Will Wolff's absence affect Mercedes in Brazil?



Toto Wolff isn't turning up to the Brazilian GP. What difference does it make if the team boss isn't at a race? And how much does the team principal matter on a race weekend?
David Smith, via email

A team principal with Toto Wolff's level of involvement will always be missed.

Some team bosses are just there for the craic, but he's heavily involved, especially in strategy decisions and keeping everyone, including the drivers, focused on the job in hand.

I'm pretty sure Mercedes will have appointed someone else to make the final calls. As we know, Mercedes has strength in numbers so the team shouldn't have too much trouble pulling someone out and dusting down their passport.

But the timing of this is interesting. The new 2021 rules were revealed at the last race in the US, which was just under two weeks ago, so the teams will have had a little bit of time to decipher them.

All the other top brass will be in Brazil, so it would have been a good time to have had a few unofficial chats about what the other teams think of the regulations.

It could simply be that sometimes Brazil is not the safest place to be. We've heard of - and I've been involved in - tricky situations when some of the locals have got a bit heavy-handed, so perhaps Toto just wants to make sure he's around to spend some of his bonus money for that sixth double world championship!

I'm wondering if one of the effects of the 2021 front wing attaching to the nose and the removal of bargeboards will be the lowering of the pedal-box closer to the chassis underside. Or is the location of the pedal-box dictated by the regulations?

I've always disliked the 'raised nose' look and think that the 2012 Red Bull was the ugliest car to win the championship! Variation in the position of the pedal-box would introduce a variety of nose designs, which would be good for F1.
Guy Dormehl, via email

It will mean that the front section of the nose will be a little lower but, without spending a lot of time drawing out a car using all the coordinates that they have issued, it's more or less impossible to see if that will lead to a lower front bulkhead.

At face value, I don't think so, and I'm pretty sure that the aerodynamic research will require the teams to pursue a high chassis.

The ground-effect tunnels and their leading-edge turning vanes will still want to pull as much mass airflow as possible between the front wheels. The only way to achieve that is with a high chassis.

The new rules and the way they are written is all about components and their location from X (longitudinal), Y (lateral), Z (vertical) coordinates located all over the car.

Each component has its own individual reference and there is also a global reference. After that, it is all about minimum and maximum curvatures etc, so unless you put the whole thing down on paper nothing makes sense.

Currently, and it seems in future, F1 intends to continue its restrictions on CFD and windtunnel usage. Owning, renting and running a windtunnel, or for that matter obtaining enough teraFLOPs, is expensive for smaller teams, but I cannot understand why frontrunning, successful teams are not handicapped by reducing the available time for these things. Why not help the less successful teams by giving them more CFD and windtunnel time? It seems to me this would be very easy to implement on some sort of sliding scale, so why not do it? Would it help level the playing field?
Rob Ducker, via email

I think the main reason for this not being done is that it would be too simple a way of the not-quite-so successful teams perhaps catching up with the top teams. As the top teams have the biggest say in influencing the regulations, they just wouldn't agree to that.

I agree that something needs to be done and 2021 would be a good time to do it. To allow the smaller, less well-resourced teams to use their facilities more to the maximum and at least have a chance to at least try to close the gap, I'm pretty sure there could be some calculation created that takes into account budget, personnel count and points scored in the previous season and spits out an allowable windtunnel and/or CFD usage percentage.

To get anything like this through would be almost impossible. All the teams have their own, or have access to, highly specced windtunnels. They are a fundamental necessity if you want to go racing. Yes, it costs a lot of money to run them, but it costs even more in performance to have them sitting idle.

A very simple question/suggestion. Can't we design an F1 engine that runs on biofuels? I watched a programme a little while ago that featured a Koenigsegg that could run on petrol or biofuel. And it actually produced more bhp with the biofuel. This could surely solve F1's combustion engine/pollution problem and leave all the electrical stuff to FE. Am I missing something?
Sean Simpson, via email

I'm pretty sure if the might of F1 got behind it, the teams and manufacturers could do most things and to build an engine running on biofuels would not prove too big a problem.

But the regulations as they are written are still all about fossil fuel and it is incredibly well-defined, so it would take a major direction change by the FIA to make that happen, even though there is an increase in the biomass in the fuel from 2021.

When you look at the transport world in general, it's in a huge mess. I've been looking at a new car for my wife, and when you go to a dealer and start to talk about petrol, diesel, electric, petrol hybrid, diesel hybrid, petrol plug-in hybrid or diesel plug-in hybrid and ask which they think is the way to go, they just glaze over because no one has a clue for the future.

Most manufacturers that I've talked to don't believe that all these government threats of electric-only by 2030 will happen. Even speaking to Volkswagen people after the diesel emissions scandal, they still suggest and want to sell diesel cars.

As far as biofuels are concerned, I don't believe any of them have gone down that route. Yes, there are some conversion kits, but not mainstream suppliers. I also watched a programme on supply of biofuels and the worry was what it would do to farmers' crops in terms of basic food production.

I know the 2021 regulations are suppose to improve cars being able to follow and therefore pass each other. But other than the aerodynamic issues of following a car, there's also a huge problem with overheating. In Mexico, the top five could get close for a lap and than had to back off because the brakes were overheating. This is because they run the smallest brake ducts possible to reduce drag when running by themselves.

I know moveable aerodynamic devices have been banned since the 1970s (other than the controlled DRS in current regulations), but would adding brake ducts that could move depending on the cooling needs at that time be helpful? Or would, even following another car, the drag penalty be too great?
Jeremy Baldi, via email

It's not just about the drag penalty, as there are two other things to take into account. One is the loss of downforce. The bigger the cooling ducts, the less downforce the car produces, so every team optimises its car to maximise the performance for that one lap in qualifying. This means running it with adequate cooling both for brakes and all the other systems when in free-stream airflow.

The other, and more important, requirement is the working window for both the engine and the brakes.

If we take the engine first, over the years these have been designed and built to work best at elevated temperatures. This has been done to allow the teams to use less airflow for cooling and more to produce downforce.

The FIA stipulates that a pressure-relief valve has to be fitted in the cooling system. This is set at 3.5 bar. The engines run best at about 120/125C and if they get above about 135C the pressure-relief valve (basically a very expensive radiator cap) will blow off, losing water and the car will start to overheat.

But the opposite is also true. If one of these engines was started up from cold, say 20C, it would just seize. This is why the teams are allowed to keep water and oil heaters on them while the cars are in parc ferme.

Basically, the engine design working window is very narrow - roughly between 105C and 135C. If they get outside of this, or even close to it, the engine will be damaged. On top of that, you are not allowed to alter the cooling parameters of the car from qualifying, when you're on your own doing one timed lap, and the race, when you could be in traffic for most of it.

This makes it very difficult to get the right balance, and normally it's the race that gets compromised because you can do something about it like drop back a bit.

The brakes are similar. Too hot - 1000C - and they wear very quickly. Too cool - 350C - and they just don't give the required retardation and are critical to locking up when they go through their optimum temperature working window threshold of about 500C.

It's 20 years since Eddie Irvine very nearly won the world championship, which seemed bizarre even at the time. You worked with him at Jordan and Jaguar - would he have been a worthy champion or would it have been a bit of a fluke?
Javier Garcia, via email

If you can put yourself in the position, as Eddie did, of nearly winning an F1 world championship, it's never a fluke. You need the talent and commitment. If he had done it, he would have been a bit of a different champion from what we've had over the past 10 years at least.

All things being equal, I think Eddie would have won it. But with Michael Schumacher coming back to Ferrari for the last few races, it threw in a couple of extra problems that, with them both driving for the same team, he just couldn't overcome.

• From the Autosport archive
• Schumacher's extraordinary but controversial 1999 comeback
  

I once asked Wilson Fittipaldi, Emerson's not quite so talented brother, why he wanted to be a racing driver. His answer was that it was a lot easier than working. I'm not saying Eddie is like that because he works hard, but he also likes life and what being a racing driver can bring to that.

He's now a very successful property tycoon who's more or less turned his back on what gave him the steeping stones to that life. For him, that's the best way to move on. I think had he hung in there and won the 1999 championship, he wouldn't have been able to do that, so would have ended up with a very different post-motor-racing life.

Is there anything in the 2021 rules package that you think will do anything to help new teams get into F1?
Olivier Blanc, via email

No, I see no reason for anyone wanting to get their feet wet - or more importantly their fingers burned - and I will actually be a bit surprised if we don't lose one or two.

The budget cap being set at $175million plus-plus-plus just highlights how much it really costs to compete. Those who think they can come in and be competitive for, let's say, $100m will have had a major wake-up call.

That, combined with the technical regulations and how they are written, means that from day one you need a large team of design engineers to put together the detail of the car.

It used to be about designing a car and the regulations allowed you some open areas to come up with your own interpretation of what might just work. Now, it's far too detailed, and therefore prescriptive.

There's no other simple way of doing it, so unless you can afford that sort of budget for a couple of years before you go racing - as that's the length of time it will take to set up a working structure to design and build a car - then best leave your piggy bank alone.

The huge movement of these 13-inch tyres causes a lot of unpredictable behaviour, and due to the new 18-inch tyres this will vanish partially. Will this simplify the job of the aerodynamic teams, or are there still enough unknowns?
gerko_ploeg, via Instagram

I believe there will be a huge learning curve to get the best out of the low-profile tyres. Even aerodynamically, the tyre deflection under lateral load will be significantly different.

I'm old enough to have been involved in Formula 1 with Brabham, when you could get up to some strange things. I was working there when we had 10-inch diameter rear rims, which was done to improve the traction. The Tyrrell six-wheeler, with four on the front, the Williams and March, with four on the rear, why go down that route? The answer is simply 'because they could'.

Unfortunately, those days have long gone. Now, as there is only one tyre supplier, it's the same for everyone, so any advantage or disadvantage will be down to how each team optimises its respective designs around the tyres.

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