is very important to allow a team to optimise ride heights when they get to hotter conditions.

At pre-season testing it was always more important to me that the car balance could be tuned for each of the tyre compounds, changes in temperature and different fuel loads, and that each time the driver went out on the track the balance was somewhere near what it was previously. If you can achieve this comfortably then you should be in a reasonable position when you get to the hotter climates.

Every team will have developments in the pipeline, planned for the first race in Melbourne. But they will all be in line with the initial car research direction. Any change of direction that comes out of initial testing is vitally important, since it could mean that components already committed to are not now required, or that you need to evaluate a different path.

There is just under a month from the start of testing until the cars will head out of the pitlane at Albert Park, so not much time to recover if you have major problems.

Within the design, there is normally room to recover from pursuing the wrong concept. Red Bull had to do it last year and managed to close the gap to Ferrari and Mercedes dramatically as the season progressed. But it takes time and money, so if you're a big well-funded team then recovery is possible. If you're on a tight budget it's not so easy.

I'm pretty sure there is a fair amount of nail-biting going on within the teams at the moment. Every one of them will be believing they are going to move forward and be more competitive, but until the car runs on track no one really knows what progress they've made.

I would be very happy if the car performance means that the teams close up and we see closer racing. With 21 races it's going to be a long season, and the last thing we need is one team running off into the distance early on.

Barcelona testing will give us, and the teams and drivers, a decent understanding if that is going to happen.