Why Formula 1 Cars are IMPOSSIBLE to Drive in the COLD

every now and then F1 organizers throw a spanner in the works and we typically get a very unusual Grand Prix and that's likely to be true for the first race on the new circuit in Las Vegas it's fast it's a street track and the race starts at 1 p.m. local time but the biggest challenge for the teams is that at that time it's going to be cold really cold so why is the drastically colder than usual temperature such an issue what are the teams and drivers going to do about it and are we going to see an incredibly chaotic race Formula 1 cars don't really work well at cold temperatures now this could be counterintuitive you might notice that all of the fastest laps at your local car trck was set in the evening or at night but in F1 the power units and in particular the tires just aren't made to work when temperatures are below about 15° C and you might ask why well the vast majority of the season is within a fairly tight temperature band within the mid to high 20° C range and it has been for a while and remember F1 cars are trying to extract the most performance not just work in any conditions like your road car where road tires have a very wide set of operating conditions Formula 1 cars don't and F1 cars are made to be driven hard and deal with all the forces associated with that on a side note they also don't like being driven slowly just think back to when Richard Hammond drove that Renault F1 his main problem was that he wasn't keeping the tires warm making the car very difficult to drive and at this race it could be a similar situation anyway back to Vegas the average temperature in the middle of the day is 21° C spot on for an F1 cup but qualifying in Vegas is that midnight local time and the race is at 1: p.m. these cars could be seeing temperatures of around 5° C so it's going to be the coldest race of the season and perhaps ever now teams do sometimes run their cars in colder conditions think preseason testing in Barcelona where the daily low is 4° but the high is 16 and of course at winter testing the cars run in the daytime and remember this is an open pit Lane test so when it's cold the teams just have the choice to wait for it to warm up this is very different to having to run 100% Pace at midnight for qual and 1000 p.m. for the race so what are F1 cars like to drive in cold conditions well I've actually driven a few F1 cars during the winter time in the UK particularly at the Donnington Park circuit where temperatures have been in the mid single digits and I can tell you it's not that nice first off there's just very little grip which is pretty obvious as the tires are miles outside their operating temperature however while the low grip means you have to be more delicate on the brakes in the corner and under acceleration you do get used to it quite quickly but the most difficult thing as the driver is not the low grip it's how quickly and unpredictably the car breaks away particularly when you're in a quick Corner one of the main skills needed to drive a race car quickly is to predict how much grip a car has and how it's going to behave when you reach the limmit and when it's properly cold that predictability reduces dramatically so imagine your heading into a high-speed corner you turn the car in and the car gives you good feedback it's going to accept the rate of turning you've asked for but then mid Corner bang it breaks away really quickly as a driver a surprise like this is really bad a surprise means we've not predicted the cornering speed properly as surprise means that rather than expecting a slide and adjusting slightly we're having to react to it and there's a big difference between the two reacting and catching a slide is not only slow in terms of losing time but also dramatically increases our chances of going off something we don't want at the best of times let alone on a high-speed Street circuit so what does that really mean to the drivers well it means that the difference between the good and the great drivers is going to be larger than normal the merely good drivers will have to be more cautious run a little bit below the limit in more challenging Cor corners and not run as close to the walls and this of course costs your lap time the great drivers however will feel more comfortable to take risks although in their mind they'll just be driving quickly so the field spread in terms of skill will likely be larger however the Vegas circuit doesn't actually have too many corners so that'll probably bring the spread back down to normal so from a driving perspective I expect the weekend to be interesting and potentially quite chaotic however think back to the first year in Baku when everyone was predicting loads of safety cars and in that first race there were none so I might be wrong they did more than make up for it after that first year in Baku and it's not just the temperatures that are going to make things challenging for the drivers this is a new circuit on a new Surface granted it's not a twoe old surface like we saw in Turkey during 2020 which leis said was with a capital S but it is completely green no race car has ever been on it and there are no support races in Vegas either meaning there's no one to help clean up and and rubber in the circuit those first few practice sessions are going to be incredibly slippery then there's the track layout itself basically there aren't many corners and there's a 1.9 km straight fewer Corners means less load on the tires and so less tire temperature fewer braking zones means less load on the tires less brake temperature and so less tire temperature and longer straights means that the tires aren't working all that hard and so less tire temperature and with that long long straight team are going to be running a low down Force setup which means less tie temperature so if you're a tire it's safe to say you're going to be struggling to get warm in an interview Nico hulkenberg said when you go out in those kinds of track temperatures It's Tricky it's going to be different it's going to be challenging in a different way instead of keeping the tires cool you'll have to do something to switch it on so will the tires even be able to get warm enough or will the drivers be slithering across the circuit like we saw in Turkey in 2020 well obviously the teams know it's likely to be cold and so we'll have explored Solutions and also when you actually check the weather for the race weekend it doesn't look like it's going to be too bad but what might be really challenging is how long it takes you to get the tires up to temperature Alex alour said that he expected to need three or four laps of Tire preparation before starting a flying lap so you'll likely see the drivers trying to put temperature into the tires gradually if they push too hard too soon they'll over only the surface of the tire not the entire core and so we'll get cold graining on the surface so three or four laps during qualifying to get up to temperature whilst not great is not the end of the world but a big problem could be during the race if there's a safety car a virtual safety car the drivers are really going to struggle to keep temperature in the tires not only will they have a cold track temperature and less load and energy going into the tires but if they're Midway through a stint they'll also have less rubber on the tires than themselves which means the tire is even harder to add temperature to and so if there is a safety car period and we're a reasonably long way into the stint we'll likely see drivers come in for a fresh set of warm tires or the restarts will be very interesting we could also start to see the driving style differences come back to the surface back when Jensen Burton was at McLaren he said a lot of the performance difference between him and Hamilton was that Hamilton worked the tires more but could also keep them alive for longer the Bas Bas on that and trying to get the tires fired up we could see the Ferraris do well here with their higher tire wear and we could see some drivers struggle just think how gentle Perez usually is on his tires he's going to have to adapt to push his tires that bit harder so what can the teams do to generate more Tire temperature well the first thing would be to add more downforce but do that on this circuit and you'll be a Sitting Duck on the Straits the second is to add more tire pressure than normal which will also increase their temperature in fact just as I was recording this pelli released their minimum tire pressures for the weekend which are 27 PSI in the front and 24.5 PSI in the rear that's up significantly from 23 PSI and 21 PSI in the last race in Brazil and remember even those pressures are higher than what the teams would want for normal running so pelli are moving the teams to higher pressures to increase the speed of Tire warmup and the third and I'm speculating here would be to run some extra toe on the front and rear of the car toe is the difference between the direction of the tire and the car and we actually just made a video all about that but basically F1 cars run with a few millimeters of toe out on the front and toe in on the rear but if Tire temperature is going to be such a problem Engineers could increase the car's tote this would then mean that the tire is dragging across the surface of the circuit even more even when the car is driving straight and this dragging generates extra heat in the tire in fact Formula Ford teams do do this all the time at the famous Formula Ford festival at br's hatch which is held in October or November in the cold damp UK and this extra toe really helps the tires get a bit of temperature it's exactly the same as what Mercedes was doing with their Das system back in 2020 so how much of an issue is the temperature really going to be well personally I think the teams and drivers will be able to get their tires working pretty well in normal conditions however after a pit stop or safety car period I do do think it will be really challenging for the drivers anyway I love it when things are mixed up a bit and the teams and drivers are having to think about new problems and difficult circuits and conditions and there are more concerns about how the power units will handle the colder temperatures but that's for another video if you've ever wondered what the most important setup changes are on an F1 car check out this video just here with an xf1 performance engineer cheers and I'll see you next time

Channel: Driver61

Views: 638,238

Keywords: Formula 1, Driving, Coaching, Motorsport, Engineering, F1, Racing, Incredible Motorsport, Driver61, Scott Mansell, Callum McIntyre, LasVegasGP, Vegas GP, F1 Vegas

Id: oc6KAPqpRPY

Length: 9min 55sec (595 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 15 2023