I think we’ve come to expect a bit of mayhem and surprise from our trips to Baku, but this
weekend’s rather muted grand prix made the chaotic, teeth-clenching races feel like a
baijan era.
A baijan era.
Because, like, by- never mind.
Despite the race never truly coming alive in the ways we’d hoped, it doesn’t mean
we weren’t without plenty to discuss.
And early Virtual Safety Car split the Ferrari/Red Bull strategy.
What COULD this have looked like?
We’ll never truly know because Leclerc retired.
In fact it was a double retirement for Ferrari.
So is that game over for their championship hopes?
We’ll also look at some nonsense that happened in qualifying and some potential rule changes
afoot to smoothen things out.
And of course we’ll once again look at the bouncy bouncy porpoising problem that left
a few drivers more than a bit sore.
But let’s start by looking at some race strategy, because it seems we were all cruelly
robbed of at least an attempt of an intriguing head-to-head between Leclerc and the Red Bulls
running on different strategies Carlos Sainz broke down with what seemed like
a brake by wire failure on lap 9, triggering a virtual safety car across laps 9 and 10.
Quite a few teams used this as an opportunity to take a cheap pit stop.
Stopping under the VSC costs about 11-12 seconds, compared to stopping under normal race conditions,
which costs around 20 seconds.
So you can save a lot of time by reacting to a safety car and coming into the pits out
of your scheduled plan.
There was a risk in this though.
For those starting on the mediums, Pirelli calculated the fastest strategy was to go
all the way to lap 18-23 before switching to hards for the rest of the race.
A slower, alternative strategy was to stop early, around laps 10-15, but this was a two
stop plan with a cheeky switch to softs at the end of the race.
The Red Bulls didn’t come into the pits under the VSC, something Perez called an error
of communication as he believed they should have stopped, but perhaps Red Bull played
it right, sticking to the one stop and playing to the intended tyre life.
So from this Virtual Safety Car period, the race could have played out in two ways, had
Leclerc been able to go the distance.
Let’s assume, Red Bull stick to their first pitstop window with Perez coming in on lap
16 and Verstappen on lap 18, with Max leading the bulls.
At this point, Leclerc was about 13 seconds ahead of Verstappen.
He could have then tried to go to the end, extending the hard tyres beyond their planned
strategy or, pushed them a bit harder and done a second stop for softs or mediums at
the end.
It seems most likely he would have at least attempted the one stop, having gained track
position by pitting under the VSC.
Would this have been possible?
Well, probably yes.
The hards were not only very fast and consistent, but their degradation was extremely low around
Baku.
Gasly stopped at the same time as Leclerc and took his set of hards the 42 lap stretch
to the end of the race at a fairly consistent pace without noticeable drop off.
In theory, Leclerc could have managed his hards to the end without compromising much
on pace.
But would he have kept that lead?
Well… that involves a bit of guesswork and extrapolation, but if we look at the laps
he actually did do against the Red Bulls, we can probably guess.
The three at the front were well matched before the VSC.
When the race resumed, with Leclerc on new hards and the bulls on used mediums, it was
clear the fresh hards were faster.
I mean, the hard tyre was very much the rubber to be on this race.
It was just better all round.
So through the first laps of this stint he’d not only saved a bunch of time with a safety
car pit stop, he was reeling the Red Bulls in quickly, around a second a lap.
But once the Red Bulls stopped, it was clear they were even faster on the hard tyres than
Leclerc was.
We see they all get one or two GREAT laps on fresh rubber, then settle into their pace
and if we extrapolate a little we see Verstappen was running the hards probably about half
a second faster than Leclerc was able to.
And at this point, Leclerc had retired so Verstappen wasn’t even fighting anyone,
really.
He probably could have gone faster if Leclerc was still ahead of him on track.
So, in reality, Verstappen probably would have passed Leclerc.
His pace was incredible and the DRS was powerful.
No one really matched Verstappen on race day.
Red Bull knew this, hence their “no fighting” message to Perez.
I didn’t read this particularly as suppressive team orders, rather a ‘let’s not cause
problems for ourselves while it’s clear Max has the pace’.
And so it bore out, with Checo really having no answer for the laptimes Verstappen was
able to put in.
For all the talk of Perez being in this championship fight, he really needs to find something extra
to match his team mate if he wants to stick his nose in.
Red Bull also did have to be wary of losing too much time to Leclerc at this point, who
was in the net lead.
Yes, Red Bull were faster and were running a more optimum strategy as discussed BUT around
these tricky streets, there was always the chance of a second safety car down the line
that would hand Leclerc a free second pitstop and put him right back in a winning position.
It pays to be paranoid in F1.
So what do we make of Ferrari then?
A double retirement with different failures on the factory team with two further failures
from customers in the cars of Magnussen and Zhou?
Well Ferrari did rebuild and redesign their power train for 2022 and it’s working really
well in terms of pace.
But turning out a brand new engine brings with it the possibility of gremlins and errors
that you’ll only find from running the things.
I mean, it happened a bit with Red Bull, too, even without a full redesign, but Ferrari
need to get on top of this, and fast.
I guess you could say now things have evened up between the two teams in terms of bad luck
and reliability.
And with the dust cleared, Red Bull are 80 points clear in the constructors’ standings
and have a one-two in the drivers’ with Max 34 points ahead of Charles.
A full reverse swing.
We are only a third of the way through the season, so plenty could happen between now
and the end, but it really has felt like Red Bull has the stronger package and probably
the stronger driver this year and all the big gains Ferrari made capitalising on Red
Bull’s issues has now washed out.
But the teams will be busy at the factory looking for gains, so it’s not over yet.
They will of course be stymied by the budget cap so the days of bringing big upgrades regularly
throughout the season are gone.
But clever, tactical improvements could swing things back to Ferrari.
I hope so.
I do much prefer a long fight than a walkover.
We’ve had enough of that recently.
Meanwhile on the Saturday, we had a couple of interesting goings-on.
The more noticeable incident was Alonso supposedly holding up an entire train of cars in the
mad rush at the end of Q1 before outbraking himself down an escape road and causing yellow
flags, ruining multiple drivers’ attempts at a final quick lap.
Did he do it on purpose?
I think there may easily have been some gamesmanship with backing people up behind him but losing
control later on the lap may have been accidental.
But Albon, the most immediate casualty from Alonso’s silly-buggery brought back the
idea of deleting lap times from anyone that causes a yellow or red flag in qualifying
as it’s far too easy for people through to the next round to game the system and lock
down their result by forcing competitors to slow down for flags.
I agree we probably need to prevent against people gaming this.
There have been a few dodgy, suspicious incidents on track that have raised a few eyebrows and
ruined other people’s laps.
My only concern with deleting lap times is penalising people who genuinely make an error
and suffer doubly for it.
But, to be honest, maybe that’s the risk you take from pushing.
Push too hard and maybe you’ll lose your banked lap by wrecking the session for other
people.
It’s worth thinking about, and exists in IndyCar.
Lesser noticed in qualifying was the stewards looking into the Haas cars inserting themselves
into the pitlane queue for the qualifying restart.
So what happened was, when the red flag came out towards the end of Q1, all the cars came
back into the pits.
Then, anticipating the restart, all the cars queued from the pit lane exit down the fast
lane.
Haas with its garage positions down the far end, was already blocked by the queue of cars
so basically inserted themselves as best they could into the train when the session restarted.
Article 34.8 of the sporting regulations states that cars must leave the pitlane in the order
they joined the queue.
But the problem with Haas (and other teams at the far end) is that they couldn’t really
join the queue in order as it was already forming right across their garage, and it
was impossible to work out at which point they pulled out of their garage.
So the only way to ‘legally join’ would be to wait for the whole queue to pass and
join last, which is a huge disadvantage born out of their garage position only.
So the stewards decided not to penalise Haas as they tried their best to join fairly but
were hamstrung by circumstance.
The stewards also recommend examining the rule as it will continue to cause problems
like this.
So there we are, another little quirk of the rule book showing itself.
And finally let’s talk about the issue that left Lewis Hamilton with a Well Done Backu.
The heavy porpoising, combined with long fast sections and a bumpy street surface meant
those cars that were troubled by porpoising were feeling it hard.
And Lewis Hamilton seemed the worst affected by it.
There are potentially some real issues that can start arising from all this, beyond the
drivers experiencing pain in their neck, their back and… other places.
Yvanka Elena put together a useful thread on some of the long term damage that can come
out of spinal damage, even from light injury.
It’s worth reading to understand some of the consequences, but even the pain itself
can cause problems.
It’s all well and good telling the drivers to suck it up, but if the race is causing
them so much pain that they are slow extracting themselves from the car, as Hamilton was,
that causes issues in cases of fire or other dangerous situations after an incident.
So something probably needs to be done, and the drivers are closing on consensus on this,
proposing mandating something like a minimum ride height or changes to suspension for the
future.
Russell in particular thought it strange that, with such high technology available that they
couldn’t allow tech that could make this better, like some form of active suspension.
And there are two main positions on this.
That being either, it should be up to the teams to take the initiative to stop the problem,
or it should be on the FIA to force a solution upon the teams to stop it.
The first camp points out that some teams, like Red Bull, have made a car that works
well without obliterating their drivers’ spines.
So it’s up to other teams to figure that out for themselves and in the meantime they
can just lift the ride height up if they really are concerned about their drivers.
And you can understand that to an extent.
Toto seemed very upset, complaining before the race about how hard the car was on Lewis
in particular, and how he was unsure if Hamilton would be able to get all the way to the end.
And you could easily say “well, if you’re that worried about him, just raise the car
higher and ease the pain.
You’ll lose laptime, but you’ll reduce the injury on your human driver”.
And Hamilton is one of the older drivers, about the same age as me.
And he’ll feel it strain on his body harder and earlier, while taking longer to recover
than the drivers still in their early twenties.
That’s just bodies.
If you’re still young, I say as a 38 year old - enjoy your bodies!
They start feeling their age earlier than you think!
Christian Horner says that Mercedes drivers are being told to ham it up to force a technical
change.
He says that’s absolutely what he would do.
So, to be honest I think that tells us more about Christian Horner than Mercedes.
But, you know, you’d be right if you say this is a choice that teams like Mercedes
actively make.
They are chasing performance at the expense of driver comfort, at the expense of risking
hurt and injury.
Lando Norris suggested that McLaren has actually sacrificed some ride height to find balance
between performance and porpoising, though dialling out the porpoising may have all been
part of chasing performance than comfort anyway.
The truth is, teams will push the envelope in the direction of performance every time.
And almost every time, the FIA will step in to stop them if they feel things are going
beyond the bounds of safety, expense, and so on.
The FIA has a mandate to save teams from themselves.
So I expect some kind of technical directive or regulation change to come at some point.
Maybe for next year, maybe mid season.
Is this fair on the teams that got it right?
Maybe not.
But that hasn’t stopped the FIA before, who’ve indirectly penalised teams who absolutely
nailed something, only to have it banned or modified.
So we’ll see what happens.
Canada is coming up and everyone is expecting more of the same.
And though Lewis says he’s be fit and racing and has had acupuncture (which doesn’t work
and is a load of woo nonsense, go to a proper physio, dear viewer I beg you) Mercedes are
making sure they have a reserve driver on standby, just in case.
Maybe this is exaggeration and egging it on to a small extent, but I definitely don’t
want to see anyone permanently hurt by any of this.
This isn’t the NFL.
And while F1 teams struggle to create both tightly-packaged, form fitting design AND
user comfort, today’s sponsor Bellroy have no such issues.
And you can get 10% off their site with the link in the description
Bellroy are in the business of efficient, modern design for their collection of carryables.
They know our habits are changing as we move around with all manner of portable tech.
So they have a whole range of pocket accessories, bags and work kit that is functional, innovative
and streamlined.
So they’re not taking up bulky space, not weighing you down and are quick and smooth
to use so you’re not fiddling and faffing awkwardly.
Like this Apex Slim Sleeve.
It’s lovely and thin, well crafted, magnetically snaps closed but pops open with a one-handed
pinch.
Holds my cards and notes.
It’s all so easy.
So if you’re on your commute, out to lunch or even off travelling on an adventure, like
I will be this week when I head off to Montreal, you know you and your kit are sorted from
your phone to your keys to your money to your…
well, your everything.
And their supply chain and manufacture is sustainably and ethically managed.
So, head on over to Bellroy with my special link in the description and get ten per cent
off whatever you fancy!