Throwing forward to Round 11 of the 2018 Formula One World Championship at the Hockenheimring in Germany.
- Toto Talks Germany
- Featured this Week: The in-season development race
- Stat Attack: Germany and Beyond
Toto Talks Germany
“We didn’t score as many points in the triple-header as we had hoped for. A lot of that was down to our own mistakes. However, there is a silver lining to this – while we didn’t maximise on points, we did bring the quickest car to all three races.
“Hockenheim will mark the halfway point of the 2018 season. We’v e had a decent first half – on the one hand, we’ve left points on the table and had to do damage limitation more often than we would have wanted. On the other hand, we still scored a good amount of points, both drivers have shown strong performances and we have a fast car. So there are many reasons why we’re looking forward to the second half of the 2018 season; we’re hungry, ambitious and want to kick on from here.
“Going to Hockenheim always feels like coming home; it’s only about a 90 minute drive from the Daimler headquarters in Stuttgart. While we had the great opportunity to race in front of many of our colleagues from Brackley and Brixworth in Silverstone, we’re now looking forward to welcoming the German members of the Mercedes family to the circuit and to holding high the three-pointed star on home turf.
“The track itself is quite interesting; it has a variety of corner speeds and will test every aspect of the car. We will fight hard to not only put on a good show for our friends and fans in Hockenheim, but also get the result that they will be hoping for.”& lt; /p>
Featured this Week: The in-season development race
The 2018 Formula One season sees the closest and toughest fight in recent years. While that epic battle is fought on-track, one of the determining aspects of this year’s Championship happens off-track. It’s the in-season development race – the improvements the teams bring to their car while the racing season is in full swing.
What are the main areas of the car a team develops during the season?
Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport will focus mainly on three areas: aerodynamics, the Power Unit and the tyres. The aim of aerodynamic development is to find new and better bodywork packages. For the Power Unit, the team will usually pursue two goals. The first is to bring new component designs to the PU; the second is to learn how hard we can actually push the PU. At the beginning of the season, the team wants to make sure that the Power Unit runs reliably. As the reliability has to be proved on the dyno, we will usually start a little more conservative to have a product that can run the required mileage. Once a reliable base has been established, all subsequent long runs of the engine will focus on trying to extract more power. In those runs, the team will be more willing to push the PU a bit harder on the dyno. This is a well-calibrated process as we aim to find the exact limits of the PU without overstepping them – but knowing that if we overstep the mark, there is still a proven configuration on the track. The third focus area for in-season testing is the tyres, because the teams only get to see them for the first time properly in winter testing. The tyres are a major performance factor and it takes a while to fully understand them and be able to exploit them to the maximum. This might not necessarily have an impact on the subsequent development and design of the car; it will, however, very likely change the way the team uses the car in order to get the most from the tyres.
How much time can a team find through in-season development?
The exact amount of time a team can find over the course of the season is one of the better-kept secrets of this sport – and we aim to keep it that way. However, it is sufficient to say that in-season development has considerable impact on the season’s result. If a team were to stop development of their car after the first race, while all the others brought developments for the rest of the season, that team would drop several positions in the Constructors’ standings – simply by not bringing improvements to the car. In Formula One, if you don’t go forwards, you go backwards.
How is the development schedule for in-season upgrades determined?
That depends on the components. For the Power Unit, the development course is mostly dictated by the regulations. With only three PUs for the entire season, the team wants to make sure that the mileage is split relatively evenly between those three. Other components are driven by the specifics of the circuit. Monza, for example, typically needs a lower rear wing level than most of the other tracks. So the team will develop the rear-wing and low-downforce package sufficiently in advance of Monza to be able to construct those pieces for the race weekend. For the aero programme, an outline plane will be established that says roughly when you will want to introduce new packages. It’s usually spaced to a sufficient degree such that the team is confident that it will have found a decent number of gains which are then brought to the track as a package. However, those schedules are very fluid – mostly, because the team can never be sure precisely where the gains are going to come, how big they will be and how easy they will be to implement. Last but not least, there is also the opportunistic kind of development – where someone just has a good idea and the team decides to make it. So while some update packages might have been planned for months, others updates might be brought to the car as soon as the team finds them.
How important is driver feedback for in-season development?
Driver feedback plays an important role. While it will rarely change the fundamental performance direction of the car, driver feedback allows the team to modify its approach and make sure the car really suits the driver. This is especially true for all aspects of driver comfort, for example seat position, mirrors, steering wheel angle or pedal spacing. While those might seem like minor details, they are important to get right as a driver who is uncomfortable won’t be able to get the best out of the car. While the key ingredients of a fast car are usually universal for all drivers, driver feedback still impacts the performance development of the car, as it helps the team to identify the areas of the car they should focus on in the ongoing development process.
A tough in-season fight also means that teams will put a lot of effort into the in-season development of the car. How do teams find the right balance of in-season development and working on next year’s car?
A team wants to make sure that it doesn’t sacrifice next year’s performance for this year’s points. However, the decision on when to shift more and more people from this year’s development to next year’s is not an easy one – especially in a hard-fought fight. If a team is miles ahead in the Championship, it’s a relatively easy decision because the team can back off early, knowing that the others won’t be able to catch up. The same is also true for a team that is miles behind, because no matter how hard they try, they won’
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