Ask Gary: A radical proposal to improve overtaking

I think one of the reasons for the lack of competition in F1 is the size of the cars. Why not evaluate reducing it?
Tono Villalobos‏ via Twitter

Yes, the size of the cars does reduce the potential for overtaking, especially at places like Monaco or even on any track where there are slow-speed corners, which is where you would think overtaking should take place.

I have to admit that the bigger, wider cars look a lot better than the narrower ones with narrower tyres and stupidly high rear wings that we had a few years ago, so I would have to say let's keep them and try to do something with the circuits.

I'm pretty sure that if you looked at a few lowish-speed corners over the season's races, you could introduce a banking steep enough to allow two racing lines - even if you had to have a painted line mid-track to say that if you entered on the inside line you had to stay there, and if you entered on the outside you had to stay out there.

It could be fitted with sensors so there would be no need for the stewards to get involved. If you had that, it would be interesting to see who took what line in qualifying.

I think you could very easily come up with a list of potential corners for modification, and that would give you a corner radius etc to concentrate on to come up with a banking angle that could be adapted for most situations.

If Ferrari's car has inherent issues with getting the 2019 tyres into the optimum temperature range, specifically tyre warm-up issues, how was it able to look so good in winter testing when temperatures were cooler?
Tom Caster, via email

I'm pretty sure Ferrari will be asking itself the same question.

Barcelona is what's called a high-load track. It has a bit of everything - fast corners, long corners, traction events and a chicane - so when you get the car working around there as Ferrari did in testing, it's just a case of going around for lap after lap and testing different set-ups.

The car, as you say, always looked good, but it's only relative to your competition - and the Mercedes didn't look great. The track temperature for testing wasn't too bad and because of the nature of the track the car loads made the tyres work well.

In between the tests, and post-test, Mercedes introduced a raft of new bits and I think basically outdeveloped Ferrari, which arrived at Albert Park with a very similar car to what it tested at Barcelona. Albert Park is very different to Barcelona and requires a car with a very strong front end. Ferrari didn't and still doesn't have that and is paying the price.

In the faster corners I still think Ferrari has an edge over Mercedes, but in the slow stuff Mercedes just murders Ferrari and, as you spend a lot more time in slow corners than you do in fast corners, the time difference becomes greater.

Is it all down to tyres? Well, yes, they are the only thing connecting you to the track surface and getting the best out of them is critical. But the inherent problem is in the car configuration. This is what loads the tyre in the initial stages and if you are not doing this correctly, then one end will produce grip before the other and this will lead you to a compromised set-up.

The reduced tyre-gauge thickness will also alter how the tyre works. It will heat up that little bit faster but not retain as much heat, so it's less critical to blistering and when worn out will lose grip faster as it will cool down quicker. It's the same for everyone, so as a team you just have to take it on the chin and make it work.

Can you explain the variation between the pole and fastest lap and the variation in the differences and the rate the fast laps progress? Why the huge difference?
Leigh and Jen Edwards, via email

The time delta, as you say, is very inconsistent. The first major influence on it is fuel load, which at the start of the race would be about 3.5 seconds diminishing as the race progresses.

Then there are engine modes, which when you look at qualifying you normally see a step of around 1.0s - so that's 4.5s in total already.

Then there are tyres. No matter what the circuit characteristics are when the tyres are new, you need to look after them as this is the time when you can damage them and it will be very difficult to get them to recover. Very seldom do the tyres actually improve in lap time as the fuel load goes down - normally they lose just that little bit and that's why people talk about the undercut being a good strategy.

Get a new tyre on the car and in one lap you can gain a couple of seconds on someone on an old tyre.

So if you add that 2.0s to our 4.5s you end up with 6.5s. As Australia and Bahrain were the first two races of the season, the engine manufacturers were probably a little more conservative on race engine modes and come Azerbaijan had a little more confidence. Also, some tracks improve a little as the race weekend progresses and some get more marbles on them, so that can have a major influence.

It really depends on when that fastest lap was done - late in the race with a lowish fuel load, or by a driver who just wanted that extra point and risked a little more than at previous races with a free pitstop for fresh rubber as we have seen Pierre Gasly do a couple of times.

I don't think there's a black and white answer to your question, it's just how everything unfolds as the race progresses.

Please tell me if this proposal would work: the F1 rulebook is massively simplified to effectively give designers a box to work in with complete freedom. However, all designs are uploaded to an official FIA CFD software that analyses the shape of the car and calculates how much downforce it will generate. If it's over the legal downforce limit, the design is ineligible. Cars will look different to each other, rulebook is reduced to a few pages and creative minds can really make a difference again.
Dave Goss, via email

It's not a bad idea but there is a lot more to a car's design than just performance.

Actually, something like this was mooted a few years ago but instead of using CFD to come up with a total downforce calculation, the talk then was to either use the load cells or an improved FIA version on the pushrods to measure the actual car's maximum loads. This would work as long as all the other suspension forces, which would be different for each car, could be calculated from the pushrod forces.

The other way was to embed a set of scales into the track surface that the cars have to drive over and they then give you the car's load at that given point. It would be the same for everyone, so probably with current technology the easiest to do.

So if you picked a point on every track where the cars are traveling in the region of 250km/h and stated that the maximum load at that speed could be no more than, say, 1200kg, then in theory aerodynamically the big teams couldn't outdevelop the small teams.

But theory doesn't always work. It would then be all down to who could optimise airflow separation; what the load would be at 220km/h and what it would be at 280km/h. With lots of research into front wing, bargeboard and diffuser airflow characteristics, the big teams would still have the upper hand.

As I said at the beginning there is more to the car's design than aerodynamics; safety is actually the prime mover. Low noses, side-impact structures, chassis shapes and cross sections, rollover-bar areas and their location and rear-crash structures are all safety critical items and their location is defined in the regulations. Even if designers had an open book on aerodynamic regulations, these components would still more or less define the rough concept of the car.

What has been the big change at McLaren that has seen their performance improve?
itsnotagsr, via Instagram

I haven't quite seen a big change yet, but McLaren is definitely going in the correct direction.

The three years with Honda did McLaren no good in any way. At the beginning, Honda, as was to be expected, was not on top of the situation, but as the years unfolded it improved and McLaren lost its way. Before long, both sides of the package were struggling, so the change to Renault was necessary - if for no other reason than the team wouldn't have anywhere to hide.

The Renault is by no means the best engine in the pitlane and a switch to Mercedes or Ferrari would have been a better solution, but neither wanted to supply McLaren. But for McLaren, a change was necessary just to give it something to be measured against.

The first year with Renault was an even bigger disaster than when McLaren was with Honda. Red Bull was out there winning races and McLaren with the same engine was struggling to get into the top 10, even with Fernando Alonso driving. That was a huge eye-opener for everyone at Woking, and the response to that is what's moving McLaren.

First of all, an internal structure change has given McLaren a group of people that understood they had a problem, but who before this change weren't in a position to do anything about it. That, combined with the signing of James Key as technical director and Andreas Seidl as team principal, has finally put a structure in place that has the experience and credibility to offer the leadership that a top-flight Formula 1 team needs to go forward.

We shouldn't underestimate the talent of Carlos Sainz Jr or Lando Norris. Both of them are doing a great job, and as they don't have the legacy of success of someone like Alonso, they don't come with the same pressure or politics.

Do you think F1 should adopt a similar style of cockpit protection to IndyCar with the Red Bull-designed aeroscreen effectively shored up by a halo?
Michael Smith, via email

I have always said that I'm not a fan of the halo. Yes, in some circumstances it will offer more protection, especially when big bits are flying around, but if a front wing gets detached and comes at that opening end-on, it will have serious consequences.

When the screen was tested on an F1 car, Sebastian Vettel complained that it obscured and distorted his vision and made him feel sick. I suppose we can assume from that that he's not interested in driving at Le Mans. Driving around Silverstone is a lot different from being inside a closed cockpit in the dead of night with it lashing it down, overtaking cars that are going at half your speed at Le Mans.

I'm sure that with a little bit of caressing the distortion would have been reduced dramatically and I think that's what IndyCar has done. With the titanium support structure it offers the best of both worlds - the screen to see off the smaller parts like the spring that hit Felipe Massa on the head in Hungary, and the structural part to see off the big bits like a wheel or front wing. Well done to IndyCar for seeing the big picture.

Why do so many teams seem to be marginal on cooling at hot races? Wouldn't it make sense to be conservative and be able to push harder?
Javier Marquez, via email

To get the best aerodynamic performance from the car you want to use as little of the airflow as possible to cool it. Airflow used to cool the car is heated up and beaten around so much that there is no energy left in it to create downforce. That's why over the past few years you've seen radiator and brake cooling inlet ducts getting smaller and the airbox intake getting larger.

The first two affect the airflow to the underfloor, Coke bottle and diffuser, while the airbox intake is further away from those critical downforce-producing devices. As long as you can keep the airflow attached to the sides of the engine cover then the rear wing is OK with it.

However, to achieve this using the minimum airflow possible to cool the car, these engines are built to run at a very narrow window of temperature. The cooling fluid (water to us normal people) probably runs at something like 120C+/-5C maximum, so get it outside of those parameters and it will suffer reliability problems.

As well as that, there is an FIA-prescribed pressure relief valve on the cooling fluid system that blows off at 3.5 bar. This is there to stop teams running the engines stupidly hot and then scalding the driver or a marshal if they have an accident. If they blow off, you lose pressure in the water system and before long the system will start to boil its brains out.

When this all started quite a few years ago, engines were running at around 150C and upwards of 5 bar in the system, so it all got pretty stupid and needed some form of control. The pressure relief valve was the most fair control across all the chassis and engine manufacturers.

So to summarise, if you have too much cooling you will lose aerodynamic performance, which is quite important at all times but especially for that one lap of qualifying. As you can't change the car's bodywork specification from qualifying to the race, you then have to turn down the engine performance.

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