Will F1 cars lap quicker in 2010?
Mark Webber's fastest lap at Brazil beat the 2008 mark by 0.003 seconds
Thanks to safety rules and cost cutting F1 is far from being the unfettered pursuit of raw speed it used to be.
But it never fails to impress me how cunning designers keep coming up with ways to wriggle free from the constraints of the rule book and build F1 cars which are just a little bit quicker than the governing body wants them to be.
There are some significant changes to the F1 rules this year, but not as drastic as those we saw in 2009. So how much more speed can the designers conjure out of the cars – and how will it affect race strategy?
How 2010 rules changes will affect lap times
Fastest qualifying laps at three tracks, 1996-2009 (click to enlarge)
Last year’s rules changes were mainly intended to allow the cars to follow each other more closely but they also had the effect of slowing the cars down, or at least keeping them roughly at their 2008 level of performance. This year the aerodynamic rules are largely unchanged apart from minor details such as the banning of the wheel ‘spinners’.
Bridgestone 2010 F1 tyre width
More significant is the reduced width of the front wheels explained in the diagram (right). Front tyres will be 245mm wide in 2010, 25mm less than last year. The cars will lose almost 10% of their front tyre contact patch which will obviously cut their cornering speeds.
It’s down to the designers to claw back that lost time – and more – by refining the cars’ aerodynamics and weight distribution as best they can. It’ll get harder for them in 2011 if the mooted ban on double-diffusers comes to pass.
I suspect we will ultimately see the 2010 F1 cars lapping quicker than their predecessors on a single low-fuel qualifying run. But the banning of refuelling will make it a very different story when it comes to race lap times.
Race lap times
Lewis Hamilton's lap times, 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix (click to enlarge)
With drivers no longer allowed to refuel during the race, cars will have much larger fuel tanks. This will have one obvious effect – as well as others that might not be immediately apparent.
Cars will now be much slower at the start of races than at the end of them. In the example above from last year, Lewis Hamilton began his 24-lap middle stint in the Hungarian Grand Prix lapping two seconds per lap slower than at the end of it. Multiply that across a full race distance and we could see lap times differing by six seconds, though this will vary with different circuits and conditions.
It will also have an interested effect on strategy. Previously after a car pitted the driver would leave the pits with more fuel on board and lap more slowly than he had immediately before his stop. Now, as the drivers’ fuel load will not increase during a pit stop, they will be faster immediately after it, thanks to their fresher tyres.
This may tempt a driver who is stuck behind a rival into pitting early in an attempt to get ahead. But they could run into trouble later in the race when their tyres are more worn than their competitors’ are.
Stint lengths are likely to change too. Instead of splitting the race up into roughly equal portions, as in the example above, tyres will now suffer greater punishment at the beginning of a race compared to the end.
Using rough numbers we can see that if a car carries 200kg of fuel to last a 60-lap Grand Prix its average weight over the first half of the race will be 151kg compared to 51kg for the second half.
Drivers are still required to use each of Bridgestone’s two compounds at least once per race. In our example, they could start the race on the harder tyre then switch to the softer. But the exact moment when they should change is no longer dictated by how much fuel’s in the tank – it’s down to the driver to decide if and when he needs new tyres.
Faster laps, slower races?
The upshot of all this is that even though we may well see faster individual laps in 2010 compared to 2009, race distances will take longer to complete. If we get a safety car period at Singapore – as we have the last two years – we might not even see the race distance completed within the two hour time limit.
We’ll get out first impression of how quick the 2010 F1 cars are when testing begins at Valencia on February 1st. Here’s a reminder of what the quickest times were last year in testing at the three tracks where the teams are returning this year:
Jerez – 1’17.494 (Kazuki Nakajima, Williams-Toyota)
Circuit de Catalunya – 1’18.926 (Rubens Barrichello, Brawn
Valencia – No group test in 2009
2010 F1 cars
- 2010 F1 testing dates confirmed
- Updated 2010 F1 rules include new testing, engine and safety car regulations
- How new rules will change 2010 F1 cars
Image (C) Red Bull/Getty images
matt90 said on 11th January 2010, 16:40
Is qualifying keeping the knockout format?
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine) said on 11th January 2010, 16:47
Yep
Harry said on 11th January 2010, 16:45
Speaking of short filling the fuel tanks……….
Are the teams REQUIRED to fill the tanks with a minimum amount of fuel [either via weight or quantity]?
If not, it will be interesting to see if teams take a chance on a rainy weekend, chancing that the race wont go the full distance due to weather/time. Short fill the tanks with as little fuel as they think will get them to the end, thus being quicker than the rest of the field.
Not sure how this would effect the minimum weight requirements. But if the teams are in fact allowed to use as little fuel as they want, it would lead to an interesting strategy – at times.
Could also work for temas with better fuel mileage. Has anyone studied the new fuel requirements? Woudl this be allowed?
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine) said on 11th January 2010, 16:52
No, there’s no minimum level specified, so they could get away with under-filling them as David suggested.
Robert McKay said on 11th January 2010, 19:46
And this is important as some engines are definitely more fuel efficient than others.
Vince said on 11th January 2010, 16:58
You may indeed see some faster laps during the
races in 2010 – especially if the FIA decides to award a world championship point for it.
Uncle said on 11th January 2010, 17:33
it wouldnt be too much of a risk to say that by mid season, the cars will be quicker. It’s the nature of F1.
VXR said on 11th January 2010, 18:26
I was wondering if F1 cars would be able to use software that would prevent them from running out of fuel?
MotoGP have this (they have a set amount of fuel), and it works by cutting the revs on the engine when the ECU computes that the fuel tank doesn’t hold enough fuel to get the bike to the end of the race at the current pace.
If you go all out for two thirds of the race, you may then find yourself in for a bit of a shock in the last third!
Chapmondo said on 11th January 2010, 19:04
Aren’t electronic aids banned in F1 like traction control, active suspension and ABS.
Meaning the fuel software will also be banned?
VXR said on 11th January 2010, 19:17
It could be that it is already a functioning part of the standard ECU?
Although, currently drivers are told to adjust the mixture on the engine by their race engineer, which is just another way of going about the same thing as only pit to car telemetery is prohibited. This would mean the engineers would know fuel level, current consumption and race distance remaining and would advise the driver accordingly.
K said on 11th January 2010, 19:32
The fundamental problem with modern F1.
When F1 switched to “grooves” they made the front tyre larger to compensate but when they switched back to slick tryes the teams had already designed the cars with the old size tyre so they couldn’t change the size back to how it was. As a result oversteer was more of an issue so this may not actually do that much to slow the cars down, also taking into account the aerodynamic effect.
VXR said on 11th January 2010, 19:42
“The fundamental problem with modern F1.”
The cars have gotten to be as fast as they are ever likely to go and still be safe to drive, and you only need to look at what has happened recently to realise why ‘spendathons’ don’t work.
K said on 11th January 2010, 19:59
The less speed = more safety thing is only true up to a point. F1 cars now are not more safe than the ones of the past because they are slower. They are faster and safer because of a greater emphasis on safety. F1 cars could be made safe enough to travel at significantly higher speeds and circuits could be made safer also.
Spending more to go faster doesn’t equate either. Toyota spent a lot more than Williams but were never really that much faster, spending efficiently is more importantly.
Lastly the manufacturers didn’t leave F1 because they couldn’t afford to stay they left because they could afford to leave. Williams rely on F1 for their existence but Toyota don’t thus they were able to leave.
VXR said on 11th January 2010, 20:24
You can make cars faster by giving them more power and more downforce. All you will achieve by doing that is having faster F1 cars and not necessarily ‘better’ F1 cars. You may also find that drivers are already pretty close to ‘blacking out’ on some fast corners.
To make circuits safer you could first of all dump Monaco and circuits like it and then maybe move back the spectators another hundred yards or so.
Spending more doesn’t necessarily equate to speed, but how fast do you think Toyota would have been if they hadn’t spent the money they have? How good would they have gone on £40 mil a season!?
The manufacturers left because they realised that only one team out of the ones who were throwing money away could become world champions in any given year.
Here’s a link that tells you just how bad it got.
http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_news_item.php?fes_art_id=39752
K said on 11th January 2010, 21:17
Down force slows cars down.
A good F1 car is a fast one.
If drivers are close to blacking out in high G corners then they’re not fit enough. With the help of G-suits and better conditioning jet fighter pilots can handle up to 9G sustained and higher for shorter periods. That is double the highest an F1 driver can expect to experience.
If you said “we’ve made an F1 car that can travel at 400mph but it’s a bit too fast to drive around Monaco safely” I’d say screw Monaco let’s go racing at 400mph.
You don’t have to move fans further away, Abu Dhabi has some solutions to this but there could be other ways to deal with safety issues that are as yet unexplored.
Toyota did not need to spend that much money. Ferrari, Renault, McLaren and Brawn, the teams that won the championships while Toyota were competing, none of them spent as much as Toyota and yet they were all faster.
£40m a season was and still is a joke.
Toyota and Honda probably planned to have a limited time in F1, they were not run like sustainable businesses and were probably just expensive exercises in PR. From the moment Honda cam up with that Earth Dreams cr@p in was obvious their departure was imminent. BMW left because they felt F1 had degenerated and they were probably right.
That article is poor and misleading. I’m sure the £175 book it takes it’s figures from is better written and that would be the best place to view those figures but just stripping them out of a 180 report and quoting them out of context does not give an accurate representation of the data. There is no reference as to how they came to those figures which is especially important when considering value over such time frames, how they took inflation into account etc. So you can’t really take that article seriously.
Damon said on 11th January 2010, 19:36
One is sure – the cars will be even uglier.
With the rediction of the front grip, the engineers will shift the weight of the cars further to the back.
This means even longer noses.
http://static.sidepodcast.com/content/2009/01/mclaren_2009_nose.jpg
VXR said on 11th January 2010, 19:56
Unless they are thinking about putting the fuel tank in the nose, I wouldn’t think that they would be any longer, quite the opposite in fact!
Most pictures I have seen of 2010 cars indicate that the sidepods are longer, since the extra length of the car is made up by having to make the fuel tank bigger that sits just behind the driver.
AP said on 11th January 2010, 23:16
? why would they have to sift the weight even further back than what?
09 all the weight was thrown forward as compared to 08 so if they did have to move weight slightly back from 09 the weight will still be a long way forward to 08.
The cars wont look much longer than the 09 RBR as that was the longest car last year.
Robert McKay said on 11th January 2010, 19:49
My only worry is that the FIA’s appointed sporting working group will do a kneejerk reaction and make the teams do a second mandatory pitstop/tyrechange, as has been rumoured in a few places.
I think that would be unneccessary.
sato113 said on 11th January 2010, 20:57
the drivers might have to do a second stop anyway! Since i don’t think the softer tyre will last on a one stop strategy.
Robert McKay said on 11th January 2010, 21:38
Maybe, but let’s just give them the opportunity and freedom to decide themselves…some will try it and make it work, some will try it and it won’t work, some will take the extra stop.
But variations drop out when you get prescriptive with such things.
F1Yankee said on 11th January 2010, 22:20
nice article, keith. i expect cars to lap at the same pace or maybe a bit quicker. hubcaps were worth about .3 sec/lap, so the value of their banning is not in speed reduction but in cost (small), safety (medium)and trulli-train prevention (large). i don’t expect the front tire width reduction to reduce speed at all.
there was a proposal for 2010 mandating a 10mm radius on the edges of an areo device, in order to pose less threat to tires. was this proposal put into effect?
Jim N said on 11th January 2010, 23:35
I’m old enough to remember the FIA contemplating narrower front tyres in the early 90’s and Williams testing some narrower tyres for Goodyear on spec…. they went faster because of lower drag…. and the FIA quietly dropped the proposal.
The size of the contact patch is related to tyre pressure and construction, not tyre width, so they may not loose any contact patch area, depending on what games Bridgestone play…. but braking distances should be fractionally longer.
So on low fuel at least I expect them to be faster…..
I was interested with the graph showing a steady increase in lap times at Bahrain ….. what is so special there that they buck the trend?
David said on 12th January 2010, 13:39
“The size of the contact patch is related to tyre pressure and construction, not tyre width, so they may not loose any contact patch area, depending on what games Bridgestone play…. but braking distances should be fractionally longer.”
You’re telling me a 1mm wide tyre can provide the same grip as a 1000000000000km wide tyre? Come on, mate.
Jim N said on 12th January 2010, 16:42
200 lbs of load in the tyre at 20 psi gives 10 sq inches of contact patch…. (200 / 20) etc … thats physics, irrespective of tyre size…. the tyre construction reduces that patch size because some load is carried directly by the side walls…. but for the minor changes changes we are talking about, the tyre manufacturer I’m sure can keep the side walls carrying the same load and so the patches the same size if they want to…
VXR said on 12th January 2010, 1:51
I can’t wait for F1 drivers to start wearing G-suits. :/
Which are totally ineffective on a drivers lateral (side to side) movements anyway.
However, it will certainly be interesting to see how the drivers react to the ever changing car dynamics over a race distance.
K said on 12th January 2010, 2:28
So you’re saying a driver can’t black out then because blood flow to the brain wouldn’t be restricted?
Drivers experience lateral, longitudinal and vertical G. Take a corner like Eau Rouge for example. Also their seating potion should be considered as they are pretty much horizontal.
VXR said on 12th January 2010, 16:51
It’s not a question of blood flow. It’s a question of muscle strain, particularly at 400mph.:)
But anyway, I have it on good authority that F1 cars have reached the safety limit for most of the circuits that they now perform on (including Spa).
As for your thirst for speed. Have you tried watching Dragsters?
Florida Mike said on 12th January 2010, 2:29
I think it will be interesting in the teams’ strategies for the number of stops, as tire wear vs speed will be different for each chassis or driver preference. One team planning soft/hard, another hard/soft, another hard/soft/soft or soft/soft/hard. Eliminating the need to refuel from the equation seems to open the envelope for large relative differences in lap times, and might introduce more overtaking opportunities.
The Limit said on 13th January 2010, 1:00
I like the sound of it. What we need are closer race finishes. I am tired of seeing the race winner cross the line three seconds in hand of his rival. I hope these new rules change that.
Chaz said on 14th January 2010, 18:33
Good piece. F1 should aim to stir up the rules and regulations, within reason of course, and keep the designers and engineers and drivers on there toes…