Under normal conditions, qualifying is often about timing.
Sure, ultimately, the fastest driver/package combination should result in the fastest lap,
but in order to make that happen, drivers need to be setting those laps at the best
possible time.
A dry track is not a static track.
Its grip levels change throughout the session with temperature and rubber laid down through
repeated use.
If the track starts fairly ‘green’ - that is, if there isn’t much useful grippy rubber
laid down on the racing lines, and all the dust and dirt is yet to be swept away - then
the continued setting of laps throughout a qualifying sessions will keep bringing the
grip levels up and the lap times down.
Let’s look at a hypothetical Q1 session.
It’s 18 minutes long, which we’ll plot along the bottom of the graph here.
Let’s use this orange area to represent grip levels so we can show that over the course
of the session grip levels will steadily increase as the track is cleared up and rubber laid
down.
So let’s use the vertical axis, here, to represent lap times.
The further up the chart we are, the slower the lap time - faster lap times (what we’re
aiming for) will appear towards the bottom of the chart.
It’ll all become clear.
So, we can make some predictions about how our dry tyres will perform over the session.
With grip rising all the time, the Ultrasoft tyres will start out giving us reasonable
lap times but will gradually be able to provide even faster lap times as the session goes
on, thanks to the increasing grip levels.
So this line we’re drawing is a rough prediction of whereabouts the lap times will be for the
Ultrasoft tyre over the course of the session.
So we might expect to be able to set a laptime of 1 minute 14.4 right at the beginning, we
could see that improve to a 1 minute 13.6 by the very end.
This is why you can often see teams positioning themselves to be the last car out at the end
of qualifying - to get that very last drop of potential performance from the track.
This, of course, has to be balanced against getting good track position and not stuck
among the traffic.
And, naturally you could use Softs of Mediums, but they are always going to be the slower
option and not useful unless you’re sure you can get through to the next session with
them.
Now, getting yourself on track at the right moment isn’t always perfectly simple.
Once you leave your garage, you’ve got to take your Out Lap - driving once around the
whole circuit before you even start your flying lap.
This out lap is slower than the fast lap, not just because you have to navigate the
pit exit, but because you’re warming up the car and tyres and getting everything prepped
and positioned for the fast lap.
You then take your fast lap to set your time, then come back into the pits by taking another
lap of the circuit at reduced speed.
You’re then dragged into the garage, refuelled, have your setup adjusted and sent out again.
This repeated process only leaves so many flying lap possibilities available through
the session - even fewer in Q2 and Q3 as the sessions are shorter in length
Sometimes you’ll see drivers take two flying laps back-to-back but this is often more to
do with the tyres sometimes needing an extra lap of preparation than giving drivers two
shots at a fastest time.
All the while, remember that this is not an exact science.
The out laps and in laps might be dramatically slower than expected if you have to get out
of the way of faster cars or if you end up having to slow down to avoid being stuck behind
a car for your flying lap.
OK, so that’s a standard dry qualifying.
That was really just to set up the pieces.
Let’s now look at Q1 at Hungary, which was decidedly less ordinary due to unpredictable
weather.
Q1 started out with a wet track but it wasn’t raining.
Let’s indicate the ‘wetness’ of the track with this blue area.
So, the track starts pretty wet but, without any rain to keep it damp - and with twenty
hot cars sweeping round and lifting the water, the circuit quickly starts to dry.
However, there are storms nearby and moving towards the circuit so the expectation is
that soon enough the rain will return and the track will get wetter again.
The circuit, at the start, was wet enough for Inters and lap times would continue to
improve on the Intermediate tyre as it dried up so the plan was to fuel the cars up and
have them run a series of fast laps one after the other in order to make sure they were
on track at the right time, when the track was at its very driest before the return of
the rain.
Sitting in the garage and waiting for it to seem at its driest is a no-no as it takes
such a long time to get the car on track and onto a hot-lap that you could easily miss
the window and get knocked out of qualifying, even in a top team.
One thing everyone seemed sure of - the rain was coming back, and soon!
So the drivers started setting lap times on Inters, hoping they could get a decent enough
time in the bank before the track got worse.
However, six minutes into the session, everyone started to get a little twitchy.
The track was drying pretty fast and the rain had not yet arrived.
See, the prediction was that the lap times for Inters would reach a fastest point at
the driest moment before the rain returned and brought the lap times back up again.
So you really wanted to be setting lap times on the Inters at around this point.
The lap times for the dry tyres is more dramatic.
Initial predictions for Ultras showed they’d never quite be as fast as Inters if the rain
returned quickly enough as the track would never properly get a dry line.
But the fast drying track meant there was a possibility that the track would dry for
long enough to give the Ultrasoft tyres the edge - even for a short period.
This adjusted model was enough to make some people question a gamble for dry tyres.
Vettel, while still out on Inters asked his team if they should switch but was told the
rain would return in two minutes and there would be no point coming in - there wasn’t
enough time.
Meanwhile, in the midfield, teams started strapping on Ultrasoft tyres, because why
not?
Sainz, Magnussen, Hulkenberg, Ocon, Sirotkin, Stroll, Alonso, Grosjean and Vandoorne all
did racing pitstops to switch tyres and what do you know?
The Ultras were much faster and it was suddenly looking like a disaster for Mercedes, Ferrari
and Red Bull, who’d decided to stay out and keep lapping on the Inters.
If the rain came back and the dry tyre window closed - this part here where the Ultrasoft
is faster than the Inters - then the top teams could have been squeezed out of Q1 with no
means to set faster times as they’d have to do an in lap, quick change and outlap before
the could respond with a lap time.
Whereas, the midfield teams had made their decisions much earlier and were ready for
the optimum time for the Ultrasoft window opening up.
As it turned out, the rain did not return in any meaningful way and all cars were able
to set fast, dry lap times.
Note though that Ricciardo was kept out on Soft tyres, not Ultras, as Red Bull seemed
to think they had the pace advantage to get through on the harder tyre and not waster
a set of Ultras.
They only just squeezed through on Ricciardo’s last lap.
Phew.
Q2 then.
This was a whole other scenario, which once again rewarded reading the forecast, playing
the odds and taking the advantage.
This one was more subtle.
The track was still dry-ish after Q1 with the rain still expected to arrive imminently.
The plan, then, was to get out on the dry tyres and squeeze in a lap or two before the
rain arrives, while the track was still dry.
Once the rain returned it would be impossible to improve your lap time so getting a dry
banker in early was crucial.
Had the rain held off for a few minutes, the Ultras would have been quicker for a long
enough window to get out and set a lap time before the dry tyres succumbed to the weather
and became markedly worse than the Inters.
So everyone came out on Ultrasoft tyres.
Except Vettel, who came straight out on Inters.
This seemed strange for about 30 seconds.
See, what actually happened was it started raining almost immediately - so suddenly that
the dry tyres were worse than the Inters before the end of the Out Laps.
This means Vettel, already on Inters, was able to take his flying lap straight after
his outlap and set a time while the track was at its driest.
Meanwhile, everyone else had to return to the pits after their out lap, quickly change
tyres, take another out lap and only then could they take their flying lap.
All the while, the track was getting wetter and wetter, meaning Vettel’s time was well
out of reach and he was home and dry.
No pun intended.
As you can see, the lap times being set just got steadily worse over time.
Ricciardo in particular struggled to set a good time early on and was left desperately
trying to get into the top ten on an increasinly wet track.
In fact, things got so bad for Ricciardo that he still hadn’t got out of Q2 by the wet
tyre crossover point - the moment it got so wet that Wet tyres were faster than Inters.
He tried a lap on the Wets, but it was not to be and he was eliminated from Q2 - all
because he did not set a competitive lap at the right time of the session.
So, unpredictable weather in qualifying requires patience, a keen eye on the forecasts and
the ability to take the right risks at the right time.
Getting out onto the circuit at exactly the right time is not something you can do nimbly,
it takes a long time to start a hot lap so you need to be making forecasts at least three
or four minutes ahead of when you want your driver to set their time.
Much like clay pigeon shooting, you’re aiming for where you expect the track to be, not
where the track is now.
And that’s tricky.
Thanks for watching - here’s the quickie post-video Q&A as promised:
First a follow up on the low-profile tyres video: A couple of people mentioned that large
wheels would mean larger brakes.
And yes, I did neglect to go into that in the video, partly for reasons of length.
But the truth is, the brake size has not yet been finalised.
The brakes could be as large as the wheel hubs, or the FIA could choose to keep the
brakes small, which will mean there will be interesting choices to be made in the area
around the brakes.
Stay tuned.
Servy also asked how the softest compounds would stil work on low profile tyres.
Well firstly, the tyre tread thickness won’t necessarily change, just the height of the
tyre.
But also, the rubber compounds are very likely to change through the whole range to meet
the new demands.
Alexander asks, ‘Do you want podium interviews back?’
Yes, actually.
I don’t like the parc fermé interviews at all and I think it’s well worth giving
the drivers a breather before they gather themselves for interviews.
So far the interviews have been pretty rubbish cause the drivers are amped up, looking to
hug their team, gather themselves, wanting a drink, etc.
Sometimes, as we saw with Lewis, they need a few minutes just to calm down a bit.
And finally, I guess I brought this on myself.
People asked about my cat - he’s called Toby (seen here sitting on my video notes)
and he’s named after this guy right here.
Thanks for the questions guys, see you … soon.
F1 Bingo coming soon.