Ask Tim: Why Albon isn't the biggest scapegoat at Red Bull

Ahead of the weekend it was announced that Red Bull would be shuffling its trackside engineering staff around and bringing Simon Rennie back to engineer Alex Albon. But the way Albon's former engineer Mike Lugg has been treated seems a bit harsh. If the public reason for the change was to give Albon a more experienced hand, wouldn't Lugg have benefitted from being kept on? What's your take on the situation?

Jeremy King, via email

I think Red Bull handled it very badly. I don't know whether he put someone's nose out of joint, but to take him off the job and stick him in the factory seems totally unfair. Why not keep the guy on and learn a bit from Simon?

Christian Horner said that it was "unfair" on Lugg "to have that pressure" of dealing with a difficult car and, while I know Simon very well and he's definitely the right guy to put in there, I really feel for the guy being stood down like that, so publicly as well.

It was fairly obvious on the radio conversations from Hungary that Albon was annoyed at being put back out in traffic in Q2, but that's down to the strategist. It's not primarily the engineer's fault, that's why they have someone working strategy out.

Red Bull's car is difficult this year, obviously, but it's the job of an engineer to be there and find out why, so it will sting. I'm sure that Simon could give him pointers about where he has been going wrong, if indeed he has been going wrong.

In 1994, Ross Brawn approached me to join Benetton because it was felt that the engineer running the Jos Verstappen car wasn't experienced enough. But Ross thought that it would be better if he still came along to the races in 1995, with Johnny Herbert now in the car.

He was almost like what we'd today call a performance engineer, a role which didn't really exist in those days, and together the two of us would make decisions. It was all amicable.

That engineer was Christian Silk, who learned his craft and eventually he was running the test team after me. He now runs the NIO Formula E team.

You can't do this job unless you've got a bit of character, but naturally it will dent his confidence for a while

It's a slightly different situation to Red Bull because Christian was very inexperienced, but it shows that you can make changes in a way that don't leave people feeling like they've been shafted.

I'm sure that Lugg will be a strong enough character to bounce back. You can't do this job unless you've got a bit of character, but naturally it will dent his confidence for a while. I suppose it also depends what they've got him doing.

But Red Bull has a reputation of dealing tough love to its drivers, so I would be surprised if he got another opportunity back in that high-profile trackside job with the team.

How did Lewis Hamilton know how fast to drive with his punctured tyre? Pete Bonnington was counting down the gap back to Max Verstappen, but wasn't telling Lewis how fast to drive. Is that something teams will ever discuss with the drivers as a contingency or is it completely down to the driver to work out?

Jakub Dabrowski, via email

I don't think they would discuss that specific instance, no. The teams get so much information back from Pirelli, they are given parameters to work within and have to rely on what they're told. What to do if the tyre fails isn't something you would typically factor in, because you would want to do everything possible to avoid that eventuality.

Hamilton at least would have been able to see the tyre and see what's happening, which wouldn't have been the case if it was a rear tyre. He simply wouldn't be able to do that sort of speed with a rear tyre gone. Luckily it was the last lap, so you just have to take the chance and go for it. Fortunately for Hamilton it paid off!

What can possibly explain loose parts in Sebastian Vettel's cockpit, as reported on team radio? What happened to Ferrari's quality standards?

@4realthing, via Twitter

Occasionally mechanics forget or they leave things inside the cockpit because they've been in there upside-down on their backs fixing something and maybe they've forgotten to take a spanner back out with them or something.

It can happen when things get done in a rush, but for Ferrari it's frankly inexcusable that it had a problem not once but twice

Funnily enough, we had exactly the same thing in the Oulton Park test a week or so ago with the Speedworks Toyota Supra GT4. The driver came on the radio and said 'I'm pitting, there's something floating around in the footwell'. It turned out that one of the mechanics had left his phone in there because he was using the light on the phone!

This can happen when things get done in a rush, but for Ferrari it's frankly inexcusable that it had a problem not once but twice. I understood that the first issue was something to do with one of the pedals, I don't understand why that would be.

Then the second time I think there was just something loose in there, so maybe they went in there to fix the first problem and that caused the second one.

Why did Racing Point struggle so much for pace at Silverstone? How much would that be because of the need to accommodate Nico Hulkenberg compromising the set-up work the team would normally do?

Karl Davis, via email

I think they would have their own run plans, so it shouldn't really have affected Lance Stroll too much. Yes, they have to coordinate the two cars and they will have needed to give Hulkenberg a bit of extra time to get used to everything, especially as he didn't get into the car until after the session had started while he was waiting for the results of his COVID test. But having a simplified run plan shouldn't have made any difference to Stroll and in fact, he was quickest in FP2.

It seems to me that the team hasn't managed to work out how to get the car working in race-trim. It knows how to make it quick, and it's clearly capable of qualifying well as we saw in Hungary. But at Silverstone, Stroll was losing places to midfield runners when he should have been on the tail of the Red Bull, so there's clearly still some work to do.

Does Hulkenberg's performance on Friday when he was six tenths off Stroll show that it's too easy for F1 drivers to get up to speed nowadays, even if it still takes something extra-special to fully maximise the car?

Jamie Wallings, via email

I think that's a fair question. I've always wondered what would happen you put any of the current drivers in the Mercedes. I expect they would be perhaps not as quick as the regular drivers, but still be there or there abouts.

Compared to 30 years ago, the cars are obviously more complicated with the array of systems the drivers have to get their heads around, but for someone of Hulkenberg's experience that wouldn't be a major issue

If the car gives you confidence and you're a fit lad, as Hulkenberg undoubtedly is, then you'll soon get back into the groove. It was just a bit unfortunate he didn't get it together in qualifying, but the cars do give the drivers a lot more confidence these days because of the aero and the electronic help and so on.

Compared to, say, 30 years ago, the cars are obviously more complicated with the array of systems the drivers have to get their heads around, but for someone like Hulkenberg with 177 starts under his belt in recent machinery, that wouldn't have been a major issue.

And while the set-up window of the cars is not huge, they certainly aren't the brutes to handle with savage turbo-lag of the mid-80s, when electronic control systems were minimal. You'd have to say that the extra aero does makes it easier for drivers coming in.

Regarding the graphics that show how much tyre life is left, where are the sensors on the car that measure it and how do they work?

Richard Bell, via email

I know the cars have got heat sensors on things like front wing endplates and bargeboards that are looking at the surface of the tyre. I can only imagine along with the TPMS sensors, they can judge how much wear there is.

Perhaps the cameras will have some sort of sensor in them, infra-red, to give them an idea as well. If they set it up knowing the gauge of the tyre, they will be able to monitor the way it changes.

Teams will probably buy that sort of technology from suppliers rather than develop it in-house. There are several people I used to work with at Renault that have gone off and set up their own electrical companies and I'm sure they would be delighted to have a project like that!

Teams are talking about an unfair situation with the tokens for the next winter break. But are the tokens still needed at all with the upcoming budget cap?

Dominik Zillinger, via email

The tokens correlate to certain things they're allowed to change for free, or with some understanding - but the budget cap will cut back everything, all your windtunnel testing and CFD and all this kind of stuff.

There's already talk that Racing Point and AlphaTauri have got 'free' tokens for next year, but when the budget cut comes in it will affect everything. I don't think it's got anything to do with the token system.

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