Why Williams needs to sign Kubica

Who would you choose from Daniil Kvyat, Robert Kubica or Paul di Resta if you had the choice for Williams?
Tim Such, via Twitter

I would have no reservations about immediately picking Robert Kubica. The reasons are simple:

1 He showed in the past that he has the speed, understanding and commitment to thrive in Formula 1.

2 He was at the top of his game when he had his rally accident in 2011, so knows what it takes to get there - and, more importantly, what it will take to get back there.

3 He will now be more determined and committed than anyone to show that he has made a full recovery from his life-threatening injuries and has lost none of his natural talent.

4 He is a very sensible individual and would not be putting himself up there to be shot at if he didn't think he was capable of achieving his own, and the team's, objectives.

5 It would be a great story for Williams and for Formula 1 in general.

6 If for any reason it doesn't work (which it will) there will always be drivers out there queuing up for the drive.

Williams definitely needs Kubica. He's the man for the job.

How big of an advantage will Renault have now that they hired Marcin Budkowski, the guy that knows every team's secrets and designs?
@bigmike899, via Twitter

I'm not so sure it will be a big help. Building a good car is not about piling together the best of the ideas from all the teams, it's about having a design philosophy that is understood by all involved.

As a result of that, you should also have a development philosophy and a direction in place to allow the concept to be further optimised.

Creating a good car is a bit like putting together a jigsaw; it's about all the pieces fitting together and complementing each other. The difference between a Mercedes and a Sauber is that Mercedes has a jigsaw with a lot more pieces, but it has a more sophisticated understanding of how they fit together and the picture that will be revealed when they do.

The teams are fairly secretive with their information, and I doubt very much if any team sent the FIA detailed information of what they were trying to achieve. What was supplied would be more generic, pointing to the general direction of the concept but without specific details.

Having someone with just some of the information from a variety of teams can actually do more harm than good. Everybody, especially the upper management, will be looking for the 'silver bullet'.

But, in reality, it's all about having a strong group of people working together in one direction, along with hard work and the budget to back them up.

Do you think Sergio Marchionne would seriously pull Ferrari out of F1? How many hundreds or thousands of people would lose their jobs and how many suppliers close their doors if he made good on that threat? Wouldn't there be major economic ramifications from such a move?
Helen Knode, via email

I doubt very much if Ferrari would pull out of F1, at least not in the near future. Ferrari needs F1 as much as F1 needs Ferrari.

But Ferrari does need to be listened to, as do Mercedes, Renault and Honda. After all, without them F1 would be in a bit of a pickle.

These decisions are made purely on the return relative to what it costs to compete - the manufacturers are not there for the good of their health. So for Ferrari, it will be down to what value it can measure in terms of brand equity and car sales as a direct result of its F1 participation.

I'm pretty sure the F1 programme justifies its existence and that Ferrari knows this. But if rule changes mean F1 gets even more expensive, then the board members and shareholders will start to ask questions.

The rule changes that are being discussed now are for 2021, so that's still three years away. The rules package needs to be forward-thinking and the automotive world is moving so quickly - so who knows where we will be by then?

The rules either needs to accommodate those potential changes to allow manufactures to show how good they are in those areas, or wash their hands of it completely and go back to nice, noisy V8s or V10s.

One of the changes in the new F1 regulations was a proposal to have some sort of driver-deployed energy boost. In practical terms, how will this work differently from the current system?
James Frankland, via Facebook

The current system is basically mapped to give extra torque from the ERS in parallel to the fossil fuel part of the package when the driver demands as much torque as is available.

For qualifying, the teams will have simulated where on the circuit that extra torque will be the most advantageous to lap time, meaning that to the driver more throttle equals more power at the driven wheels.

For the race, they will have a torque map available that will probably give up a little bit of lap time in exchange for providing more torque on or at the ends of the straights to allow them to defend or attempt to overtake more easily. The driver can select this style of torque mapping when they feel they need it.

As we the viewers know, this doesn't really work since every team has something available to them and they cancel each other out.

The new proposal means that the extra torque from the ERS would only be available when the driver presses a button. So instead of having whatever level of energy is stored in the battery pack being distributed around the lap as defined in the torque mapping, the driver would have it available to them to defend an overtaking manoeuvre or to use it to pull off an overtaking manoeuvre.

Will all this help to give closer racing? The answer is pretty simple: NO.

Why would anyone think it would? Under normal circumstances the driver will use whatever energy is available to get the best lap time, so in reality nothing changes other than giving the driver another button to press instead of it all being mapped into his throttle pedal electronics.

Will they save some of the energy up to have in reserve in case someone catches them and tries to overtake? No, because doing the best lap time is the best way of defending against being overtaken.

Will someone use more energy on a lap to catch someone? No, because they don't have more energy than the other cars racing with them.

Basically, the driver will try to copy exactly what the teams now map into the throttle pedal. So I would expect the difference to be invisible.

When they start an F1 engine, why do the mechanics rev it over and over again instead of just letting it idle?
Nigel Cass, via Facebook

The days of the mechanics standing there with the throttle mechanism revving the engine are long gone, but it does bring back some good memories of standing there with a squirt bottle, putting fuel into the trumpets to get the old Cosworth DFV to fire it up!

As with most things, progress has meant that the engine is connected to a laptop via what is called the 'umbilical cord'. That revving you hear will all be automatic and the mapping of that will be based on what the engine manufacturer has deemed to be the best rev profile for checking out the function of all the systems that are logged on the car. It will also be based on what is best for the combustion efficiency at those low revs.

These engines are designed and built to run at elevated temperatures. Because of that, starting them from cold is a no-no.

The engine oil and water temperature are all pre-heated to a certain level with external heaters and pumps, which all need to be disconnected before the bodywork is finally fitted.

Any engine running you hear is to maintain that heat at an acceptable level, otherwise you would run the risk of damaging the engine's internals. With more revs you have more heat, so it gets up to temperature faster.

Red Bull, Mclaren and Ferrari all have high-rake cars, but Mercedes doesn't. What is high rake, how does it help the chassis produce grip/downforce, and will Mercedes need to go down this route in 2018? Does this design philosophy require a different driving style in a similar way to the exhaust-blown diffusers of a few years ago?
Mark Hayward, via email

High rake is basically when a team runs a high rear ride height relative to the front. A normal static ride height set-up would be around 20-25mm at the front and 65-70mm at the rear.

A high-rake car would have a very similar front ride height, but the rear would be 100-110mm. This means the complete underfloor is working as a diffuser.

The centre of pressure of that underfloor, which is the common point where all the aerodynamic forces join up and push on the car, will also be further forward - meaning the car is not so dependent on the front wing performance.

Running the car like this doesn't just come from raising the rear ride height, it takes a lot of effort to get the best from the aerodynamics with this increased rake. You need to start with it as the foundation of your aerodynamic philosophy.

If you can get it all working the package should create more overall downforce, have more front grip at lower speeds, and be less critical to rear ride height changes. That will give it a bigger working window.

The only negative is that a car with a low front ride height and high rear ride height will be potentially a little more draggy on the straights.

Do you think we would get better-looking and more individual cars if the rules were made more restrictive? So many square millimetres of front, rear wings with only three plates - the same for all external bodywork, such as 10 items per side of a maximum 'x' square milimetres, as well as controlled intakes and brake ducts. But with that, have no restriction on the location or shape of free outlets. You could also allow any cockpit position, provided it passes crash testing. F1 is also crying out for a sensible overall length - about one metre less than now. Do you think this would lead to better racing?
Guy Dormehl, via email

I remember when you could take the F1 rule book home and decipher it in one evening. Now it takes a team of people continually looking at all the areas in which you just might find that advantage.

A quick example of that is the engine cover shark fin and T-wing. The FIA didn't think that was possible, but some clever ass found it, and now look what we've got.

What I'm saying is that the more complicated the regulations, the more room there is for one team to find the loopholes. Then the others will just need to spend money to catch up.

The brake ducts you mention are an example of how silly things have got. Now the last design requirement of these items is to actually cool the brakes, and they're covered in deflectors, vanes and wings, all producing downforce directly on the upright and wheel assembly. Oh yes, and there is a hole in the front of them to cool the brakes - and in some cases that hole is actually too small because that hole and the airflow that goes through it actually loses downforce!

These very complicated and expensive components do nothing for the racing or for the spectacle and we never really see them, or have anyone explain them to the viewer. So why have them?

You also talk about overall car length and cockpit location; I don't think you could package everything currently required in a car that is one meter shorter. As Ferrari and Mercedes have shown, a team can decide (differently) on what wheelbase a car should have, and from there the overall car length gets defined by the overhangs.

As far as better racing is concerned, this is very difficult to achieve. If you just take GP3 or Formula 2, these are one-make chassis and we still get one team and driver combination that is stronger than the others. They even have reversed grids for the second race to try to spice things up, but still there is always a winner and a loser.

In F1, we do nothing to improve the show. We get the fastest driver/car combination qualifying on pole on the Saturday, and then we wonder why on a Sunday, when everyone is driving cars that just can't follow each other within two seconds, that driver normally romps off into the distance.

We all wait with bated breath for the pitstops to see if this undercut or overcut is going to work out, and when that doesn't happen we normally nod off again.

The regulation proposals for 2021 that I have read do nothing for the above and will be invisible to the viewer. Someone needs to realise we don't give a damn or care whether or not the cars have an MGU-H, we just want to see better racing.