Would Sirotkin demoralise Williams?

With Williams set to take Sergey Sirotkin, what's it like for those working in a team to know a driver has been taken primarily for commercial reasons? He seems to be an OK driver, but he's nothing amazing, so surely that just makes all the hard work feel like it's for nothing?
David Mills, via email

Williams is in a very difficult position for next year. It has Lance Stroll in one car with only a year's experience and, to be honest, he didn't improve as much as I expected as the season progressed. Yes, 2018 could be a very different story for Stroll, but with the information currently available Williams shouldn't expect too much.

As for the second driver, Robert Kubica would have been a gamble. He was quick but his experience is now from quite a few years ago.

Daniil Kvyat has current experience but his performances with Toro Rosso were a bit questionable. Sirotkin comes with only testing and Friday morning practice experience with Renault, so again is questionable.

Paul di Resta again has experience from a few years ago and I am sure would have done a positive job. Pascal Wehrlein has current experience but, like di Resta, didn't seem to have much of a budget, which surprises me with the Mercedes contracts.

For Williams, a better budget means it will be able to build and develop the car at a faster rate. I am sure it would have signed Kubica if his budget had come through, but it seems to have stumbled.

Kvyat or Sirotkin are very similar gambles. Either of them could come good and be another Max Verstappen, as Stroll could, so I am sure it is down to who has the biggest budget and that would allow Williams to spend as required to get the car to the level required if it does ever get a top line driver. Provided, that is, it has the ideas and direction required.

Which qualifying lap impressed you the most this year?
Didier Coton [the driver manager], via Twitter

Didier, hope you are well! There were quite a few cliffhangers, but I think it would have to be Lewis Hamilton's Q3 lap from Silverstone.

To finish up over half a second ahead of Kimi Raikkonen in second place was an amazing lap. To do this in front of his home crowd with hundreds of staff members from both Mercedes' Brackley and Brixworth factories present was a great thank you for all of them.

That Silverstone is a circuit where commitment to corner entry is everything, combined with changing grip conditions as the track dried up from earlier rain, just shows the level of feel Hamilton has for such situations.

As we know from his qualifying record, Hamilton is very good at getting the maximum out of a new set of tyres, but even still that was an exceptional lap.

On a recent Autosport Podcast, Karun Chandhok mentioned Lewis Hamilton was particularly good at compensating for the effect of wind in the first sector at Austin. What effect does wind have on a car's aerodynamic performance, and can a driver really compensate for that?
Pedro Silva, via email

A headwind increases the overall downforce of the car, as basically the car thinks it is travelling faster than it is. A tailwind loses you downforce, but mainly from the rear as it affects the diffuser and rear wing performance.

With that in mind, it is important to understand which direction the wind is blowing in and where you can gain from it and where you need to be that little bit more cautious.

Hamilton has always been very good at feeling the circuit and tyre grip level and taking the maximum from it, and windy conditions are just an extension of that.

Mercedes will have helped him to understand where the conditions would be positive and where they would be negative but it is then up to him to believe in that information and use it to a) improve his lap time and b) not throw it all away.

Gary, why is the method of the F1 driver seeing behind still a mirror, when simple video screen(s) and camera(s) would improve the view massively?
Phillip Llewellyn, via Facebook

I completely agree. It's probably down to tradition, but in the 21st century it's probably time to move on.

As we have heard on many occasions, the drivers are the first to say that they just didn't see someone coming up behind. And I am sure we have all had near misses on the motorway when someone is in our blind spot - it's just the same. Actually, it's probably 10 times worse in an F1 car.

Formula 1, and especially the manufacturer teams, keeps harping on about being road car relevant. I'm pretty sure that a rear facing camera and a small screen just about where the gearchange lights are positioned would be much better than what we currently have.

If it was wide angle, it would have caught Raikkonen and Verstappen as they made a much better start than Sebastian Vettel in Singapore. If that had happened who knows, Vettel might just have gone on to win the drivers' world championship.

As a side benefit, it would be more aerodynamically efficient. The rear-view mirrors on a F1 car, as on a road car, create drag so they would become more fuel efficient without them. That would be a benefit to all.

Why does an F1 weekend need three days? There has been talk that two would suffice.
Simon Bill, via Facebook

Two days would be sufficient for F1, but there is also the practice, qualifying and races for the support events to fit in.

These support series are important to the overall package and if they were run on the Friday with Formula 1 on the Saturday and Sunday, very few people would show up on the first day and then the support series would lose what sponsorship they do have and fade away.

I don't think it would save much money, because the teams all arrive quite early in the week of the event. Some even arrive to set up the weekend before, so with a little bit of lateral thinking I'm pretty sure money could be saved if it was vitally important.

What I would suggest is more action on the Friday - more, shorter, sessions to allow the teams time between sessions to do set-up changes.

Using the current bill, something like this could work:

You could have more or less the same on Saturday, with some of the sessions changed to qualifying and/or races.

Will an expected drop in prize fund affect the gap between the big manufacturer teams and the smaller independent teams?
@Tigerkart, via Twitter

Any loss in budget will affect all the teams, but the teams with the fairy godmother at the other end of the phone - Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull and Renault - will suffer less. So, I suppose it will hit the midfield teams worse and I imagine that will show up in their performance.

Before we get to any cuts, the current payment fund is far too biased in favour of the big teams. Yes, winners deserve more but the reality of it is that they also get paid more for just being there.

In the old days, the teams would individually negotiate with the circuits for an appearance fund. So back in those days, Ferrari would get more than Ensign or March. But it wasn't a crippling difference. Currently, it is a difference of more or less a small team's budget!

After that there was the prize fund, which was paid purely on performance.

Then Bernie Ecclestone took over and negotiated for everyone, and that has ended up leaving us in the situation we are in today.

More equal payments for the teams is the only way to close the chasm between those that have and those that don't.

How much do gearshifts - the timing of them, etc. - effect the way an F1 car handles? I guess it's less of a problem with high-tech semi-automatic gearboxes, but back in the day did certain drivers have a knack for shifting in a way that was best for lap time?
Mark Davies, via email

Gearchanging used to be part of the art of being a racing driver. But as you say, with the current gearshift systems there is more or less constant torque being fed through the rear axle, so shifting gears mid-corner if required creates minimal problems.

For example, Ayrton Senna would arrive at the end of a straight in top gear, press the clutch with his left foot, stand on the brakes with his right foot and at the end of the braking blip the throttle with side of his right foot and change from seventh directly into second, or whatever gear he required.

He did this because it was more efficient in braking than blipping and going down the gears one at a time. But you had to be careful not to over-rev the engine by selecting the lower gear too early. I had a few drivers in my time that thought they were another Senna however many times we ended up with engines spread all over the pitlane.

Planning where you changed up the gearbox was another part of being a racing driver. It wasn't always about the most efficient revs, it was more about where you were brave enough to let go of the steering wheel and go for another gear. Circuits like the Osterreichring (now the Red Bull Ring) when it was basically still a real racing circuit with six or seven almost flat-out corners were always difficult - the last thing you wanted to do was let go of a steering wheel that was nearly seized up because of the high lateral loads twisting the chassis just to change gear.

How much money would teams save with a standard FIA front and rear wing and underbody?
Tony Taylor, via Twitter

The answer to that is: lots! A current front wing assembly costs in the region of £80,000 to reproduce. Some of them have around 50 individual components that are all bonded and fitted together.

But the main cost is in the moulds and tooling required to manufacture and assemble these components. If a new design requires a complete new set of moulds, tooling costs go well into the hundreds of thousands.

No one wants a spec car in F1 and I completely agree. I would limit the number of front wings, rear wings, underfloor/diffusers and brake ducts a team can introduce. I would also implement a rule that whatever specification you arrived with at the first race of the season had to be used for four races minimum. After that, you could change and again once introduced the new package would need to be used for four races.

A team would have one wildcard for each of these components that could be introduced at any time, so if it really screwed up on something it could recover.

This way you would save a lot of money and still allow the teams to design their own components.

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