There’s an exciting level of uncertainty about any new Formula 1 season but it’s particularly acute in the eve of a regulation change, especially one so all-encompassing as the new ‘50/50’ electric/combustion set.
It’s not actually 50/50; that was just a loose regulatory aim. The electrical power is capped at 350kW (around 470bhp) whereas the internal combustion turbo V6s are free to be developed to whatever anyone can get out of them within the regulations. A current ballpark figure for the ICE (internal combustion engine) seems to be around 530bhp, making the split more like 47%/53% electric to ICE.
The significance of one half of the power source being capped and the other not is competitively profound. That’s because the more potent the combustion engine, the more efficiently the batteries can be recharged – and the longer therefore the electrical power can be deployed while still keeping the batteries in a balanced state (i.e. using no more energy over the lap than that which is being fed into them).
So not only will any ICE power advantage itself help get the car down the road faster, but it will be able to feed the battery well enough that the electrical power can be deployed for longer. It’s a little more complex than that, because it’s not just the peak power of the ICE which determines how quickly the batteries are recharged but also the engine’s power delivery and how that integrates with any particular track layout. But essentially, any ICE power advantage does compound in the whole power unit equation.
Furthermore, because we now have active aerodynamics allowing the wings to be flattened down the straights, the authority of power over laptime has increased considerably. You are no longer straining against the squaring resistance of drag, which is no longer trying to saturate any power advantage as you get into the 150mph-plus range. Extra power now translates much more obviously into straightline speeds, which in turn are way more influential on lap times, with corner speeds no longer the dominant factor.
Given that broad backdrop, the implications of Max Verstappen’s Red Bull performance on the first day of Bahrain testing were potentially devastating. For one thing, his terminal speed on the pitstraight, at 214mph was 7.5mph faster than any non-Red Bull Powertrains car (second-fastest to Verstappen down that straight was the VCARB of Arvid Lindblad, also with a Red Bull Powertrains PU). But that’s only over a single lap and may have just been down to the different choices made by each team in how to spread the energy deployment over the lap. Certainly, the McLaren and the Ferrari showed themselves capable of lapping at least as fast over one lap. What was far more concerning for the others was Verstappen’s sequence of 10 consecutive laps, at around the same time of day as George Russell was doing a similar run in his Mercedes.
“Look at Red Bull’s energy deployment – more on the straights than everyone else”
On the issue, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff commented: “Look at their energy deployment. They are able to deploy far more energy on the straights than everybody else. On a single lap we’ve seen it before, but now we’ve seen how it looks on 10 consecutive laps with the same kind of straightline deployment [throughout]. They are taking 1sec out of us on the straights. I would say that today, the first official day of testing, they are the benchmark.”
