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Finally after many, many years of fervent yearning and trying, Formula 1 got itself
a grand prix in Miami. And for all the glitz and glamour, the pomp and promotion,
the race itself was… fine. Not that exciting. Not the worst, but perhaps a little bit of a dud.
It wasn’t necessarily a write-off and I’m not shaking a fist to the sky cursing this terrible
track. In fact, there’s a lot of potential here, despite the fact it’s taking place in a car park
of a country where there are a handful of awesome permanent tracks in existence.
Hey, Baku was a bit of a dud in its debut and has now become a race to look forward to with
high speed action between the barriers. Now everyone wants to be Baku for some reason.
The main issues here in Miami could easily be remedied for our return visits.
First and foremost, the track surface. The asphalt used to create the track was an
American-sourced mixture that contained an usually high amount of limerock aggregate,
a material that tends to be bad for both grip and increasing tyre wear.
It was damaged early on by cleaning machines and had to be repaired by Free Practice,
and even then drivers hated the track surface. Perez called it “a joke”, Alonso said it “was not
F1 standard” and that it was very difficult to go off line and very difficult to race.
It was a shame really because the track layout, mostly was pretty cool, with some
real challenges - particularly at the Fake Marina corner of turn 7 and some high speed sections and
potential fighting and overtaking areas. But, as Ricciardo said, the surface was so
poor that you could only really get grip on the racing line where cars had cleaned up the asphalt
and laid down a bit of rubber, making the racing (as he called it) “one-dimensional”
If you cannot take alternative lines, you can’t race in a clever way to outmanoeuvre other cars.
So out go tactics like taking a longer exit onto straights to gain some top speed, holding
an attacking line around the outside or even controlling a late braking attack into a corner.
The car ahead can, for the most part, do their best defence just by sticking
to the rubber railroad of the racing line. It’s not an insurmountable problem. The track
can be improved or resurfaced. Norris pointed to the Saudi Arabian track which can work at
all temperatures and remains grippy throughout. The decision of Apex, the Miami track designers
to go an alternate route with the tarmac composition appears not to have worked,
though this is one learning point going forward. The other little issue with the track is this
turns 12-16 section where it gets all slow and fiddly and,
as is the common term: “a bit mickey mouse”. Again, drivers are hoping this section can
be changed up a little bit as they find it “not suitable for these cars”. The current
era of Formula 1 cars are very stiff and and don’t do well on slow pokey corners so this
section feels very inelegant in an F1 car. Having said that, I didn’t have a massive
problem with it, particularly. I think it’s fine to give drivers a weird little challenge,
even it it does feel like navigating a car park. And there is a reason for it being this way.
The run from 13 to 16 goes over an access road and, as such, forms a crest with the track rising
and then falling over a pretty short distance. To comply with FIA safety standards,
the speed of the cars through this section has to be limited to stop them losing grip as they
top out across the crest, hence why a pokey little section was added to keep speeds low.
There are probably option s here to do this in another way as we go over
one road and under another, but I don’t think it was a massive problem. We’re
not here to make the drivers comfortable. But we are here to keep the drivers safe.
And there were a couple of little safety issues that showed themselves this weekend.
The first was the lack of Tecpro barriers down at Turn 14. Both Sainz and Ocon lost
it in practice sessions through turn 13 and ended up sliding into a solid concrete wall
as the track suddenly chicanes into 14/15. Ocon hit the wall so hard he triggered the
alert on his car that mandated a medical check up and Sainz,
having hit the wall on Friday, suffered with neck pains throughout the rest of the weekend.
Not being a particularly fast section, as we just discussed, it was surprising that cars
were able to have such heavy impacts, which is likely why no proper barriers were installed.
But turn 13 is an acceleration zone and the tarmac is slippery offline,
so any little error could and did end up sending the cars spinning out of control
with only concrete waiting to meet them. It was surprising that the FIA couldn’t
get Tecpro or something installed for later sessions, and infuriating to the drivers who
will surely demand it for next year’s race, if the layout remains identical.
It’s funny really, because turns 13, 14, 15 were designed to be a ‘mistake generator’
to quote the designers. A tricky section with blind apexes and elevation changes
could induce errors and benefit the skilled and the brave. So with mistakes built into the track,
you’d assume they’d have put safety measures down to catch them. But apparently not.
Another thing I’m getting a bit tired of seeing is tractors going out onto a live track. It’s
happening a lot lately, and I guess will happen more frequently with street-style circuits where
space is limited but it makes me wince every time. Even with halos on the cars, having big,
heavy vehicles with high floors right next to grand prix cars seems like an accident waiting
to happen. It only takes one mistake, even under safety car conditions, to result in an injury
no one wants to see. We only have to look back a few years to remember Jules Bianchi and Maria de
Villota, who both ultimately died after colliding with high-floored vehicles in Formula 1 cars.
Again, we have the halo now and we have safety cars controlling the race but
if we end up in situations where there’s not other way to remove a car than by getting tractors
onto the track I’d rather stop the race or mandate an ultra slow zone or something. [De Villota’s
accident happened at only ~60kph] I know quite a few people disagree but it continues to bother me.
And while we’re on the subject of safety, the war on jewellery continues. Essentially, the drivers
have been banned from wearing jewellery since 2005 but enforcement has not been particularly
strong and basically non existent in recent times. Many drivers wear jewellery, if not piercing, then
chains or rings. The FIA has now strengthened the enforcement by making jewellery removal part of
the formal scrutineering process, where teams must sign a declaration that their drivers will not
wear jewellery and will also wear underwear that meets FIA’s fireproof standards.
There has been… some resistance to this. Lewis Hamilton has been the most vocal,
as the most obvious jewellery wearer, though far from the only one.
The reason for the ban is pretty simple. Jewellery can cause a lot of problems in the event of
serious accidents. In fires it can greatly increase the risk of burns, it can get snagged
and cause injury when rescue workers or medical staff remove clothing. It can means scans can’t
take place quickly - particularly, if Lewis’s earrings really are welded in place and not easily
removable. And, like with contact sports, they can cause extra injury in the event of impact.
So, all pretty reasonable really. And not a new rule.
The arguments Lewis makes are: a) that it hasn’t been enforced for years, so why now?
This is not a great argument as the FIA can easily argue the problem was it not being enforced, and
safety is their mandate. And b) that driver are adults and should have some personal choice
over how they mitigate the risk of such things. And that’s an interesting point to ponder. You
might consider a scale: on one end, some of the safety measures the FIA enforces affects everyone.
This includes forcing all the cars to have halos, making sure barriers are suitable for impacts, and
controlling the track speeds with safety cars if required. These aren’t things the drivers can opt
out of. Changing these things affects everyone. But then at the other end, there are things that
solely affect the individual driver. If Hamilton keeps his jewellery on but then
gets badly burned or injured because of it - that’s affected only him.
But then again, you could categorise the HANS device in that way. Or helmets. Or
fireproof race suits altogether, to be honest. So, where is the limit on what the FIA should
mandate? Honestly, there probably isn’t one. Most sports ban jewellery, and F1 has just
been slow on the uptake to be honest. The FIA, as the operator and safety monarchy
over their series, has to right to demand whatever they want from people who take part in it.
Having said all that, it’s far, far less likely that some jewellery is going to cause a grievous
issue than a barrier without crash protection. Or that cars might accidentally hit a tractor.
So, you know. I hope the FIA don’t get themselves distracted from the bigger fish.
Anyway, the race itself. It was pretty processional for reasons we’ve highlighted
already but the late safety car did bring out some last minute interest.
One thing is that it kept George Russell’s good fortune going.
Having had a bad qualifying for reasons he himself didn’t fully understand as the Mercedes car
continues to be its own worst enemy, Russell decided to start on the Hard tyres and go for
an alternate strategy of running a long first stint, making up places as cars ahead pit,
and try and be as aggressive as possible. And who knows, it’s a high speed street-style
track - maybe a safety car will bring a blessing. And that it did. On lap 41, Gasly and Norris
clashed, causing a Virtual-cum-full-Safety Car which allowed Russell to nip onto the
mediums and run a fast final stint on fresh, softer rubber, securing fifth.
Before the Safety Car, he was already positioned to be net seventh had he stopped,
so as soon as the VSC was called, this was a no-brainer. He dropped two positions but was
able to take them both back on his superior rubber. Another good day in the office.
Further up the field though, the Ferraris, and particularly Leclerc did not take the opportunity
to switch to fresh tyres. If Leclerc had pitted, with the gaps as they were, he’d have popped out
behind Sainz and been on fresh rubber for the final sprint to the flag. If they’d both pitted,
he’d be behind Verstappen at the restart, still. But, alas, he didn’t have the tyres. At the
start of the race, like Russell, both Ferraris had two hards, one medium,
and three used sets of softs. Leclerc and Sainz had already used one set of mediums and one set
of hards by the time of the safety car, so their only real option was to switch to new hards.
Ferrari calculated that with the reduced grip and longer warm up phase of the Hards,
staying out on their current warm hards was the overall faster strategy. And while they
tried to attack, Verstappen was just too quick. And, as for Red Bull vs Ferrari going forward… the
ball looks very much in Red Bull’s court. They are chewing through their points deficit to Ferrari
at the moment and it’s only reliability issues stopping them from a serious lead in both titles.
Ferrari are suffering from lower top speed than the Red Bull’s and they eat
through their tyres quicker, too. So they are on the back foot on two fronts. But
Leclerc looks very up to the challenge. But that Red Bull machine is very fast,
and Verstappen is probably the best driver on track at the moment. So it’s good to see Leclerc
looking every bit the title challenger as we all want to see this battle go all the way. But if
Ferrari want to take it to Red Bull they are going to have to respond to their issues or the titles
will be flipped sooner rather than later. But next we go to Barcelona.
And I’m approaching this with optimism. Yes, it’s been a bit of a duffer track for many
years but these 2022 cars have proven so fruitful in following each other than we may actually get
some actual action on our hands. Imagine these cars chasing each
other close through Catalunya’s fast turns. Could actually be exciting. I guess we’ll see!
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