Why Mercedes has to pursue Ricciardo

Mercedes has Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas out of contract, Daniel Ricciardo is yet to re-sign for Red Bull and Ferrari has not given Kimi Raikkonen a new deal yet - so four of the top six F1 drives are technically available. What would you do if you were running each of those teams - and what do you think they will actually do?
Miguel Lopez, via email

Keeping Lewis Hamilton should be a major focus for Mercedes. After all, he is the one that brings home the results.

Valtteri Bottas is a different proposition. He blows hot and cold too often, which suggests he would not be a good team leader for when Hamilton does eventually walk away from Formula 1 - something I suspect could be sooner rather than later.

Kimi Raikkonen is doing the job Ferrari asks of him and can keep Sebastian Vettel honest. So there's a stronger argument for Ferrari keeping Raikkonen than Mercedes keeping Bottas.

For the same reason why Mercedes can't lose Hamilton, Red Bull needs to keep hold of Daniel Ricciardo. Max Verstappen is too erratic right now and with the pressure he's under could go either way. I'm sure he'll get it under control soon, but it must be a worry for the team.

So the only one I see as vulnerable is Bottas. Mercedes has Esteban Ocon in the pipeline, but I think the team would prefer a proven top-liner.

If I was there, I'd be making a play for Ricciardo. But hopefully not because it would only make Mercedes stronger at the expensive of the competition.

The engine air intake on the McLaren is very small compared to the rest of the field. Does McLaren have a different approach for this area? Also, there are inlets just in front of turning vanes under the nose, but no bodywork openings like other teams. Are they using these inlets for some other reasons or is it a future development area?
@Varun_FA, via Twitter

Cooling a current Formula 1 car is one of the most difficult things to do efficiently. Remember, airflow used for cooling can't be used for creating downforce.

There are currently three inlets for the cooling flow: two sidepod inlets and the airbox inlet, which also allows airflow into the turbo. There are some other small inlets, mainly just to make sure of air circulation around the very compact engine packaging.

The sidepod inlets are in an area that can impact downforce dramatically and their size, shape and location are vitally important.

The inlet size needs to be matched to the size and flow characteristics of the radiator cores it is supplying as the radiator core will not take all the airflow that you can throw at it.

If they are too small, the car will not get enough cooling at low and medium speed. If they are too big, too much airflow will spill around the outer surface of the sidepod at high speed and will change how the sidepod works aerodynamically between low and high speed.

Having a larger airbox inlet and using this area for some of the cooling flow means the sidepod inlets will be supplying a reduced percentage of the airflow required for cooling, so it will be more stable in its impact on overall downforce.

At higher speeds the excess cooling airflow would normally be spilling around the sides of the airbox, but having the cooling inlet and turbo inlet in the same area means that the turbo reduces this as it needs more airflow because of the higher engine revs.

In Monaco, Ricciardo had to wind the brake bias forward because of the loss of rear braking from the MGU-K recovering energy. How does brake bias affect the car and how is it used in normal circumstances to help performance?
Alex Brown, via email

The brake balance is like a small balance beam. The driver's pedal pushes on the middle of it and the outer ends of it push on the brake master cylinders. One of these cylinders is for the front brakes and the other for the rear brakes.

To explain it simply, it is like a long threaded bolt and the driver can turn a knob in the cockpit to rotate it. When they do this, they move what would be the position the pedal pushes on that threaded bolt, making more of the pedal pressure go towards either the front or rear brakes.

This is done to get the optimum braking performance from all four tyres, and it is always a compromise as the grip level of the front and rear axle changes during the braking phase. So the driver will be fiddling with the brake balance more or less every lap, if not every corner, especially as the tyres are also constantly degrading.

Front wings were narrow, then they got wider in 2009, then narrower again and now wider again next year. Can you make sense of it? Wider wings will get damaged more often and they look terrible. Will we ever have well considered and well planned technical rules?
sashaselipanov, via Instagram

In the past there was a scattergun approach to changes in regulations. Decisions were made with very limited or no research and usually by people who didn't really understand how to achieve the objective.

The changes for 2009 (pictured above) were researched on windtunnel models that were not very technically advanced. If you are going to put effort and money into researching the next move, then you need to have top people doing it using the latest equipment. Remember, when the final regulations are released there are more than a thousand people that are going to try to find loopholes to exploit.

Going back to your original question, yes I agree. The front wing has been a major gripe of mine for a long time. They are far too complicated and very easy to damage as the only time the driver sees the front wing is when they are out of the car and that can't be the best thing.

At a time when everyone is talking about reducing costs, right there we have a single component that is very vulnerable and expensive. If regulations were written correctly for this single component, it could save most teams in excess of £1million per season.

Hopefully - and I'm not holding my breath - the new regime will put a little more effort into future changes before they actually happen than was done in the past.

That said, and from what I hear on the grapevine of the changes for 2019 and again for 2021, I'm not really that convinced what is being proposed will do anything significant for the racing.

Having a bigger rear wing just to allow a bigger DRS effect is one of the last things I would have done. Artificial overtaking doesn't really excite me, I want good close competition with the chance of an overtake as opposed to more 'mirror, signal, manoeuvre' passes.

The Monaco Grand Prix was so boring. What would you do to make that race more exciting?
Christian Muller, via email

Monaco is an individual case steeped in history. If it was trying to get onto the schedule for the first time there would be no chance of it happening, so I think it needs to be taken in isolation.

In Monaco, the race really starts on Saturday afternoon at the beginning of qualifying. Grid position is everything and unless there is some divine intervention, the race result and the qualifying order ends up more or less the same.

What would I do to make Monaco better? Well, the introduction of the wider cars and higher downforce levels for 2017 did nothing for the racing, and in Monaco the wider cars are at their worst. But it is more fundamental than that.

The racing is poor at most circuits because the cars cannot follow each other. Part of this is the downforce loss that means the following car slides around a lot and overheats the tyres, but part of it is also that the following car starts to overheat and has to drop back just to cool adequately. Monaco, with its slow speed and closed track nature, is one of the worst for this.

All of these problems are very difficult to find a solution for in the regulations unless the teams actually have to build a car that can cope with these situations.

There is only one way to force the emphasis onto them - and that is, dare I say it, reverse grids.

I know that is changing the face of F1 but isn't it time to think out of the box? In the early 2000s, we were all complaining about the Michael Schumacher/Ferrari domination and here we are nearly 20 years later just about to put another patch on an already many times repaired inner tube.

Sometimes, you just have to think out of the box. Changing the outwash front wing endplates will do nothing to the fact the leading car will make a hole in the airflow and the following car will suffer from a downforce and cooling loss simply because of that.

If you had reversed grids in drivers' championship order, then the team that could build a car that could follow another car for longer, losing less downforce that disrupted the cooling less, would come out on top over the season.

It would also demand the driver copes with planning and executing overtaking manoeuvres to get the best from any given weekend, which would result in a more complete driver than the ones we have now who get in the best cars, do the fastest lap on a Saturday, start from pole position and go on to win what normally, at the front at least, is a boring race.

The cameras are always directed at the midfield squabbles, so let's have more of them but with the top drivers involved.

Many will disagree, and rightly so, but let's not simply change things technically just for the sake of it as it will just increase costs, especially for the smaller teams who are already struggling, and in the end do nothing for the excitement of race day.

If the modified rules allows cars to follow more closely, do you think overtaking would then be improved by having the rear end format similar to now, or going for bigger rear wheels - taller and wider - having a 'barn door' rear wing and a minimum rear end cross sectional area to produce a massive slipstream hole to follow in. More like it was in the 70s/80s.
Guy Dormehl, via email

From what I have heard, I don't think the changes that are being proposed will allow cars to follow each other any more closely than they currently can.

Changing the regulations with the objective of improving racing will be extremely difficult. Remember, you are changing it for all cars so whatever the changes are it will affect everyone in the same way.

As I said above, the teams have hundreds of people responsible for designing the cars, so let's get the emphasis back on producing cars that really can race.

Why is the process for rules and modifying the regulations via technical directives in place? Would it not make more sense just to change the rules when something needs clarifying rather than issuing technical directives that are never made public? It seems to me an easy way to manipulate what happens on track for the FIA?
David Taylor, via email

It's pretty simple. To be able to change a technical regulation, it takes unanimous agreement between all the teams.

Issuing a technical directive to all the teams simply means this is how the FIA interprets a given regulation. These sorts of things happen on a daily basis, usually because there is always some smartarse out there who thinks they have found a loophole in the rules.

Charlie Whiting, or whoever has to make these decisions for the FIA, has a tough job. In general, I think they do it reasonable well.

Yes, sometimes teams and the enthusiast will not agree with their interpretation, but that's life. Everyone, including the FIA, has an opinion.

Given the performance of Mercedes last year in Monaco, why are they still using the longer wheelbase car this year?
Tono Villalobos, via Twitter

Monaco is only one grand prix in a 21-race season and Mercedes sees the long wheelbase as an advantage over the balance of the year. And more teams have headed in the direction of the longer wheelbase for 2018 than went shorter.

Remember, Mercedes did go on to win both championships last year. Yes, Ferrari fell apart mid-season, but still even before that it was nip and tuck between the two of them.

It's easy to blame the longer wheelbase for being Mercedes' major problem, but there is also something else that is causing underlying problems. This is that the team struggles to get the softer tyres working at most circuits.

It would be an inherent understeer problem that I would be looking for the fix to, as the longer wheelbase exaggerates that problem.

Yes, you can normally sort out most car balance problems, but it's about getting a better balance while reducing lap time.

I'm glad Mercedes did keep the longer wheelbase, because if it is causing it problems it is a very difficult and expensive thing to change and it has meant that six races into the 2018 season we have had three teams winning two races each.

So at least Sundays aren't a walk in the park for Mercedes.

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