A new circuit but the same routine: Sébastien Buemi and race engineer Riccardo Adami walked the track on Thursday morning, and we took a walk with them.
When arriving at a circuit for which no data exists, the fallback of any team is to begin practice using a set-up borrowed from elsewhere. After walking a lap of the Yas Marina Circuit, the verdict from Sébastien Buemi and his Toro Rosso engineer Riccardo Adami is that this place is a bit like Fuji, but with a touch of Bahrain and a dash of Singapore.
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“In many ways, I think this will be a good circuit because you have a bit of everything,” says Buemi. “It is quite fast at the beginning of the lap with a couple of good overtaking possibilities, but very slow at the end where it resembles Singapore with a run of chicanes and short straights where you simply have to follow the car in front. The circuit is very smooth, so we will be able to run very low.
“I think it makes this circuit a bit special. When you look at the first part, you would tend to think that it’s a low-downforce track, but when you see the middle and last part of the circuit, it changes your mind. It will be one of the circuits where we drive with nearly the maximum downforce. It will not be the absolute maximum, but I don’t think it will be so far away. We will need to find a good compromise: we need to be fast enough on the straight but also fast in the last, twisty section, because it is very long.”
“My first thought on set-up is that we have a circuit with both long straights and low-speed corners,” says Adami. “We’ll go with a softer car generally to start with. Then we’ll test the downforce and see what we need. It looks like a smooth circuit, and usually that means a trade-off somewhere as we will need more downforce [to combat the slippery surface]. We’ll start with a 50:50 car and from there we’ll move one way or the other. Obviously, this being a new track, we don’t have any history to work with.”
'I don’t think guys like Rubens have had to learn many new circuits this year, so maybe we are better prepared' – Sébastien Buemi
Both Buemi and team-mate Jaime Alguersuari are at less of a rookie disadvantage this week. For most of the season, they’ve been learning circuits on which their rivals have been racing for many years, whereas Abu Dhabi is a new experience for everyone. But rather than levelling the playing field, Buemi believes coming to a new race actually tilts it in his favour, “because Jaime and I are used to learning new tracks,” he says. “We do it all the time. And somehow I don’t think guys like Rubens [Barrichello] have had to learn many new circuits this year, so maybe we are better prepared. We’ve been on the simulator to practise, but it isn’t the same as seeing it live. Since I got here, I’ve already run the track, and I think it’s going to be very exciting. We have a good car and I’m looking forward to it a lot.”
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The Lap
“The first corner is a big left-hander,” says Buemi. “It’s a mid-speed corner, taken at around 150kph. It’s quite fast, but has a big run-off area, so from the start you can push very hard at little risk. After that, there are two very fast corners. On the simulator, they’re flat, but whether or not it’s the same in reality is something I’ll find out carefully in practice – but it should be the same. They’re followed by three very slow corners as you come down a hill into a stadium section. There’s a left-to-right and then a small straight before a hairpin.
“It’s really important to get the hairpin right, because you need a good exit for the long straight that follows it. Maybe not much happens at the hairpin itself, but it’s one of the most important corners on the whole circuit, I think.
“The straight is 1.2km long, and has two very slow-speed corners at the end. The first is a very tight left and maybe slow enough to use first gear. The right that follows isn’t flat, so it should be good – there will be a lot of oversteer going through it, and again you need to have a good exit, going onto the next straight to set up an overtaking opportunity at the end of it. The second straight is shorter than the first, but they both have slow corners at either end, so they will both be possible overtaking points.
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“The last section of the track is like Singapore. You need to carry a lot of speed through the corners, many of which are off-camber, which will make it more difficult. That section is going to be important in qualifying – you can lose a lot of time in the slow corners if you get it wrong. It’s also going to be tough finding space for a qualifying run, because the track isn’t very wide, and everyone will be travelling slowly to generate a nice gap. It’s going to be tough, but we’re very confident that we come here with a really good car.”
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