The F1 compromises required to nail a perfect Silverstone set-up

There are several things Britain still does very well: a proper bacon sandwich; a well-organised queue; a high-speed FIA Grade 1 circuit. There aren’t many venues on the calendar that challenge a Formula 1 car across the full range of its capabilities – but Silverstone occupies an exalted position within the handful that do. It tests the bravery of the driver as it does the dark arts of the designer. The skillset of the race engineer also gets thoroughly worked over too.

The circuit mods in 2010, designed to make Silverstone more bike-friendly, created a more nuanced Arena layout for F1 cars. Instead of being a high-speed monster it became a high-speed monster… with some really complicated slow bits. The bluff, old traditionalists may choke on their cucumber sandwiches but making a safer, more modern circuit also made it better.

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It still has that ragged-edge joy of seeing an F1 car on the absolute limit through the ultra-fast changes of direction at Maggotts-Becketts-Chapel; it still has thunderous velocity through Copse, Stowe and Abbey… but it’s the slow corners of Vale and Club, Village and The Loop where the lap is made or lost.

The high-speed stuff isn’t to be ignored, but the stupid-huge amounts of downforce the 
’22 technical regs deliver mean this isn’t the Alpha and Omega anymore. It’s now a circuit for balls and brains.

It’s been a while since Tom McCullough was a race engineer tasked with setting up a car to tame Silverstone’s challenges – but Aston Martin’s performance director has a fine view of the circuit from his team’s shiny new technology campus over the road. Set-up, he says, is very much a question of deciding which concessions to make.

“It’s a real challenge,” he says, “because these modern cars don’t want the same set-up in a high-speed corners as they do in the low-speed. So, you have to compromise. It’s a fantastic circuit – but it makes you think.”

Aston Martin Performance Director McCullough (right), with team principal Mike Krack, says Silverstone is a circuit that involves innate compromises

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Rear wing level

Perhaps the best example of the aerodynamic superpower introduced to F1 in 2022 is the sight of F1 cars here eschewing the big rear wings of yore in favour of medium downforce. The track is very power-sensitive and, while TV will undoubtedly describe Copse in tones verging on the near-hysterical, on a qualifying lap it’s not quite the maximum-effort corner it once was.

“The modern generation of F1 car produces so much downforce in the high-speed that Silverstone has become a lower and lower-drag circuit as the efficiency of the circuit has gone up,” says McCullough. “Copse is easy-flat. It’s all about reducing drag in qualifying. There’s a lot of full-throttle time, so you need to be efficient, which means not carrying too much drag.”

Gear choices

Easy-flat seems a little insulting to a corner of Copse’s repute (cf Eau Rouge, 130R) but there is still nuance to be had, with drivers making gear choices, at low fuel, either going all the way up to eighth, or holding seventh to avoid a double-change down before Maggotts – which is now also flat.

“With these cars, we’re trying to run relatively stiff to keep the ride-height platform under control”
Tom McCullough

“It often depends on the wind,” says McCullough. “It can be quite strong there, headwind or tail, which will affect that choice. Also, sometimes energy management and whether you want to keep the revs up or down.

“We’ll sometimes be playing those trades – but normally, reducing the number of gearshifts makes it easier for the driver and the car. So, unless we really need that upshift, we would rather just not.”

Race bias

Silverstone has migrated from three to two DRS zones after the sight of cars flap-open through Abbey was considered too extreme. When more of the lap featured DRS teams usually ran more wing and, correspondingly, a smaller percentage of time spent with DRS active nudges teams to run with less – though McCullough argues qualifying considerations rarely feature, given the primacy of race set-up.

“Racing is the most important thing,” he says, “If you’ve got poor race pace, you’re not looking after your tyres, and you won’t have a good race. The rear wing level isn’t dictated by the DRS here.”

Aerodynamic efficiency is crucial as teams seek to avoid losing speed through drag while having enough bite in the slow corners

Photo by: Erik Junius

Tyre control

While Silverstone is still the recipient of Pirelli’s hardest compounds, the British GP has now become a straight-shootin’ one-stop race, with Max Verstappen winning last year on a medium and soft strategy. This flies
in the face of its reputation as a tyre killer but greater downforce means
less sliding and lower degradation.

Getting the car into that one-stop window does, however, require careful management, virtually from lap one. It’s the left-side of the car that takes the most hammer, though whether it’s graining on the front-left or wear and degradation on the rear-left tends to depend on conditions.

“You’re harder on the tyres at the start of the race, because you have the highest fuel load and the heaviest car, but you’re also in traffic,” says McCullough. “There’s more load on a car that’s sliding more in dirty air, so it’s always that first stint where you need to do the most management.

“Planning to do some lift-and-coast into the braking zones is always part of the game, but how hard you push into the high-speed corners at Silverstone is very important with these Pirelli tyres. We start getting
into management, trying to not overheat the compounds, after one or
two laps, once things settle down.”

Ride height and stiffness

Working out tyre performance during free practice is half the set-up battle at Silverstone. The other half is dialling in ride height and stiffnesses.

“With these cars, we’re trying to run relatively stiff to keep the ride-height platform under control,” says McCullough. “The run down the Hangar Straight has some bumps that, as the cars are flat-out, you definitely see load fluctuation and the rear ride height jumping around.
But in the grip-limited zones in the corners, it’s not too bad.

“We play tunes from track to track with the difference between the vertical heave stiffness, and the roll stiffness, but Silverstone is one where we’re at the high end for both heave and roll. Maybe not necessarily the highest of the year, but pretty close to it.”

And this is the set-up for the British Grand Prix: lower downforce
than you might expect, with a nebulous balancing act between the desire to reduce drag but not by so much that the car slides and cooks the tyres. A very stiff car in roll and heave to keep the aero platform stable and maximise performance in the high-speed corners, and a firm bias in
favour of race pace over qualifying position. Brown sauce, no butter, mushrooms and/or tomatoes optional.

Preventing the tyres from overheating is a constant battle at Silverstone

Photo by: Erik Junius