Q: During SQ3 in Shanghai, the majority of teams were struggling on the inters. Would you please explain why none of the teams chose to pit one of their cars halfway through the session for full wets to see if that tire could have produced a faster lap time?
Kyle
CHRIS MEDLAND: With apologies to Pirelli, the full wet is not a realistic choice at any stage. If you can generally keep the car on track then the intermediate is comfortably quicker than the full wet tire. F1’s basically reached the point where the full wet will clear so much standing water that it makes it impossible to see, so it almost never gets run. It’s only needed to navigate the most treacherous of conditions.
Every now and then that does happen in a qualifying session, but it’s extremely rare and it would need to be absolutely pouring down with plenty of standing water on the track before the wets would come into play.
The intermediate is by far the quicker tire, and there was very little aquaplaning going on in SQ3, but the bigger problem was the tire was cold — many drivers sat at the end of the pit lane before the start of the session wanting to get out straight away — so it wasn’t offering any grip. Once you got some heat into it, you went a lot faster.
If you’re still thinking “but why not just try one lap on the full wet?” there just isn’t enough time. SQ3 is only eight minutes long, so you have to commit to one option or the other. Mercedes managed a quick pit stop for a new set of inters for Lewis Hamilton, but that was with the knowledge of exactly what it needed to change, and even then that risked Hamilton not getting everything out of the session because drivers build up confidence in the conditions and get quicker and quicker with each lap.
Q: Apologies if this has been asked before, but is there a published criteria for what determines if it will be double yellows, VSC, full safety car, or a red flag in F1? There seems to not be a lot of consistency week to week for the calls, and putting out one call and then changing to a different call screws over drivers every time it happens.
Is there an explanation from Sauber about what has changed from last year to this year on the lug nut design? It seems like that part of the car doesn’t have much change year over year
Will, Indy
CM: For the criteria on what’s used, there are a few entries in the Sporting Regulations that roughly outline the requirements.
For a safety car: “It will be used only if Competitors or officials are in immediate physical danger on or near the track but the circ*mstances are not such as to necessitate suspending the sprint session or the race.”
For a VSC: “It will normally be used when double waved yellow flags are needed on any section of track and Competitors or officials may be in danger, but the circ*mstances are not such as to warrant use of the safety car itself.”
For a red flag: “If Competitors or officials are placed in immediate physical danger by cars running on the track, and the clerk of the course deems circ*mstances are such that the track cannot be negotiated safely, even behind the safety car, the sprint session or the race will be suspended.”
The most simple way they’re usually applied is it’s double waved yellows if the incident might clear itself — if a driver sits in their car and is trying to restart it or move it somewhere safe, basically. That’s why it often stays that way for a while until a VSC might be called upon for marshals to intervene.
The incident with Valtteri Bottas was a good example, because he went off with a mechanical issue and might have been able to get the car to safety, then when he got out the marshals were needed so it went to VSC. That then got upgraded to a full safety car because the car was stuck in gear and after attempts to move it by the marshals they needed to bring a recovery vehicle out from the behind the barrier.
And regarding Sauber’s issues, teams do redesign parts regularly, and in this case had done so with the pit equipment and wheel nuts as well as the wheel assembly over the winter. That could be intended for quicker pit stops, but also just for aerodynamic and weight-saving reasons for when the car is running on track.
So it is all part of a major redesign, and something within that (the team has been coy on specific details) is leading to cross-threading of wheel nuts that are then require to be removed again and replaced with a new one.
Probably the only time this year that we’ll see Max stuck behind a Mercedes. Mark Sutton/Motorsport Images
Q: With what used to be Toro Rosso being a Red Bull junior team and Haas a Ferrari spec team, why are they so bad?
Bernardo, TX
CM: I love how blunt you are with this question, Bernardo! But I’d argue that they’re not bad by any stretch…
Firstly, they still need to design and manufacture the majority of their own cars — the chassis and aerodynamics — but take as many parts as allowed from Red Bull and Ferrari. That does lead to slight compromises on certain things like power unit integration, because you’re receiving that from the company you’re buying from, but it’s the works team that those items are being tailored perfectly for. Tiny differences on items like that add up.
Then look at qualifying in Shanghai. In Q1, the fastest Red Bull was only 0.7s quicker than the fastest RB, and the fastest Ferrari just 0.3s quicker than the fastest Haas. The differences are very small.
The bigger teams with more money and resources then have the ability to take those small performance advantages and extrapolate them over a race distance with tire understanding, strategy, etc., but Haas still scored points.
Then if you start in clean air at the front or in a dogfight in the midfield, your performance is going to be severely impacted accordingly. Look at Lewis Hamilton as an example of that, finishing second in the Sprint when he could have clean air for most of it, but then only ninth (and 2.5s ahead of Hulkenberg) in the GP having to fight through from 18th.
Nico Hulkenberg was 37 seconds behind Charles Leclerc at the flag of a safety car-interrupted race — just like the Long Beach IndyCar race was — and at Long Beach there was a bigger gap between cars from the same team if you look at Scott Dixon and Marcus Armstrong as an example. Setup, driver performance and the race situation in traffic, etc., can play such a big role even with the same machinery.
It’s all relative, but these cars are so complex that it’s amazing how closely-matched they actually are.
