Octane – Bahrain 2022
An F1 blog, done differently.
Quote of the Weekend
"Everyone arrived here thinking Red Bull would be the benchmark; they leave here with zero points." - Toto Wolff.
Hello and welcome to Octane, a new series of articles digesting events in the world of Formula 1 every Monday after a Grand Prix weekend. This isn't your usual write up; I intend to focus on things that haven't been covered anywhere else and bring you a different take on this high drama, high stress, high octane sport. This is Formula 1.
I'll start each article by using a word of the race weekend to summarise the comings and goings of the previous three days and provide a theme and anchor for the article. As the 2022 season kicked off in style in Bahrain, this week's word is…
Bang
What a first race! From a series of practice sessions where you couldn't quite work out which teams had the pace and who struggled, to a nail-biting qualifying session, and the race that had it all. F1 2022 is here, and it started with a bang.
It wasn't the only bang of the weekend, of course. During last week's test, Alfa Romeo had troubles; however, it wasn't them who struggled - picking up their first double points finish since Imola 2020. Red Bull Powertrains (RBPT) had a nightmare first race, with three of the four drivers using their engines failing to finish the race. What's worse is that it looks like disparate issues rather than a single, straightforward fix. Red Bull's 2022 car has a noticeably thinner steering arm and track rods, which may have caused Verstappen's steering issues after his final stop, with the car being unevenly dropped onto the steering arm.
Adding to the team's issues is a new E10 fuel mix for this season, meaning getting more from what you have, and it appears Red Bull Powertrains have a problem with their internal combustion engine (ICE). Red Bull confirmed that Verstappen, Perez and Gasly had terminal issues unrelated to what people suspected the problem was at first - the battery and the standardised fuel pump - which should concern them. What's surprising is that they didn't catch these issues in testing last week, which indicates it's a much more subtle - and fundamental - issue. So bang went Gasly's engine, Verstappen's chances of a victory, and Red Bull's chances of a point-scoring finish this weekend. Lots of data for them to look over before next week's Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
Porpoise
If my series of articles had started after testing, my word of the weekend would have been something you may have already heard this season - porpoising. Porpoising is where, due to new ground effect regulations, the cars are prone to creating a low-pressure area under the floor below the high-pressure area above the wings. This sucks the car to the ground like a magnet, which stalls the aerodynamics, popping the car back up before being sucked to the floor again - the process repeating itself.
Mercedes are the most unmistakable offenders due to how much performance they are losing, but they are far from alone. Aston Martin has similar issues, costing them 0.7 seconds a lap - taking them from potentially being as quick as Alfa Romeo and Haas, to the second slowest team on the grid. As a keen observer of strategy, data, and engineering, what's important to me is how porpoising impacts teams. I'll use Mercedes as the example because it is most extreme on their car.
For me, the reason you can't count Mercedes out just yet is the confidence they seem to have in the philosophy of their car. Rather than being concerned and bemused like McLaren, they have immense faith in the concept of downwash compared to the Ferrari concept of outwash. In simple terms, the Ferrari pushes air around the car's sides so that it won't disturb the car further back. In contrast, the Mercedes pushes air above and over the car, using that air to generate downforce. The advantage of the Ferrari approach is a consistent platform for the car; the benefit of the Mercedes approach is outright downforce. The Ferrari a carefully balanced package, the Mercedes a beast yet to be tamed.
What's occurring here is that the Mercedes generates so much downforce that at a certain speed, the car pushes itself into the ground, scraping along the floor, slowing the car down, and pushing the car back up. This prevents Mercedes from using its car's full speed, making it very unpredictable during cornering and very uncomfortable for drivers. Mercedes had to deploy a workaround in Bahrain, which required stiffening the suspension, loading the wings up with drag to reduce the top speed and raising the ride height to prevent unpredictability. This, in turn, made the car unhappy riding curbs in the slow corners, lofty on turn in on fast corners and slow down the straights. It made them faster than they otherwise would have been, but still a long way off the Red Bull and Ferrari. The news is that Mercedes are working on an update for Imola to specifically target this problem and unleash the potential of their car. Until then, they'll have to hang in there.
Star of the Weekend
Whilst Kevin Magnussen - who bagged 5th for last season's slowest team Haas after getting a late call up last week to drive for the team this season - was undoubtedly the best story of the weekend, my star of the weekend was Alfa Romeo. Alfa struggled in testing with an unreliable car and yet had a fantastic result for last season's second-slowest team. Bottas managed to stick the Alfa Romeo alongside Lewis Hamilton in Qualifying and, despite having a poor start to the race, managed to climb back up to 6th again. Zhou Guanyu, on his debut, managed to get into the second stage of qualifying and then finished inside the points after the correct tyre strategy from the team. The car is just plain quick - well done, Alfa Romeo.
On This Day
March 21st
In 1960 Ayrton Senna was born - world champion in 1988, 1990 and 1991 and considered by many fans and drivers alike to be the greatest driver in the sport's history.
In 2004 Jenson Button claimed his first podium in Formula 1 at the Malaysian Grand Prix, the season that would see Michael Schumacher win a record 7th world title.
In 1974 Ted Kravitz was born - Sky Sport's pitlane report, who previously worked at the BBC and ITV. After gorgonzola and Babybel, I can't wait to see which cheese Ted compares an F1 car to next!