Phew,
that Singapore Grand Prix was a bit of a slog,
wasn’t it? A bit of a slow burn, it was delayed by an hour and the fizzled
along gentle for a while before getting a little more bubble in the second half.
But I’m going to use the Singapore Grand Prix to springboard into a few points:
Let’s start at the very beginning with the heavy rain that dropped before the
race. It was clear quite early on that the rain was going to continue for long
enough to force a delay to the race start. Luckily, Race Control recognised this in
advance and delayed the start procedure. Under normal conditions, the race was due
to start at 8 pm local time and the race start procedure is as follows:
40 minutes prior to the scheduled start (so 7:20 in this case), the pit lane opens up and cars
can leave the garage to do a reconnaissance lap. They can do several reconnaissance laps
if they want to feel out the conditions of the track (as often happens if the track has changed
due to weather or temperature), but they have to keep going through the pitlane each time.
But eventually, the car has to make its way to the grid.
With 30 minutes to go, the pit lane is closed (after a two minute warning). If
your car hasn’t left the pits by this point, it’s a pit lane start for you.
With ten minutes to go the five starting lights act as a countdown,
indicating ten, five, 3 and 1 minute and then fifteen seconds until the warm up lap.
At the ten minute mark, only drivers, officials and team staff can stay on the grid
At the five minute signal, the cars must have their tyres fitted,
the tyre blankets must be turned off and team personnel must start leaving the grid.
At the three minute mark, only sixteen team members per car can remain.
At the one minute mark, the engine must have been started.
At the fifteen second mark, all team members must have left the grid and
be standing outside track limits. Then at the scheduled start time,
the formation lap begins. All very simple and clear.
Now, as you might recall from Monaco, the race must be completed within three
hours of the scheduled start time, no matter how many stoppages. In Monaco,
that clock begun at the actual scheduled start time of 3pm local and started ticking,
despite the race not having started. In Singapore however, because Race
Control got out ahead of the situation, the scheduled start time was moved from
8pm to 9:05 and that would be the new start time for the 3 hour limit.
This was one of the big benefits of what Race Control did. At about 8pm local time, they shifted
everything forward 65 minutes, so the pitlane would open at 8:25 and close at 8:35 instead.
Now, a lot of people argued this ended up being an overly long delay, to the point where the track
was a LOT dryer by the time the race started, to the point where it was easily a standing start
on intermediates, with no question of a Safety Car start, despite the earlier deluge of rain.
There was the argument that they should have got all the cars to the grid early and have them ready
to go with ten, fifteen minutes notice as soon as the conditions were good enough. And I sympathise
with that and see a lot of that merit. Speeding up the procedures can be really useful, especially
to broadcasters, locals, attendees and… well anyone who might have plans following the race.
However, giving that long run up, allowed the scheduled start time to be delayed,
gave F1 a proper starting procedure and meant once we got racing, everyone knew what was going on
with regards to the race clock and the running. We got a normal race. And a standing start too,
which is always preferable to a safety car start. So actually, there’s a lot to be happy about,
with how it was operated, even if we had to wait around an extra hour.
I would say, it would be worth added a secondary optional race start procedure in case of delay
that speeds up the whole process but there might be some grumble from teams and promoters
who need all that time to get everything done. There was also a lot of consternation over why
the stewards decided to wait until after the race to decide whether or not to penalise Perez for
his Safety Car incident. And honesty, even after reading the stewards decision, it seems odd to me.
I know stewards have to try and maintain a neutrality in how they deal with decision
and not allow whether an incident affects a race win or not to be a part of their
decision making process or not. But… knowing who’s won the race really should be something
that happens at the chequered flag, not two and a half hours later. If it can be helped.
The rule Perez broke was 55.7 of the Sporting Regulations that mandates that
each car in the Safety Car queue must be spaced no more than ten car lengths apart,
including the leader to the Safety Car. Perez exceeded this three times during the race,
once on lap 10 (for which he got a reprimand), and then twice on lap 36. During the first time
he was given a warning, and then it happened again, for which he got a five second penalty.
Despite Red Bull saying he was finding it tricky to keep up with the Safety Car in the wetter
parts of the track, the stewards didn’t accept this. And therefore… it kind of ends up being a
bit of of a cut and dry case. He was warned, he did it again, the rule is pretty unambiguous,
so they could have just given him a five second penalty during the race.
And Perez can mitigate this penalty by trying to pull out a gap and we all know at the end
of the race who won. Luckily, Perez did pull out this gap as a precaution so we
didn’t have a late change of winner, but still. It’s not great as a sport. It’s too slow and we
need to tighten up these post race decisions unless there really is a lot of ambiguity.
A ten car length gap is pretty measurable, just like track limits are measurable. He did it three
times. Case closed, let’s get on with the race. So in this case, I’m in favour of better procedure.
This was another Singapore Grand Prix where we had to finish the race early due to hitting
the two hour time limit. Singapore often flirts with the two hour limit due to the slow average
lap speed and likely safety car periods. The wet conditions compounded this so we hit the limit,
but we did actually manage 59 out of 61 laps, only missing two laps. So it wasn’t that bad.
The two hour race time limit starts at the actual time the race proper starts. Not the formation
lap, but the “lights out and away we go” moment. There was some talk during practice about this
race looking likely to breach the two hour limit even in the dry, but I’m not really sure
where those calculations came from. Times in Free Practice 1, which was
dry but with the new style cars, were about three to five seconds off the pace of the 2019 times,
which I think is what started the concern, but a bit of maths should ease that concern.
So, long runs on Friday practice were showing times of around 1:49
on Mediums. That’s 109 seconds a lap. So let’s imagine drivers do 1:49s on average
for every lap of the race on a dry Sunday. That’s 109 times 61, which is 6649 seconds.
Well what is 6649 seconds? It’s 111 minutes, or 1 hour 51 minutes.
We still have a nine minute margin there. And actually just on 61 laps alone, without
pit stops or safety cars, you need to rise up to an average of 119 seconds a lap or 1:59 to breach
the two hour time limit. So it seems pretty out of reach, all being normal - after all,
the drivers were doing 1:48s at best at the end of the actual race on a greasy track,
though they were low fuelled by that point. OK but. Pitstops. One stop is expected around
here, so that adds about 30 seconds to your time. So actually you’re trying to beat 1 hour,
59 minutes and 30 seconds on lap time alone. But then you remember Safety Cars. A common
feature around here. Safety Car laps are about two and a half minutes,
so let’s say 150 seconds, which is about 40 seconds longer than a normal lap.
So every lap behind a Safety Car adds 40 seconds. Let’s say we lose nine laps total behind a Safety
Car in the race. That’s 6 minutes time lost, so with Safety Car laps and one full pitstop you
lose six and a half minutes so you’re trying to beat 1 hour 53 minutes and 30 seconds,
which you can still do if you average 1 minute 52 seconds a lap on your normal laps, bearing in mind
the two hour limit will fall during your last lap. So actually it’s still quite hard to breach the
two hour mark here without Safety Cars and a bit of mayhem, despite these cars
being slower on street tracks like this. This is a rough estimate, but still. We
had a race that was half run in the wet, 6 laps of Virtual Safety Car and 6 laps of Safety Car
and still only lost two laps. Unfounded fears. Now we had a very interesting race in terms of
strategy, managing the pace on inters on a track that was drying in some places better than others.
Like in qualifying, sectors 1 and 2 dried out a lot quicker than sector 3 - the end part of the
lap remaining the sticking point for actually making dry tyres work, as Russell found out.
It’s actually a very slow track to dry in general. While the street drainage is great for getting
rid of most of the standing water, puddles aside, the high humidity and lack of sun means the track
stays damp and greasy for a very long time. Thus we ran for 33 laps, over half distance,
before the big shift to dry tyres, despite no actual rain falling during the race.
But then there was George Russell. Having started from the pitlane,
struggling for pace and suffering from the DRS being deactivated, Russell was basically stuck
in the middle of nowhere, so the team decided to try sticking him on the dry tyres on lap 21
as the track really did seem pretty dry in many place by that point. Maybe they could be heroes
and jump their competitors if they found pace. But no, Russell was struggling even harder than
before and basically stayed out through sheer spite, despite his laps times.
Here you can see he’s a good five seconds slower than the likes of Norris,
Stroll and Gasly and was actually saved a little more embarrassment by the fact that a
lot of the next few laps were run under Virtual Safety Cars for Albon and Ocon’s retirements.
But you can see the crossover point, clear as day as Russell finds the temperature,
the grip and the dryness to make the medium tyres work, reaching parity with the intermediates
on lap 31 and being faster from then on. In a way, it was a shame that Russell stuck with
the dry tyres because everyone could instantly spot the moment to change from inters to dries.
There’s often a big risk to being the first to jump - you could gain loads… or you could lose a
lot, as Russell did. But this time, Russell made it easy for everyone. And yet… there was still
some disagreement over when to jump for dries. Gasly, like Bottas, Magnussen and Tsunoda jumped
for dries on lap 33, which was probably a little early as the dries still needed a warm up period.
Most of the grid came in on lap 34 or 35, which worked out well for them,
but Tsunoda driving hell for leather on cold mediums on a greasy track brought out a lap 36
Safety Car which was perfect for McLaren who were still holding onto their inters for some reason.
I think that Safety Car saved McLaren as they were a little late to switching to dries and might
easily have lost out to those already on dries. And quickly on Perez. A great race from him,
Safety Rules notwithstanding, but I think it was all won in the start. He beat Leclerc
off the line but Leclerc had the same pace as Perez and could have easily covered the
lead had positions been reversed. Let’s look at a laptimes chart,
but normalised to Perez. So Perez’s laptimes are this horizontal line running through the middle,
and Leclerc’s laptimes are displayed as a percentage of Perez’s time, lap on lap.
So when Leclerc is above Perez, he’s slower, when he’s below, he’s quicker.
And generally speaking, he’s basically driving to Perez’s pace the whole race,
apart from the end when Perez pulls out the 7 second gap to cover his penalty.
Sainz, on the other hand was clearly the slowest of the three, never really being
able to match their laptimes. A disappointing and somewhat poor showing from Sainz who just
wasn’t able to find the speed to get stuck in with the fight at the front.
And that was the Singapore Grand Prix. A long one for sure, and not the most exciting from start to
finish, but still gave us plenty to think about. And next we’ll be back at Suzuka for a hell
of a high speed challenge. Tricky to overtake but hopefully fun to watch.