Could Ross Brawn help run F1?

What's your opinion on Ross Brawn working for Liberty Media as a consultant on F1? Is it just a front for him to replace Bernie Ecclestone?
Anthony Durkin, via Facebook

Ross can bring a wealth of Formula 1 experience to anyone, both in the technical and the business sense.

As a successful technical director and team owner, he has seen things from both sides.

When he was at Benetton, Ferrari, Honda and Mercedes, it was all about success and money was no object. When he was running Brawn GP, it was about getting the best bang for your buck and that's the model Liberty Media needs to pay attention to.

If it pays attention, understands and reacts to his advice, then F1 might just improve its strength in depth with more teams able to raise the budget required to be stable and competitive.

Right now it's too fragile and needs improved financial stability to give interested parties greater confidence to invest in the teams knowing that success is possible.

At the moment it's just a spending war among the big boys, with the smaller teams tagging along and hoping that, by some miracle, they can pull a decent result out of the bag when they have a lucky weekend.

Ross has many strengths. His technical director approach would be better explained as technical manager. I say this because during the years after Ayrton Senna was killed, the FIA set up what was called the Technical Working Group with a representative from each team. The objective was to improve F1 car safety.

During our meetings, which we initially had every two weeks, we all put forward many proposals. They came both from the teams and the FIA.

When a little more information was needed about how it might affect our own teams' designs, Ross would always wander off and phone the relevant person at his team while the rest of us would be able to give a reasonable answer there and then.

I always took this to mean that he managed the technical side but wasn't directly on the cliff face. Given that any kind of role with F1 as a whole will involve working with a lot of people and understanding their situations, this could be a positive quality.

Why are F1 cars allowed power steering? And do you think eliminating it could spice up the racing by requiring more physicality?
Jonathan Wingfield, via email

Jonathan, F1 cars are still fairly physical to drive, both in terms of steering input and braking loads.

The steering still has to give the driver the varying feedback that comes with varying tyre grip. This is one of the first senses they use to understand what the car is doing.

Too high an assistance level and the driver won't understand what's going on, too low and the steering would simply be all about who had the muscle to turn it.

If power steering was eliminated, the engineers would have to play with the steering geometry, castor, kingpin alignment, kingpin offset, etc, and the end result would be about the same weight of steering as we have now.

In the distant past, when we had aluminium chassis, I was involved with cars that basically had steering that was far too heavy. That, combined with chassis flex, meant that on corner entry the driver needed to decide what steering angle they required and commit to that on turn-in because when the car was loaded up there was no hope of them altering the steering angle.

Do you have a favourite component on an F1 car from an engineering perspective, and if so why?
Martin Zustak, via email

I really like efficient engineering. In other words, if one component can be made to do two or more jobs then that is very satisfying.

But as I started in the era when no one knew very much about aerodynamics and continued through to the time when aerodynamics dominated everything, I have to say that the aero side is what gives me the most satisfaction.

During the '70s and '80s there were very few windtunnels available so I learned my aerodynamics from getting the feedback from the driver. To achieve anything this way meant a lot of head-scratching before you could commit to anything.

If you have the tools to prove components before they hit the track then fine, but as we have seen on so many occasions teams develop certain components but they don't work when they get to the track.

This is because most people don't have to think so deeply, they just believe what the CFD or windtunnel says. With aerodynamics there will always be a question mark beside it until it hits the track.

How do teams decide suspension geometries such as roll centres, roll axes and swing arms and how much of a priority is it compared to aerodynamics?
Micah Hill, via Facebook

Suspension geometry comes from years of experience. Every year the teams will 'fiddle' with what they've learned during the previous season, hopefully making the car better at tyre warm-up, reducing graining or reducing tyre degradation.

But, in reality, improved aerodynamics will play a bigger role in these characteristics than anything you can do with small changes to suspension geometry.

Teams will play more with anti-lift and anti-dive characteristics than roll centres or swing-arm lengths, again because if rake change can be controlled better it leaves a more consistent aerodynamic platform.

That said, next year will be interesting. With the tyres getting wider they will play a more dominant role in the overall grip level, especially in the slower corners.

Because of this, the teams will have to reprioritise the effort level they put into this side of the concept.

Why does Ferrari struggle when track temperatures increase?
Naim Haffejee, via Twitter

If I could give you a black-and-white answer to this, I would have a desk at Ferrari beside Rory Byrne.

When track temperatures increase, it happens because of increased ambient temperatures and with that most cars will need increased cooling ducts. This can change the aerodynamics dramatically.

Increased track temperatures change how aerodynamic components that are working in ground effect, such as the front wing, underfloor leading edge and diffuser, function. This change will also be dependent on how critical these surfaces are working at their normal test temperatures.

I have been involved with team bosses who just wanted improved aerodynamic figures from each windtunnel test, so you just had to push on. But deep down you knew it was more important to research the living daylights out of some components rather than just accepting that they were better after an initial test.

When you sign off aerodynamic components, the big question is what air density and temperature do you use as a reference. Some teams con themselves by using low temperatures and high density levels and don't run the model with practice cooling levels; it makes them produce better figures but it is short-lived.

I think some or all of the above is what's making Ferrari's performance level fairly inconsistent.

What do you think the first big controversy of 2017 could be?
James Frankland, via Twitter

F1 and controversy, how can you put those two in the same sentence?!

I think it would be about the teams that have been involved in the initial Pirelli tyre testing being blamed by the other teams for not sharing the initial tyre data.

It doesn't matter if you actually know what tyres you are running or the characteristics, the driver feedback and what sort of change there was on how the car braked, changed direction, accelerated and when the car touched the ground will help you understand the change from the current tyre.

Distant information is still information. No information is simply no information.

Why are teams so interested in perfect laps with no traffic during Friday and Saturday practice? You never get a race without traffic, so how valid can that be for the race?
Jens Laursen, via Facebook

Jens, I get as confused with that as you. The car and tyre performance are affected dramatically when in traffic, so to me running as conditions and traffic comes at you on Friday and Saturday would be a lot more representative than hunting down those few clear laps. To add to that, actually backing off to get out of traffic will give a false tyre reading anyway.

Perhaps the offending teams think they are going to do a Mercedes and disappear into the distance and not see another car until they catch up with the backmarkers, who will get a blue flag anyway?

Perhaps removing the blue flags, or at least not waving them until at least three to five laps after a leading car catches a backmarker, would mean more importance would be put into designing and building cars that needed to be better in traffic.

It might also reduce the need for Sebastian Vettel to think he needs to publicly abuse the backmarkers instead of getting his head down and planning an overtake. After all, they also have the benefit of DRS.

I remember when drivers were drivers and they just got on with it.

You talked about brake temperatures in your last article. What kind of temperatures are things running at in the car - oil, water, the engine? And how easy is it to manage all of this?
David Bates, via email

Managing the temperatures is one of the most demanding parts of being competitive.

In the '90s, in an effort to improve the car's overall aerodynamics, teams wanted to reduce the cooling-duct sizes. Airflow used to cool the car cannot be used to create downforce, so pressure was put on the engine builders to come up with engines that would run at elevated temperatures.

Renault was the first to get on the bandwagon and had engines that were capable of running at around 150/160C water temperatures. This was actually getting a bit dangerous as the pressure in the water system to stop the boiling was getting so high that radiator failures were occurring.

That, combined with people getting scalded with these elevated temperatures, meant that the FIA stepped in and put a compulsory pressure-relief valve in the water system.

The PRV is set at around three bar. This allows water temperatures to run at around 125/130C without boiling.

Basically, to achieve this engines are designed and built with very tight tolerances so they cannot be started up until the temperatures are around 80C. This is why you will see the engine connected to a water and oil heater system while sitting in the garage.

So to answer your question, water and oil will be in the 125/130C range and because of this so will the engine.

A paper bag or a visor tear-off in the radiator duct will lead to the water pressure control PRV blow off, losing water or air pressure out of the air spring expansion tank that's built into the water system. Either way it will be all over very quickly.

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