I tell you what - as Spanish Grands Prix go, that was a really good one.
Actually, as grands prix in general go, that was a good one. A lot of fun, interesting scenarios,
perilous mishaps and championship shifting events. Good stuff, well done
Spain. And well done once again to the 2022 cars. So, following the Spanish Grand Prix, let’s focus
on a few key things that showed themselves. First we’ll look at cooling, and why that’s so important
in blazing temperatures like we saw in Barcelona. And on the back of all that heat,
let’s look at the aggressive tyre strategies that ended up throwing simple plans out of
the window and whether Hamilton could have challenged for a win here without his puncture.
And speaking of Merc, are they about to disrupt the championship?
And how do we feel about Red Bull pulling out the heavy team orders card on Pérez not
once but twice during the race? Let’s discuss. So, cooling then. All cars need to do it, and
they have to do it without fans - they just have to use the natural passing of the atmospheric air.
So why do the cars need cooling anyway? What actually happens if the internals get too hot?
Well most of the mechanical parts, the engine and its pistons and cylinders, the exhaust piping,
the gearbox, the transmission, all of that good stuff is made of metal naturally, which can change
shape and structure with changes in temperature. Some parts can undergo thermal expansion,
which means they increase in size, bulging slightly from their desired shape. Other parts can
lose integrity if the heat softens them slightly. As the workings on power units and transmissions
and so on are made to be tightly packaged and work extremely well with as little weight and
space as possible, any warping of the shape and size of parts could cause increased friction as
parts rub or collide, could break seals and welded joints, could damage wiring…
One bit of damage or failure often tends to cascade to another as heat and fluids become
uncontained within the system, destroying large parts of the engine or transmission.
Any point of weakness, like a joint or interaction point, is incredibly vulnerable
to the effects of an overheating car. So what can be done about it?
Well, obviously what you want to do is to transfer the heat from the car to literally anywhere else.
And that’s done via a heat sink. In thermodynamics (the physics of heat
and energy transfer) a heat sink is in most basic terms just a place to dump all your heat away from
a working system. So if you’ve got an engine or something working away, you want to dump the heat
from that engine into a place where it’s not going to get reintroduced into that system.
As far as the car is concerned, that heat is gone. In practical terms, especially in electronics, you
might hear the word ‘heat sink’ used to describe the device or system that takes care of all the
heat exchanging, like a radiator or something. So what are we dumping all heat into? Well
the cool, ambient air passing over the car. Cool is a relative term here - in Spain the
air temperature was about 30 degrees Celcius which isn’t exactly ‘cool’, but compared to
the 100+ degrees inside the car, it’s cool. And as heat flows from hot to cold substances,
we can transfer the heat from the engine into the cool air passing by and boom, the heat is gone.
And you might just pop open some air intakes and let the air breeze over the engine to
let it take heat from the components as it breezes by, but this is extremely inefficient.
Simplistically speaking, the air particles can only take heat from whatever it touches
as it travels by. So if we just let the air in to brush up against the engine it could only absorb
heat through the surface of the engine, which means all the rest of the heat is crowding up,
waiting to be ascended to Valhalla. Obviously this is an extremely simplified
model of things, but you get the idea. So how do we get rid of the heat faster?
Well you’ve got to increased the available surface area to allow a
faster heat exchange and get as many hot, hot, particle-to-particle interactions going at once.
Now obviously you can’t make an engine that’s this shape. Or this shape. Or this shape. So
that’s where fluids and radiators come into play. So what you can do is pump fluid in narrow pipes
with lots of lovely surface area, through the engine and then out to a radiator.
The heat flows into the fluid in the pipes as they pass through the engine. The fluid then carries
the heat through a radiator, which is designed to have a nice big open surface area, perfect
for passing airstreams. The heat exchange between the fluid in the radiator and the cool airflow is
quick and efficient and the now-hot air is ejected from the car and into the atmosphere. Hooray.
The engine cooling fluid is a mix of water and glycol, kept in a pressurised system that
allows it to get nice and hot without boiling. Other parts of the car use oil based cooling,
but the idea is the same. Get that heat out of the heat generating bit of the
car and into the airstream. Lovely. Now of course, you’ve then got to get
the hot air out of the car and teams at the moment are working a balance between two main systems.
One of them is just a massive great hole in the arse of the car. Most F1 cars will have opened up
their rear one way or another to force all the hot air out of the back. It’s pretty simple, but comes
with a downside if you want to keep everything nice and tight and controlled back there.
So, Haas, for example have tended to have a much tighter rear end - in Imola you could
barely see much of an opening at all, though it was bigger for Spain. So to compensate for this
they have absolutely massive gills or louvres or slots in the bodywork to let the heat out.
Teams will balance what works best between these two systems as benefits their aero package. What’s
important is not to let this ejected hot air too heavily affect or disrupt the cool outerbody air
being used to work the downforce at the rear of the car, in conjunction with the diffuser.
In Spain, Mercedes had some issues with cooling and, towards the end of the race,
the team suggests water leak issues. As we just noted, the water is a vital part of
the cooling system of the car so if it was losing pressure that severely hampers the ability of the
engine to run at non-destructive temperatures. But otherwise, it was a hell of a weekend for
Mercedes. After such a difficult start to this season, the team upgraded the car and ironed
out the porpoising they had been suffering on the straights. It was still coming into
play in some of the corners, but dialling it right down in the straights allowed the
drivers to actually fight into the braking zones of crucial battle spots like turn one.
Without this crucial upgrade, Russell wouldn’t have been able to hold off Verstappen as he would
have had to come off the power early, like in previous races. So it made a massive difference to
both drivers’ races. Hamilton had to monster his way through from the back and took full advantage
of being able to use his speed all the way down the main straight to pass slower cars and maintain
very strong lap times, despite dragging his car along the floor for a whole lap after a puncture.
Could he have won or ‘mixed it with the Red Bulls’ as he put it? That’s a
tricky thing to answer but feels optimistic. I’m more annoyed by his first lap puncture
as he was the only driver to start on mediums and I was really curious to see
how that played out as Pirelli recommended starting on mediums but no one else did it.
Anyway, Hamilton ran what was essentially a two stop race if you ignore lap one, with everyone
ahead running aggressive three stops. Being out of place in the race allowed him to run fast,
stay out of fights with cars of his equal and look after the tyres while continuing to push.
He wouldn’t have been able to do that had he been among the top six throughout the race,
but that’s where the curiosity of starting on the medium tyres comes in. He could have
been out of sync with everyone and found a way to forge his way higher through strategy. To a win?
Probably not. But you never know. The thing is, we truly will never know
because that scenario creates a cascading butterfly effect - a multityre of madness.
Toto was asked before the race how many strategies Mercedes had ready to go he
essentially said that pre-prepared strategies were out of the window as they would have to
be reactive as the tyres got destroyed and the race would be won by those who
could be nimble, be fast, and be on the right tyres at the right time and manage them well.
And that’s kind of what it was. Teams were constantly reacting to the situation around them.
Max switched to a three stop to get out of his battle with Russell and find some clear track to
exhibit his pace. Perez pulled out of sync with the leaders initially but then covered Russell
midway through the race to grab the lead. If Hamilton had been among all of that,
strategies would have played out differently and with Mercedes not yet being at the pace of
the Red Bulls and Ferraris on even footing, they would have struggled to force a win.
But looking at the lap times of the top four, Hamilton pulled out an extremely impressive race,
often matching pace of the Red Bulls while pulling back all his lost time from lap one by taking
one less pitstop in the main bit of the race. And Russell defended brilliantly against
Verstappen when it seemed like Max would breeze past. Sure, his DRS was broken and
without that issue it would be easy pickings but even when Max did successfully pass,
Russell came back at him and retook the position. Mercedes really are on the ascendance.
And the timing of Mercedes wriggling their way back into front-running contention has
come at exactly the right time. The championship has flipped at the front,
with Verstappen and Red Bull taking control of both titles for the first time this season.
Mercedes, despite their struggles, have been consistently bagging points through
their troubled weekends. Sometimes through luck, but they’ve been there to pick up the
pieces and they’ve got the points to show it. So if they suddenly find themselves able to
fight for wins, that’s going to get very messy for Ferrari and Red Bull’s fight.
Even if Merc aren’t championship contenders, if they insert themselves into the middle of
the main four cars on a race by race basis, that will massively change the potential points swings.
But we might still see pretty big points swings as this championship progresses. Reliability has
shown itself to be a key issue already with both Ferrari and Red Bull’s main drivers suffering
hard, and even Mercedes fighting off gremlins in Spain. Sainz is currently fighting…himself
at the moment, but the gremlins could come for him and hold off his ability to support the team.
Power units are being rinsed up and down the field already so I think we’re going to expect another
year of grid penalties in the back end of the season. Taking them strategically and making
hay on the good days could decide the title. And speaking of deciding the title, did Red
Bull really need to pull the team orders card on Perez this race? Twice even. Once for the lead.
Wellllll. OK look, let’s be realistic about one thing. Verstappen is Red Bull’s title hope.
Perez is good, but if one thing’s clear about this season it’s how Leclerc and Verstappen
are in another league compared to everyone else. Race after race they’ve just disappeared
up the road. So if Red Bull want to maximise results, they’re gonna get behind Verstappen.
The second thing to remember is Verstappen has suffered two
reliability-based DNFs this season already. So Red Bull need to get him as many points
back as possible to get on terms with Leclerc, especially when Charles suffers a DNF of his own.
Now having said all that, Pérez had already moved over for Verstappen once before. He had two cracks
at overtaking Russell and then was told to let Max have a go. Max promptly had about 200 attempts
at an overtake and didn’t manage it. Also, Perez didn’t careen off into the gravel. Max did.
So Perez did basically get the lead of the race by driving well and working
the strategy. So he earned the right to be there. Max was on much faster tyres at the
end of the race so probably would have breezed past with ease, being two seconds a lap faster
so, I don’t know, maybe just let Max take the win for himself if it was really that
easy. Let Checo know that Max is on super quick tyres and not to crash into him so you at least
let him think he doesn’t have to just give up wins whenever Max is nearby. Keep the morale up a bit.
Red Bull aren’t great at working their second driver well so let’s hope Perez doesn’t become
bitter and disillusioned like Mark Webber. Cause he could still get a lot out of this
seat if he plays the game right. He really is not bad for a number two driver. And that’s one card
Red Bull haven’t always had in their hand. And now we go to Monaco. And while these
2022 cars have been a revelation this year, this track is the one place where I think they will be
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