The Japanese Grand Prix was my first weekend at the track this season, after watching the first couple of races from home due to family commitments. It was really nice to be back in the paddock as I tried to get my head around this new era of Formula 1.
There is no doubt that these regulations have shifted the balance of ‘influence on success’ from the drivers to the engineers a bit more than the previous years. But, having spent three days talking to drivers and engineers, it’s also clear to me that the drivers are still making a difference as they have always done. In whatever era of the sport we look back at, the ultimate winner of the Drivers’ World Championship has generally been in the fastest car. If I look back at the last 40 years, I could probably say that only twice (1986 and 2005) was this not the case, which only makes 5%.
These regulations are clearly going to favour the smarter and more adaptable drivers. There are several layers to the regulations to consider when it comes to planning your energy usage around the lap. For example, Kimi Antonelli in qualifying in Japan was excellent at just slightly delaying the final step of his throttle application out of a couple of key corners. This meant that while he initially accelerated a bit slower than his team-mate George Russell, he more than made up for it by delaying the ‘ramp down’ of the electric power level at the end of the straight.
Another example is thinking of the harvesting amount as the drivers were limited to just 8MJ per qualifying lap of recharge. Kimi stayed on the throttle through Spoon Curve for example, which meant he harvested less energy there, but it allowed him to therefore harvest more at the final chicane when George hit his 8MJ limit. This in turn gave him the benefit of more energy and power on the run to the line and more lap time. Clever stuff!
“I’m not pretending for one second that these rules are perfect”
I went out to watch at the Esses on Friday which is probably my favourite place to view F1 cars, along with Becketts at Silverstone. The speed and commitment that the drivers needed through there was very impressive and much like the previous 15 years that I’ve been going to watch there, ultimately the cars with the best chassis balance are the winners. The drivers are having to think about their lines because any extra distance or tyre scrub costs energy, but you need to balance that with smoother lines and higher minimum speeds as that will also result in less energy used to accelerate.
I’m not pretending for one second that these rules are perfect – they’re obviously not. But they are what they are, so instead of moaning about it, I would look at ways to improve them and maximising performance using the hardware we have. For example, we can all acknowledge that in qualifying, the way the drivers run out of electrical energy at the end of the straights is not good and arguably goes against the DNA of qualifying where we want to see the drivers pushing the limit of grip at every opportunity on the lap.
