With F1 visiting a brand new circuit in Abu Dhabi, Red Bull Racing chief race and test engineer Paul Monaghan explains what it takes to get to grips with a new track.
Paul, how do you approach a weekend when you don’t have any historical data for the circuit?
All of the things we would usually take for granted, we will instead have to study using a basic simulation on an assumed circuit. We will already have a circuit map that we make from CAD data or a GPS survey or a combination. We’ll get the geometry of the circuit and define what we believe to be a racing line around it. So, when we have those two things, we’ll use a simulation tool to run a car on it. We’ll simulate various wing-levels, assess average revs and take a first look at factors such as gear ratios.
What factors are the most awkward to assume?
One of the biggest difficulties in the process is identifying a grip level for the circuit. Imagine where we are now, in Yas Marina: we come here to a circuit that’s covered in dust, and has a really low level of grip. We know this is going to improve over the weekend as the F1 cars and those from the support races ‘clean’ the track and put rubber down – but where does the grip level go from, and where does it go to? The grip level is a very sensitive figure. It has a big influence on how fast you can go around a corner and therefore how much wing you need to have on the car. We have to pick a number for our first approach, which gives us a best estimate of the rear wing we need to run, and from the rear wing, we can define a front wing, and create a nominal aero-balance that hopefully will get us reasonably close to where we need to be.
It’s also difficult to know how bumpy a new circuit will be. You can get photographs of kerbs and deal with any intricacies there, but the rest is difficult to know. If you do have the information, you can feed it into your simulator and have one of your drivers come into the factory and drive it. Doing that gives you another level of refinement because rather than having a theoretical perfect driver in the simulation tool, you have a real driver in the loop.
How do you use the three practice sessions to refine that initial set-up estimate?
We arrive with some basic parameters set, and use the first practice session to test them, then at the end of that session we’ll refine the simulation data with iterative wing choices, gear ratios, brake cooling and engine cooling solutions and all of those variables. Then we’ll use the second practice session to hone in on something as close to our race car specification as we can get it. That’s usual for P2 whether it’s a new track or somewhere we’ve raced many times, because P2 is one of our biggest sessions. We have an hour and a half and can run as many sets of tyres from our allocation as we wish. It’s probably the most influential session for the drivers. P3 on the other hand, doesn’t see a huge amount of running compared to the circuit time available, because it’s often used to prepare for qualifying rather than the race.
"P2 is probably the most influential session for the drivers." – Paul Monaghan
Do both drivers prepare with the same setup, or do you try to cover as much ground as possible by running them with different settings?
You could force them onto the same setup or force them to try different downforce levels – and you might do that if it was a circuit that, by inspection of the shape, looked like it would be very sensitive to downforce. There are advantages and disadvantages with splitting the drivers. My personal view, not necessarily the engineering philosophy of Red Bull, is that you should, by logical process, identify what you believe to be your best solution and therefore apply that to both cars. If you end up with two solutions then you either haven’t analysed your data very well or you don’t have a good simulation tool, because it hasn’t delivered a right and a wrong answer. You interpret your signals but to my mind if you’re going to have good engineering discipline, that would drive you to a common solution.
Do the drivers approach practice for a street race with more caution than you would elsewhere?
I think it depends on the complexity and the number of racing lines that can produce a competitive lap time. It also depends on what suits your car. It might be that we can’t use one kerb but we can use another – and that changes the racing line and it takes the drivers a while to get to that point. But not all street circuits are the same. What’s different about Monaco is that you can’t experiment, make an error and get away with it, because all of a sudden you have no wheels on the car anymore. Here, conversely, you can have a spin and carry on. You’ll get some dirt on the tyres, lose some temperature in the tyres, and maybe see the engine get a little bit warm, but that’s all. So, I think it is easier at a circuit like this where there is a little bit of room.
I think you have to look at the circuit – street or race track – and see it from the drivers’ point of view and make a decision based on factors like the availability of run off, the time to iterate a racing line etc. After that it comes down to the drivers doing what the drivers do, which is following the grip level, the condition of the tyres, the weight of fuel in the car and the state of whatever it is they’re being asked to test. This place doesn’t present the same level of difficulty as Monaco, or even Suzuka. At Suzuka we only had one error and you saw what happened – we had a smashed-up car.
Yas Marina seems to have sectors that suit the RB5 and sectors that don’t. Do you try to optimise the car for the places where you’re fast, or the places where you’re not?
You try to fix the bits you don’t like and leave the rest alone. You play to your strengths with the setup, and try to enhance the places where you are weakest without affecting all of the good bit. There isn’t a rule by which you can do it – it’s an engineering compromise.
Is it all about lap time or do you consider the realities of racing as well?
That depends on the circuit. If you take a circuit with little overtaking, then the demand is for a good qualifying position, so it’s dominated by lap time. For example, if you’re on pole in Hungary with more fuel than anyone else, then it’s pretty much a done deal: no-one’s going to come past you unless you make a pig’s ear of the start. But somewhere like Indy, do the same thing but be dog-slow in a straight line then bad luck, it’s all over. So it’s really all about knowing what sort of circuit we’ve come to.
Paul was talking to Matt Youson
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