Why Raikkonen move could backfire on Sauber

Sauber has signed Kimi Raikkonen for two years - is this a good move for the team to have all that experience, or is it an insurance policy for Ferrari in case Charles Leclerc fails?
Joao Santos, via email

Raikkonen at Sauber could go either way. I was always sceptical about these kinds of experienced drivers who were just looking for another pay cheque and not necessarily motivated to prove themselves like a young driver is.

When Jordan started in 1991, Eddie signed Andrea de Cesaris with his Marlboro backing and at first I was very disappointed. He had a reputation for crashing, but he brought some much needed experience to the team and performed very well during the season, so in the end I was pleased to have him there. As Sauber is a team in a rebuilding phase, perhaps Raikkonen can have a similar effect.

The main question is whether he's got the pace of old anymore. At Ferrari, on average he was a few tenths off Vettel, so we know he isn't the fastest.

But perhaps joining a smaller team that can focus more on him will get the best out of him. He's certainly consistent and doesn't make too many mistakes, so if the car is good he should pick up points.

If I was Sauber, I'd want a younger driver alongside him with something to prove - that way it might get the best out of Raikkonen and what his experience brings.

But I would also be concerned that he's there more as a retirement plan than anything else. It's true that if Leclerc has a terrible time Ferrari could swap them back, but I can't see that happening.

Are you surprised Ferrari has got rid of as experienced a driver as Raikkonen for an inexperienced one in Leclerc?
Glen Simmons, via email

I always favoured having young, motivated drivers in my team when I was in F1, and given what we've seen from Leclerc this year I think it's the right move.

Ferrari will need to be patient, and I'm not sure I've seen much of that in the past

Often, younger drivers are very motivated and they are also far less set in their ways. Raikkonen has always had a certain way he wants the car and a narrow window in making the front end work the way he wants, and that's held him back at times. Yes, he's a decent development driver, but I worked with plenty of young drivers who gave the kind of feedback that you needed too.

It's also important for Ferrari to have a driver for the future and one who can put some pressure on Sebastian Vettel. Vettel has been a little too comfortable with Raikkonen in the second seat, and given the recent losses of points it's good to have Leclerc there to keep him on his toes.

Ferrari has been very conservative in the past, and it's a long time since it's had a young driver like Leclerc. It might just be surprised at what that can bring to the team because he's got what it takes. But Ferrari will need to be patient, and I'm not sure I've seen much of that in the past.

Can you explain the slip angle of tyres? People say you could only drive sideways in the past because of the slip angle and that current tyres don't allow that - why is this and would it not be good to find a way to go back to spectacular tyres like 50 years ago?
Gary Mitchell, via email

Basically, a tyre gives you more grip when it is sliding a certain amount.

As an example, when the driver is making a start they need to have a certain amount of wheelspin to improve the grip; a little too much wheelspin and you need to lift the throttle quite a lot to get the grip back.

It's the same under braking. We hear commentators talking about cadence braking, which is when a driver locks a wheel and starts to pump the brake pedal to release the locked tyre and then comes back on again, usually locking up again. This is done to try to reduce the risk of flatspotting a tyre.

The same is true when a car is going around a corner, the tyres need to slide that little bit. It's different from tyre to tyre, but on average we are probably talking about three degrees to the direction of travel of the car. If you get to five degrees, then you're normally heading for a spin or you'll understeer off the road.

It's a bit like when you drive a road car in the ice or snow. If the tyres break grip you can basically do anything you want with the brakes or steering. Until you slow down enough you will not regain control.

In the old days, when you saw people like Ronnie Peterson sideways, the tyres were crossply and would cope with high slip angles. Now the tyres are radials they have a much stiffer support under the tyre compound, which gives them higher grip levels but less compliance.

When will FOM/FIA start showing real-time ERS and battery charge percentages in graphic overlays for TV viewers? In KERS days that real-time battery charge indicator was very useful for us fans. It showed us how KERS was tactically used by drivers to defend and attack.
@F1San, via Twitter

I'm pretty sure that FOM and Liberty Media would love to show a battery condition graphic on screen, but I'm not quite so sure the teams would agree.

The teams want to keep everything secret-squirrel for as long as possible and with these power units being as complicated as they are, deployment and harnessing of the energy is a well-kept secret.

I'm sure there is a fairly generic graphic that could be used just to show if the battery was being charged or drained. If it didn't go into too much detail it would be another source of information for the viewer.

As the manufacturers want to keep the current engine specification, perhaps this could be introduced as a compromise for the new regulations in 2021...

It was a surprise that we haven't seen a crash caused by the DRS like Marcus Ericsson's at Monza before. Do you think there's a safety concern about the DRS that needs to be addressed, especially as Nico Hulkenberg also seemed to have a problem?
Gary Davis, via email

You can look at it in two ways. The teams should be professional enough to make the system work reliably. After all, the rest of the car is the team's responsibility and, in reality, even with very complex engines, reliability has never been better.

The one thing that should be addressed immediately is decisions such as being able to use DRS through the fast first corner at Silverstone, and the use of it in general.

Personally, I don't like the system. Yes, it means we see some overtakes but they are artificial and by having it, some of these new young drivers are getting zero experience of how to overtake normally. Doubly so when you can use it in junior categories on the way up.

The normal way that these systems work is that when the driver either lifts the throttle or presses the brake pedal, the DRS should shut.

The driver does have an override button on the steering wheel and some prefer to do it manually. In fact, while Ericsson relied on the automated system, Sauber team-mate Charles Leclerc always does it manually, which is what ensured he didn't suffer a similar fate at Monza.

At Silverstone, where the Abbey kink in the dry is easily taken flat-out on the throttle without touching the brakes, Romain Grosjean and Ericsson both crashed, albeit for very different reasons.

Grosjean tried and failed to go through the corner with the DRS open and Ericsson missed the close button on the steering wheel.

Thinking about the Ericsson crash at Monza, what does a team do when they first get the wreckage of a car back to understand the crash and work out what needs to be repaired? Do you get all of the bits back, or is that down to luck?
Antonio Sanchez, via email

It's all down to a bit of luck. Everyone wants a souvenir if they can get one, but normally you get all the big bits back. It's the small stuff that just gets swept up and 'lost'.

If it is an accident caused by an unknown mechanical failure, then it's very important to get as much as possible to allow you to go through everything and try to analyse what happened first. It's a bit like a plane crash - there is always something that caused the accident and it would be negligent to just brush it aside.

If it was just the driver getting a little over-enthusiastic and clouting the barriers, then it's not so important to find all the parts.

Every team will want to make sure that none of its rivals gets a look at confidential parts, so will always try to make sure that everything is returned.

You suggested Haas should think again before going ahead with their appeal, but they have now done so. From what you know of the situation, do they have a case and do you agree with Gunther Steiner that it's just because other teams envied them that this situation arose?
Joao Silva, via email

I don't have all the information, so it's difficult to know if Haas really has a case for appeal.

From what I do know, it is the team's responsibility to present its cars at each race weekend in what it considers a legal specification. After that, it should be down to the governing body to accept the team's interpretation of the regulations or not.

Will Haas win the appeal? I would doubt it very much

Neither of these things happened with the Haas at Monza. From what we know, Haas presented its car with this underfloor without the correct radius on the front corners, and more importantly the FIA didn't pick up on it and this meant that the other teams had to protest it.

This is never a good thing between competitors and without doubt it can very quickly create a strained relationship, especially when most teams consider that Haas has pushed the boundaries in how it works with Ferrari and how much it uses of the Ferrari car.

Do other teams envy Haas? No, I don't think so as they would all consider themselves to be true car constructors, which is the backbone of what F1 is supposed to be about. They consider Haas to be a kit-car assembler.

Will Haas win the appeal? I would doubt it very much. After all, the team had been advised of the need to modify the floor by Monza and warned that if this wasn't done it would be open to a protest.

I know it would put a lot of aero people out of work, but wouldn't F1 be better without wings? They're expensive; when they break, your race is done; F1 started without wings; less downforce = more exciting passing and racing; less aero degradation when following another car; ground-effect cars of the 1980s looked awesome with no front wings.
David Fenn, via Facebook

Aerodynamics always were and will always be part of F1, it's just that we know so much more about how to get aerodynamic performance out of component surfaces. Because every surface of the wings and car body is optimised, when there is a little bit of turbulence around these surfaces they basically stop working.

The ground-effect cars were more consistent because they produced most of the downforce from the underfloor. They were still affected by turbulence, but to a much smaller degree.

The fact that some of them ran without front wings was mainly down to how powerful the underfloor was and where its centre of pressure was positioned. If it was well forward, you didn't need front wings to balance the car.

I would guess that a 1980s ground-effect car produced more downforce, or at least very similar to the current cars.

In the next F1 survey, we need to get everyone to vote for ground effect and a much smaller and less complicated front wing.

How different will the set-up be for a track like Singapore compared to Monza? Will the suspension be that different in terms of settings and what difference will that make to the car to drive?
Michel Peeters, via email

Lots more downforce is the main change. Yes, there will be smaller changes to the mechanical set-up of the car including the ride heights, but this will all be around getting the best and most consistent aerodynamic platform for the complete lap.

For Singapore, drag is not so important and I think it's very similar to Hungary as far as downforce levels are concerned.

It's quite a difficult circuit to get the set-up optimised for because the practice sessions are at times when the ambient conditions are going through their biggest changes of the day.

So you need to come armed with a plan and not panic if things are not as you thought they should be during first practice.

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