The art of overtaking in F1 - How Ricciardo beat them all in China

in china on sunday it looked like it was going to be a very dull procession with very limited overtaking opportunities then a safety car at the halfway point mixed up the tire strategies and daniel ricardo showed everyone how it was done making up five places to win the race his teammates showed an unfortunate comparison botching two overtakes and ultimately getting penalized for running into sebastian vettel so how do you overtake what techniques are the drivers using to make up positions well first of all let's be clear overtaking at the moment is hard and this video isn't going to address the current problem cars have both following and getting past one another i should also make it clear that ricardo had a distinct car advantage on sunday by being on fresher and softer tyres than his rivals but he still had to make some expert level moves to get all the way to the top and here's how it's done first you have to set up the move overtakes are rarely made in the spur of the moment even the ones that seem opportunistic while spontaneous moves are made most overtakes are set up corners in advance and planned may be lapsed in advance watch your foe and find their weakness are they breaking earlier than you into term one are they struggling to get the power down out of turn eight where does their power unit derate are their tyres holding up okay if it's mixed conditions are they having to manage the temperatures more than you from gathering information on your rival you can work out where it's best to overtake and how now obviously most overtakes occur after or through a drs zone or even down another long straight but not all overtakes will happen there sometimes you'll spot an opportunity to seize your advantage through a complex of corners by outbreaking them with better positioning now we hear the phrase outbreaking a lot but what does it mean when you strip the jargon away well when you come flying towards a corner at speed you'll obviously have to hit the brakes at some point there is an ideal turning in point for the corner and at that point there's an ideal speed you want to be at to take your ideal line as fast as possible now bearing that in mind there should be an ideal point at which you can plant the brakes so that if you can get the maximum out of the brakes you'll get to your ideal speed at your turning in point now this perfect point at which you hit the brakes is highly dependent on how your brakes and tires are faring and what temperatures they're at as a driver you should be pretty aware of this and the best drivers are constantly aware of the state of their brakes and tires which affects their judgement about how early to break and how hard to apply the brake pedal through the braking zone cars on fresh tyres and warm brakes will have a shorter ideal braking zone than cars on old tyres and overheating brakes of course of course this is still a judgement call play it safe and break a little earlier and you'll take longer to get to the turning point but you will be more able to hit that turning point at the right speed play it risky and you could end up hitting the brakes too late and overshoot your turning point or turn in too fast and run wide on the exit try to overcompensate by slamming on the brakes or turning while the brakes are loaded and you could lock the wheel sending you flying forwards in a straight line which limits your control over your speed so actually you're unlikely to hit this ideal point-to-point braking zone but depending on your style and expertise your braking and turning points should happen somewhere in these fuzzy areas if you're not a great breaker but you play it safe you're more likely to have a longer braking zone here with an uncertain but early breaking point if you're better and more confident on the brakes you'll have a shorter braking zone but with more error margin for overshooting to put into perspective how important precise braking can be imagine a sharp corner at the end of a long straight this is the tilt era of f1 circuit so that shouldn't be too hard to imagine now say you're going 200 miles an hour at the breaking point well that's 89 meters per second so half a second too late and you've overshot your breaking point by 45 meters even a tenth of a second too late is nine meters which is the length of two formula one cars and a tenth of a second too early is also a massive nine meters before the breaking point and if you braked early you'll be down to turn in speed nine meters before you even reach the corner and that's a massive time loss so to outbreak someone is to simply get closer to this ideal breaking point to turn in point zen if you can manage it better than your rivals ahead you may be able to pull alongside now getting yourself alongside is only part of the battle you'll also have to consider your positioning if you're ever taking into a corner you want to ideally get yourself on the inside as we've looked at in our racing lines video your ideal racing line looks something like this if you've managed to get yourself here when your rival wants to turn in you've disrupted their racing line you are now taking the dominant position through the corner and you could force your rival to concede to you through the exit by taking the natural line even though you entered the corner much more tightly you can then drift wide towards the edge of the track with your arrival high and dry blocked by you you're in a position to control both of your exits now exit positioning isn't always that simple though if you're overtaking into a series of corners or a chicane your rival may benefit from being on the outside of you at the exit if the next corner switches back the other way their position on the outside of the first corner becomes the inside of the next and they can do exactly to you what you did to them through that second corner if the second corner swings the same way as the first the driver on the outside may still be in a better position if they are able to keep you squeezed through the tighter inner line and use the faster momentum of their wider line to exit the corner faster than you now on corner entry you could also try and move from the outside though this is much harder as your rival does have the high ground but either you need to try and drive right around the outside of your rival and this almost always depends on you having the confidence of a stronger car at the time either an outright chassis advantage think mercedes coming through from the back of the field or by having fresher ties at that point in the race or you need to hope you can frighten them into a mistake if they break too late lock up or start to lose balance they will overshoot the turning point you can start wide and hook in aiming for a late apex and a strong early acceleration point that will give you better umph out of the corner than your mispositioned rival also remember that if you scared your rival to the inside their breaking point needs to be earlier than you as they have to take a tighter line if they've moved to the inside at the last minute to block you then they have a greater chance of overshooting by not breaking as early as they need to not to mention that the inside of the corner is dirtier and slipperier now as you both exit the corner you may be alongside each other the leading car hopefully you needs to leave adequate space the rules are deliberately foggy on this but essentially if the car is significantly alongside you you can't just move over on them and claim all of the track for yourself but you can push right to the edge of acceptability as long as you don't force them off the track you can move wide on the exit and disrupt their ability to accelerate properly out of the corner if this first corner leads to another you also want to compromise your rival's ability to take the ideal line through that next corner if they are forced to the very very inside of the next corner they'll have to take a much slower line but try not to chop across them as you take the corner because that's where punctures lie now employ the art of surprise of course even with the planning setup and positioning you don't want your rival to see your move coming naturally if you're more likely to overtake in a post drs breaking zone then they'll be wary of you making the move then but that doesn't mean you should barrel down the track alongside them showing your entire hand staying tucked in until just before the braking zone gives you the slipstream for the longest possible time yes but it also forces your rival to pick their position first if they cover the inside you can leap to the outside or go deeper inside if you've got the space they aren't allowed to sweep across the track once you're near the breaking zone so at some point they have to commit to their defense ricardo is good at leaping out from behind at the last minute and leaving rivals looking at a wall of red bull instead of the apex they are aiming for but not every move is planned opportunistic moves can be the best you can hope for in a race where overtaking opportunities are proving rarer than french stake making a spontaneous attack requires constant vigilance if you're close behind and hunting your rival may make a mistake run wide struggle with traction have to dodge back markers like a wheel and you won't know when this might happen though you can start to make educated guesses if you're paying attention you have to be ready to seize the moment and throw yourself into a braking zone slingshot around the outside or zip through the inside if you see an open door now of course this is all prone to risk reactive moves don't have the same time to assess whether the move is worth the work in china when max spotted lewis was slow out of turn six he realized he could out accelerate hamilton and possibly come right around the outside through the long turn seven on his much grippier tires now you can see him assessing it through the move and he has plenty of opportunities in turn seven to concede but ultimately he's frightened off the road when hamilton starts to slip wide later verstappen lunges down the inside of vettel this was an opportunistic move though he'll have been ready for any opportunity when chasing him down the back straight he saw vettel go too deep so he just went for it knowing his better soft tyres would give him a massive advantage unfortunately vettel got slowed down far more effectively than verstappen thought and vettel started to turn into the corner from his long position suddenly verstappen is barreling towards the side of vettel and he has to tighten his line and break a bit harder but it wasn't quite meant to be decisions made in split seconds are improved by better instincts and instinct is honed on experience let's compare this with ricardo's move on bottas in turn six now you don't necessarily expect to make a move here but it is very possible ricardo moved inside but only as inside as he needed to there's only a breath of space between them even as bottas starts to squeeze ricardo also doesn't break as late as possible he breaks later than bottas and continues to squeeze and squeeze the brakes just enough to gain position overbought s through the braking zone and those are the main technical points of overtaking and on paper it may seem simple enough but on the track it's about knowing what your car can actually give at any given point having a feel for the changing track conditions and being hyper aware of your rival figuring out where they may leave opportunities for attack and on top of this they have to battle the inherent regulatory problems that have stymied overtaking for years but that is another story [Music]

Channel: Chain Bear

Views: 3,401,178

Keywords: f1, formula 1, explained, how to, racing, how does, overtaking, over take, overtake, passing, make a move, undertake, out brake, outbrake, outbraking, up the inside, switch back, daniel ricciardo, ricciardo, riccardo, verstappen, max, china, 2018

Id: lNqa6ASJtZo

Length: 9min 34sec (574 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 18 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/PinkAxe22]

Any new F1 fan should binge this guy's YouTube, it's very well made and very informative!

[u/jajaboss]

How Ric beat them? It’s new tyres Still a great fun to watch tho

[u/therealkimi]

Ric's trademark divebombs work only because the the other driver let's him to. But you also gotta hand to Ric in these situations for not locking up his tyres and avoiding a crash. It doesn't work for all drivers and it didn't work for himself in Spain 2016.

[u/Lumin0u]

tl;dw have better tyres

[u/bufarreti]

It’s over Bottas i have the high ground

[u/SureValla]

This was a very informative video, thanks, but I honestly expected a couple of replays of Ricciardo's overtakes. Still a good watch, though!

[u/cntchds]

A great channel with a lot of insight to break it down for us noobs.

[u/sneek_]

This was one of the best videos I've ever seen about coming into a corner in general. But I do have one critique: I always thought that outbraking was a bit different than simply outperforming (AKA stopping more quickly) than your opponent in the braking zone.

I thought it was somewhat about simply being aggressive on the brakes. AKA - if you are on the inside, but not necessarily neck and neck with your opponent and you brake HARD - as in, harder than your tyres can accommodate for, you can keep that inside line and force your opponent to run wide - even if you lock up and don't brake perfectly. If you run a bit deep into the corner, so be it. That'd keep your line and force your opponent behind you.

Have I been thinking about outbraking wrong?

[u/bertvanoranje]

King of divebombs.