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With the banning of traction control in F1 this year, you might think engineers have a lot less to do in regards getting the car off the line. In reality however, there is still just as much science involved as there always was.
Renault’s Fernando Alonso was on the front row in Barcelona, but Ferrari’s superior starting technique saw Felipe Massa jump ahead of him into turn one. SPEED’s Peter Windsor spoke at length with Renault’s Executive Director of Engineering Pat Symonds in Istanbul on the team’s pre-race routine.
Q: What are the differences in starts now there is now traction control?
PS: A good start seems to be as good as our automatic starts used to be. What the real difference seems to be is the scatter of results. Whereas before we could always rely on doing X meters in Y seconds, now we get a lot of scatter between a good start and a bad start.
Q: What is that scatter rate? How often does a driver usually make a good start now?
PS: Well luckily now with a lot of practice, one would hope 9 out of 10. But there is still the potential for getting it wrong, and if you get it wrong, it’s very wrong. We saw a couple of races ago with Lewis (Hamilton); if you hit the anti-stall it’s a significant detriment to your start.
Q: Obviously Fernando Alonso was on the dirty side of the grid in Barcelona, and made a reasonable start considered. Is the disadvantage of being on the dirty side greater than it was in the TC era?
PS: I guess it is, yeah. Obviously that’s the sort of area were traction control quite helpful, as the drivers can’t really hear what’s going on and stuff like that. But I guess the start in Barcelona had more to do with what was happening around the 120kph (75mph) mark, around gearshift from first to second. I thought we were okay in first gear; it was a bit later on that we began to lose out.
Q:
PS: It depends how we want to assess it. We have various metrics we used for assessing our starts when doing development. But the real answer is that when we are planning our strategy, the start ends at the braking point for the first corner. Therefore things like aerodynamics and fuel load come into it. If we’re looking at a pure start, whether it be a driver start these days, or even in the old launch control days, we probably look up to about the first 100 kph (62 mph). But when looking at the total strategy, particularly at places like Barcelona where you’ve got quite a long drag to the first corner, you need to think about the fuel loads, aerodynamic drags, that sort of thing.
Q: You were on the dirty side of the grid in Barcelona. Presumably you do your “best guess” start off the dummy grid, take data from that to try and get your friction points as near perfect as possible for the real start. Where do you draw the line between your best guess and just trying to lay rubber to clean up the track?
PS: Really we’re not too interested in laying the rubber, it’s much more making sure the clutch bite point is correct, all that sort of stuff. That dummy start needs to be a proper start. Now that was actually more the case in the old days, when it was fully automated we needed to “teach” it what the track was like. These days we have very little we can do, so it’s just making sure you know where your bite point is.
Q: I guess two of the variables you can control are starting on a new set of tires, and trying to be lighter than anybody else on fuel….
PS: Absolutely, as you point out a new set of tires can be a significant difference, as can fuel load and aerodynamic drag – but you’re not going to give away your laptime by going for a sub-optimal aerodynamic level just to get the start.
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