The Italian Grand Prix weekend saw a lot of… interesting happenings but I’m going to
focus on a couple of things that became pretty important through Friday and Saturday
This video will focus on the drivers constantly trying to go beyond the white line on the
outside of Parabolica and the second video in a couple of days will look at the mess
that came out of everyone trying to get a tow down the straights.
Monza is the last real high-speed power circuit on the F1 calendar since the old Hockenheimring
was chopped into its current format. While there are definitely fast tracks still
on the calendar, Monza is dominated by long straights, broken only by a series of chicanes
and a few right handers that seem only to exist to make sure the track gets back to
where it started. It’s actually kind of similar in character
to La Sarthe in that regard - the circuit that runs the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Imagine
F1 on that monster of a track. The FIA were extremely tight on keeping cars
from going wide at Parabolica through F1, F2 and F3, dishing out instant and brutal
punishments for those who transgressed. Why was that?
A key part of maximising your speed down the long straights is to maximise your exit out
of the previous corner. This means you want to get the car straightened
up and the traction down as early as possible so you can reach maximum speed as quickly
as possible. Let’s imagine an acceleration curve for
a Formula 1 car. Now this graph is just completely made up
as an example but that doesn’t really matter. A car’s speed into Parabolica is about 180
km/h and the top speed on an F1 car is about 340 km/h, let’s say. As the car accelerates
out of Parabolica and onto the pit straight, you’ll want your car to get up to that maximum
340 km/h as quickly as possible so it’s travelling at maximum speed for the longest
possible distance. Doing that means you cover the distance of the straight in the shortest
time. So, if we have time going along the bottom
of our chart and speed going up the side here, we can imagine the typical acceleration curve
of an F1 car looking something like this, maybe.
So it gains speed quickly out of the corner, then eventually reaches maximum speed which
it continues at until the braking point. But if we can accelerate even faster out of
the corner the curve will look like this: speed will be gained even quicker and we reach
maximum speed in, say, 8 seconds instead of 10. So we reach the braking point sooner.
Conversely, if you get some wheelspin or something as you start to accelerate and the car bogs
down, the curve will be shallower and take longer to get to maximum speed and so you’ll
reach the braking point later. All fairly simple right? So why is it hugely
beneficial for drivers to go wide at Parabolica and why is it so beneficial that the FIA were
deleting both their current and following laptime from the timing boards should they
leave the track. The obvious way to cut the track is on the
inside - you literally shorten the circuit, flatten out the turning circle a little and
lose less speed, in theory. But going wide through a corner like Parabolica
is all about setting yourself up for the long straight ahead of you.
Consider two lines through Parabolica. The first, a classic racing line, opening the
corner up by coming in wide, glancing the apex and allowing the car to drift wide to
the outside of the track. This is a sensible line and probably what you would do if the
next turn was a couple of hundred metres up the road.
But with a long high speed straight ahead, consider this approach. What if you brush
the apex early, bring the car out wide and get the car close to straightened out very
early on so the car has maximum traction and can start accelerating properly sooner. This,
coupled with the natural way the track opens out on exit means you get to hit higher speeds
sooner and power down the straight in a shorter time.
Consider then going further: bringing the car out even wider - beyond the bounds of
the track and thus finding a sweet spot where you can get the car on the power even earlier
and accelerating even harder down the straight. That’s the benefit of taking liberties with
the track limits of Parabolica. Of course, not only does this benefit you
on your current lap but the pit straight is half ‘this lap’ and half ‘the next lap’
so grabbing this extra bit of track will shave tenths off two laps, which is why the FIA
were deleting pairs of laps for such infringements. Seems harsh at first but makes sense.
As well as threatening deletion of times, the FIA also attempted to put down a physical
deterrent - the sausage kerb. These are some of the harshest kerbs in F1 as they’ve got
the steepest ramp. Hitting these kerbs can break your car, coax them into a spin or even
- as we saw on Friday - launch the whole car into the air.
To be honest, putting these ridiculous kerbs on the outside of a 200 km/h corner was - let’s
say, carefully - a very risky move. And the worst possible outcome occurred with Alex
Peroni jumping into the air and landing on a barrier, destroying the fencing and nearly
bringing it down on a gang of marshalls. Dangerous indeed. So those kerbs were completely
removed and not returned to the track. But it wasn’t that long ago that the outside
of Parabolica was one big gravel trap with the risk for daring with the limits to bog
down in the tractionless stone pits. Now in the interests of safety, and Monza
making itself available to serve a variety of sports, the runoff is now completely tarmacked
off, so drivers feel less worried about stepping outside of the boundaries. That’s why the
FIA have to closely, visually monitor each car’s path so intensely and penalise them
for every infringement. Assuming the tarmac is here to stay, what
could be done better than this slightly odd system of just slapping penalties on anyone
who steps out of line? And I say slightly odd because other series do it all the time
as a matter of course. The WEC fires out track limit penalties like Birdo fires out eggs.
With a vengeance. Well, they could try what Silverstone does
for some of its corners and add a gravel or grass strip to the outside of the corner so
that straying wide penalises you but if you completely lose it you still have tarmac to
catch your brakes and save you from heavy impact or flipping upside down. This is becoming
a nice compromise and saves the stewards having to dedicate so much time to watching every
single car with an eagle eye. Here’s a crazy idea - could they lay down
some kind of tacky colour surface that shows itself on the tyres? That way if a car goes
all-four-wheels off course, we’ll catch them red handed. Or red wheeled, I guess.
This is probably the stupidest idea but I think it will be the most entertaining.
We’re a high tech sport here in Formula 1 - so why not literally have sensors in the
track and cars that immediately detect if the cars go too far wide. You can then either
give them a track limit penalty immediately or - get this - drop the car to low power
mode for a few seconds so they briefly lose speed and resign their laps on track instead
of having their times deleted. The benefit of this is that is works in the race as well
as timed sessions. The downside is that it might not be the safest
idea to have cars suddenly slowing down through a very fast corner. That’s how you get hit
up the rear. This would definitely need testing and maybe some kind of disco lights on the
back of the car as a warning. At the moment I’m pretty in favour of this
low grip grass or gravel apron around the outside of tempting corners like this. It
can deal out punishment without being too dangerous and required the least intervention
from the stewards. And we all prefer it when stewards don’t
have to intervene, let’s be honest.
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Right - stay tuned this week. The next video will land in a couple of days and cover cars
trying to get the tow.