{"id":784559,"date":"2021-06-21T23:52:27","date_gmt":"2021-06-21T22:52:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/?post_type=issue_content&p=784559"},"modified":"2021-09-09T17:41:26","modified_gmt":"2021-09-09T16:41:26","slug":"when-an-f1-car-suddenly-fails-johnny-herbert","status":"publish","type":"issue_content","link":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/archive\/article\/august-2021\/35\/when-an-f1-car-suddenly-fails-johnny-herbert\/","title":{"rendered":"When an F1 car suddenly fails \u2014 Johnny Herbert"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Baku weekend began with a lot of talk about illegal \u2018bendy wings\u2019, further stoking the Mercedes\/Red Bull rivalry \u2013 but it never amounted to much. How do you test legality when cars\u2019 floors, front\/rear wings, barge boards and such generate around 1.5 tons of downforce at 150mph and they can only test a fraction of it? People criticise the FIA, but it\u2019s hard to police. The FIA test for a rear wing now allows a maximum deflection of 7mm at 50kg of load and there\u2019s a new directive that will accept a 20% tolerance just for the first month of these new tests. In Baku, it ended up as a playground spat between Toto Wolff and Christian Horner. Not that interesting.<\/p>\n

On track, the Lewis Hamilton vs Max Verstappen\u00a0duel continues to get tasty, and\u00a0Sergio P\u00e9rez put in a brilliant weekend. Before the race I said it could be the wrong time for him, wondering whether Red Bull would allow him to win\u00a0because of Max and the title fight. Christian said it was too early for that, but it never is when you are aiming at a title. Then as luck would have it\u2026 Damn good on Checo.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cWe <\/strong>used <\/strong>to<\/strong>\u00a0get\u00a0<\/strong>up\u00a0<\/strong>to\u00a0<\/strong>3.5g, max. Today\u2019s cars<\/strong>\u00a0are\u00a0<\/strong>over\u00a0<\/strong>five.\u00a0<\/strong>Incredible\u201d<\/strong><\/blockquote>\n

When I saw Max after the race, he said it\u00a0could have been better \u2013 obviously \u2013 but it also could have been a lot worse, given what happened to Lewis. Max will still feel good about his performance, as will Lewis (apart from his \u2018magic button\u2019 brake bias mistake).\u00a0When I interviewed him after qualifying he was smiling, which is rare when he\u2019s second, because he felt they\u2019d done a really good job to get on the front row. The way it worked out on Sunday was good \u2013 it keeps them close.<\/p>\n

Look at them side by side and you see the maturity of Lewis, which has grown in recent years, but you see it too in Max, developing at such a young age. He had a sweary moment with me during Saturday\u2019s interviews, but that\u2019s his character. Like Lewis, if it doesn\u2019t go his way, he\u2019s grumpy \u2013 although Lewis doesn\u2019t do the sweary bit. Max thought he was going to get pole and ended up behind his title rival. That angry face when he walked up to me was no surprise.<\/p>\n

On the Pirelli tyre failures, I was critical. But when I spoke to Sky F1\u2019s Anthony Davidson afterwards, he said you forget how much g <\/em>and downforce these things produce. They are just so mighty. Anthony thinks even Goodyear or Michelin would struggle. You can\u2019t blame Pirelli because they are doing all they can, plus there were failures in the past: remember Mansell\u2019s Goodyear blowout at Adelaide in 1986? We got up to 3.5g max \u2013 now they are over five. Incredible.<\/p>\n

In my experience, coming back from a failure is not a problem. I had wing failures during my career: one in my first test for Stewart when the car just turned left on me, without warning. I had another in a Jaguar at Hockenheim, where Jim Clark had his crash.\u00a0That was more frightening because of the speed I was doing (over 200mph) and I was lucky because I hit the barrier backwards and didn\u2019t fly. I also had a suspension failure in my very last race for Jaguar in Malaysia. The first thing you know about it is when you hit the barrier. As long as you are okay you just dust yourself off. Max and Lewis know there\u2019s a chance it can happen and when it does they move on. Not everyone can do that, they might have a mental block around all the \u2018ifs\u2019 of what might have been. But I never thought like that, and neither do these two. We\u2019re fortunate things are much safer now.<\/p>\n

The duel doesn\u2019t feel like something that is going to explode this year. Lewis is very legit, and they are both clever and understand when to back out. Lewis is also clever on the radio. You hear messages saying he\u2019s in trouble, but is he? Often I\u2019m not so sure. It\u2019s the game and that\u2019s what\u2019s going to ramp up over the season. In a way, the radio is another weapon and Lewis uses it more than anyone. It\u2019s all part of the process of an elite driver. And Max is not daft on that front either.<\/p>\n

The tyre thing? We saw with Mansell the effect it can have, it\u2019s not new. It lost Nigel a world championship. Has it lost one for Max? Lewis has experienced it, too. Remember his 2016 engine failure in Malaysia, costing him the title to Nico Rosberg \u2013 but that\u2019s racing.<\/p>\n

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Johnny Herbert was a Formula 1 driver from 1989-2000 and a Le Mans winner in 1991.\u00a0<\/strong>He is a regular contributor to Sky Sports F1
\n<\/strong>Follow Johnny on Twitter @johnnyherbertf1<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"author":16731,"featured_media":761782,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[118712],"tags":[126506,34532],"issue_decade":[122153],"issue_year":[126583],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/784559"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/issue_content"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16731"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=784559"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/784559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":786970,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/784559\/revisions\/786970"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/761782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784559"},{"taxonomy":"issue_decade","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_decade?post=784559"},{"taxonomy":"issue_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_year?post=784559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}