F1 2022 Race Weekend Changes, Explained!

but at the moment we're still adapting to those changes and working out how to organize the workflow around the weekend [Music] [Applause] the 2022 race schedule is a lot more compressed than previous seasons this has been done to help the crews get through the long 23 race season now we have curfews on a wednesday which has never happened before and the curfew means you cannot be at the track any longer than 11 to 12 hours depending on the timetable thursday we used to be able to start whenever we wanted but now there is a start and an end time to that that gives you an 11 hour day which for a day at the circuit that's actually quite a short day and also on a thursday you're not allowed to fire up their power unit until 4 p.m in in europe and again you're going to be finishing at 8 o'clock on a normal thursday so that preparation time the time to build the cars has been much constrained what does that mean for the teams well it's a lot harder to bring bits in late you've really got to know what you're going to be building into those cars and have them there from wednesday because that's the only way that you can get the cars ready for thursday night and ready to run for friday that same theme continues into the friday and the saturday on the friday night we've got again less time to work on the cars so the mechanics have only got three hours after running and then the covers need to be on the engineers have an extra couple of hours now the reason that was done in the regulations was to avoid the temptation to go and set up an office in a hotel room where you'd then be talking about the run plan or any of the changes you might make but again that's a lot less than we've had before if the car's not done on friday night well you're going to be working on it on saturday morning and worst case it wouldn't be ready for that fp3 session and then after qualifying another shrinking of the time available where the mechanics by the time they get the cars back from the fia will only have a matter of half an hour or so before the covers are on so quite quite a challenge it does give us more free time in the weekend you're not working such long hours everyone can get a bit more sleep but at the moment we're still adapting to those changes and working out how to organize the workflow around the weekend it's compressed the work into a smaller period and start of the year is quite tricky mainly because you're very short on parts i can see it being a problem and i think maybe we'll need to review as as a championship over the next two or three races to see if we've done the right thing and then we've also got to make sure there's time to do things like pit stop practice because that's one of the first things that can drop off when the car's constantly in pieces and being being worked on you obviously need a complete car to be able to do that [Applause] so there's a lot of tuning to be done but this is really quite a normal loop for us with any process we're looking at how we can make it slicker faster better optimized more efficient and we'll be doing that with the whole race weekend schedule as much as we do with the other areas for 2022 we have to dedicate two practice ones one for each driver to two rookies which i believe is is a great idea and i think it's going to be extended in future years to give these guys opportunity to drive the current race cars against genuine opposition rather than just a young driver test where teams are generally testing car parts the reason we had three sprint races in 2021 was simply test events to look at whether these work and should they be expanded in in the sport of the future the big challenge for the teams and the drivers with the the sprint format though is you've only got one hour to get the car sorted for the qualifying session for the sprint race and for the main race on sunday and that's difficult now if you consider the cars and the tyres that we had last year we understood them pretty well we could do work in the simulator we could uh come up with a setup and we'd be pretty confident we could put it on track and it would work now we're on very much a learning curve with the new cars and the tyres so that immolar race is going to be difficult if you hit the ground running you're probably in for a good weekend if you put the car on track and it's a difficult one to deal with it might be quite painful so there's a lot of focus there on making sure you can get that start set up in the right place so for 2022 that experiment continues there are still three events so we have immolar austria and interlagos in brazil again but there are some enhancements so pole position now is awarded for the fastest driver in qualifying not in the sprint race itself so it doesn't matter what happens on saturday if you were the fastest driver around the lap you get that pole position and that will remain in the record box and the other enhancement was that the points had been broadened it was first to third in last year's format now there are points from first to eight so the winner will get eight points and the eighth place finisher gets one point so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out again the results of those races will get reviewed and how exciting it is for the fans and no doubt there might be some more changes going forward the sprint races in 2021 it was quite unique for the guys because it seems an awful lot of standing around because the curfews came in quite early the car spec was generally set and this year with the extra restrictions on curfews and time on the cars it's going to be quite interesting to make sure that you arrive prepared with a good good race car because on day one it counts because you have to qualify this year is very very simple you can start the race on whatever tire you want what you probably need to do is just remind people what that rule was last year and that was a bit more complicated cars in the top 10 had to start the race on the tire that they did their qualifying time in q2 that second qualifying session if you decided that you didn't want to start the race on the soft you wanted to be on a medium that medium had to put you into the top ten and what that meant was there was a bit of a mismatch between the cars at the back of the top 10 and then the cars from 11th backwards were arguably at a slight advantage certainly we had some races where starting 11th on a medium would have definitely been a better position than starting um tents on a used a used soft tire so that's been addressed but as i said the rule now is is really very simple and what will that mean for the grid well you don't know what tires people are going to start on until the blankets are off so there's a bit more of an unknown and we can't do quite the same level of planning when we're looking at the strategy it'll also mean you get a bit more variety so you might have someone who's qualifying third or fourth on the grid who decides that you know they're not going to get into um first position off the start but their odds are better served if they actually run a harder tire and they go for longer and they're looking at a different strategy so i think over time we will see a bit more variation and it also does create a slightly fairer picture for all the teams up and down the grid on a friday morning we have to present both cars to the fia and fom for show and tell it's a transparent forum where the fans can actually see what the teams are going to be racing we show them how we're going to start for practice one and then after qualifying we have to present the cars again to show what differences how the cars evolved during the two days and what development parts have arrived on the car a lot of the fans of the sport are actually really interested in that engineering element to know where's the performance coming from what are the big developments is it going to change a team's fortune uh within a within a given weekend so i think that'll be quite interesting because it should be open to all the fans and the broadcasters so at least we can all see what has changed on different teams [Music]

Channel: Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team

Views: 193,407

Keywords: Formula One, Formula 1, F1, Formel 1, Grand Prix, GP, Race, Racing, Racetrack, Track, Circuit, Car, Mercedes-Benz, Mercedes, AMG, PETRONAS, Team, Silver Arrows, Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen, Red Bull, Ferrari, Charles Leclerc, McLaren, LH44, George Russell, George, Russell, GR63, 2022, F1 2022, W13, F1 W13, F1 Explained, F1 Explainer, Explained, Explainer, Tech, Technology, Engineering, Engineer, Mechanics, F1 Mechanic, F1 Engineer, Race Weekend, Schedule, Sprint Race, Qualifying, Tyre, Practice, Sprint

Id: P1CLTdsHQPM

Length: 8min 21sec (501 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 06 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Kicking-it-per-se]

Wow the changes to the sprint race points had completely passed me by. 8 points for winning that is huge and we saw how tactical the teams got just over the one extra point for fastest lap. Will be interesting!

[u/Mercedes-AMGF1]

Hi everyone! So, it’s not just the cars that have changed this year, there have also been quite a few modifications to the race weekends, too! After the first two races, Shov and Ron talk through what’s changed and the impact it has on the teams and drivers. Hope you enjoy the insight 😊

[u/Deadman2019]

I love these vids by Merc, one of the few things I look forward to each week!

[u/RobertGracie]

It definitely explains the complexity of the weekend and how its all structured with specific working times and working hours for the teams, I hope these informational videos always continue

[u/jadeelf254]

Thank you team! Love these videos as always. Will we get a Lewis and George bonding activity video any time soon? I'd love to see them cook something, draw, play a quiz or something, anything!