Robert Kubica: “We want to get back to scoring regular points”
Spa is a unique circuit in the F1 season. What challenges does it present? Spa is quite different to all the other circuits we run at because, although we use lower downforce levels similar to Canada, this circuit has many more high-speed corners. That makes it tricky to balance the downforce level with getting good top speed, which you need because there are two very long sections at the start and end of the lap, where you spend a long time at full throttle. Often, this is a circuit that throws up some surprises, and suddenly cars that haven’t been quick all year can be good in Spa. From the team’s point of view, we will be running the f-duct for the first time this weekend, and we hope it will work straight away so that we have as much practice time as possible to extract the maximum performance from this system.
Will the f-duct change the approach to this race? We have seen a tendency for cars running the f-duct to use higher downforce levels than normal, because they can stall the rear wing and still generate good top speed. I think that will change the approach to Spa, too, because teams will be able to run quite a lot of downforce and still achieve good top speed. Although this is a circuit we all like driving on, it’s still a track where car performance is very important.
What do the drivers find so enjoyable about Spa? It’s definitely a circuit all the drivers enjoy and we all look forward to driving there. It’s a bit different to the other circuits: we have this combination of low downforce levels and high-speed corners, there are a lot of corner combinations where they flow from one exit to the entry of the next and the circuit is quite wide so you can choose different lines. It’s a good circuit for racing, too, because the long straights can give good chances to overtake, and that can make the races quite interesting.
You had a tough afternoon in Hungary. What will your approach be to the final part of the season? After such a long break, I’m not thinking about the last race but more on what’s coming up. It will be a tough end to the season, because we have just two more races in Europe followed by some long trips to Asia, South America and the Middle East. I’ve been out of luck in the last three races, with no points in Silverstone or Budapest, so I would like to get back to how we were racing earlier in the year: scoring regular points and fighting for good positions. I think the target for myself and the whole team will be to close the gap to the top teams during these races.
Vitaly Petrov: “Budapest was a weekend where everything came together”
Vitaly, let’s look back to Budapest where you finished fifth, your best result in F1. You must have been very happy with your performance… It was a very satisfying weekend. We thought that we would be quick because our car works well on this sort of track. The car was easy to drive and I found a good balance with my engineers so that I could get the most from the car. It was a weekend where everything came together; we improved step-by-step; and I didn’t make any mistakes. It was nice to begin the summer break after a race like that.
What have you been up to during the last three weeks? I took some holiday to relax and saw my family and friends. Then I did some sports: waterskiing, jet-skiing and football, just to have some fun. It was nice to have a break and get refreshed, but I’m always ready to get back in the car. I also spent some time looking over videos of old races this year to analyse some things – the good and the bad – to see what I could learn and where I can improve.
Spa is always a favourite with the drivers – what do you think of the track? It’s a circuit I know quite well from my GP2 experience and I’m happy to be going back there. For the set-up, it’s really important to have a very good aerodynamic balance because the track has so many high-speed corners and you need good stability in the corners. Hopefully we will have our f-duct working well for this weekend so that we can be as competitive as we were in Budapest, even though Spa is a circuit with completely different characteristics.
What are your expectations for the weekend? Anything is possible. If everything comes together: me, the car, and the team, the results will come as well. But we still have to wait and see how the f-duct works in free practice and how the car behaves in the high-speed corners. We know our car is already quite stable in the fast corners, but it’s difficult to match the Red Bulls and the Ferraris. So it’s difficult to know what to expect, but we will try our best.
Eric Boullier: “Ready to fight until the end of the season”
Eric, let’s look back on Budapest where both R30s qualified in the top ten and showed good pace over the weekend. Were you satisfied with the performance of the car? It was very good to see the relative pace of the car and to see both drivers qualify in the top ten. However, the outcome of the race was a mixed one because we missed the chance to get both cars in the top six. Also, we are here to fight everyone and it’s clear that Red Bull are still much quicker than us. So we know that we still have a lot of hard work ahead to improve our pace if we want to fight with them.
Vitaly finished fifth in Budapest, his best result in F1. You must have been very proud of his performance? The whole team was very happy with Vitaly and it was his best weekend so far. He and the team prepared the car well during free practice to be ready for qualifying, and then he had a faultless race. It was a complete weekend without any mistakes and I think this is as much as you can expect from a rookie driver.
What will this result do for his confidence as we enter the final third of the season? I’m sure it will give him a boost. Now it’s up to him to capitalise on this so that he can repeat this performance on a regular basis.
One of the most significant updates of the season has been the blown floor. Do you feel the team is now able to extract the maximum performance from it? I think we still have some improvements to make in terms of the set-up on the car, but overall we are getting a considerable gain from running the blown floor. The drivers also seem happier with the balance of the car.
The team will introduce its f-duct this weekend. How big a challenge has it been to introduce this device? It has been a huge challenge. To begin with we decided to focus our development on the blown floor and on other aero upgrades, which is why we are only introducing our f-duct in Spa. It’s not an easy device to get right, but the one we have now looks promising in terms of the simulation results we have seen at the factory. But we still need to test it on the car, and this will be the priority on Friday. It’s clear that Spa will be a circuit where the f-duct should bring big gains.
Can we expect the R30 to be as strong at Spa as it was in Budapest? Let’s say that on paper the f-duct should be a big step forward in terms of lap-time gain, so we are obviously keeping our fingers crossed that we can maintain the pace that we had in Budapest.
Formula 1 has just come back from its summer break. Is the team feeling refreshed? I think that the development pace in Formula 1 is so intense these days that it’s a very sensible idea to give the team a break in the middle of the season. It means that everybody can come back ready to fight until the end of the season and push hard with our development for 2011.
Update on Ho-Pin Tung
Renault F1 Team third driver Ho-Pin Tung is making a good recovery from the small fracture to the lumbar vertebra that he sustained during the GP2 feature race at the Hungaroring. A medical examination this week confirmed that he is on the road to a full recovery, but that Ho-Pin will be unable to compete this weekend in Spa. A further medical assessment will be made prior to the next race in Monza. The Renault F1 Team will not name an official replacement as third driver.
Robert’s Guide to Spa
Spa is one of the best, if not the best place for a driver. I think most of the drivers say that they enjoy driving there. I still prefer Suzuka, but Spa has a unique character. It’s a pretty amazing track and a lot of the corners are not actually corners at all because they are taken at full throttle. The middle sector especially is just amazing.
The set-up for the car is very straightforward. You need good top speed for the first and last sectors because they are very quick with a lot of straights and sections where you are on full throttle. Then you have the middle sector with all the corners, where you need to have downforce.
This year I think most of the cars will be using f-ducts, so the problem of having a car that works in all the sectors will be easier to solve. With the f-duct you can still have a lot of downforce and then reduce the drag to be more efficient on the straights. I think Spa will be one of the best tracks for the f-duct.
Turn one is always difficult on the first lap. It’s tight on entry, but it’s quite wide on the exit so you can take completely different lines. But it’s difficult because you have to make sure that you defend your position without compromising your exit.
Eau Rouge on the first lap is also very tough when you are behind someone because you are losing a lot of downforce. You can risk a lot on entry and going in flat, or at a very high speed, brings you a lot of speed up the hill. But if you have to back off, you lose so much speed on the approach to Les Combes.
The corners after Les Combes are good fun: there are three corners, turns five, six and seven, where you are going from one to the other, and it’s important to keep online. If you make a mistake in the first part of this sequence, you are compromising the other two corners.
The downhill corners, such as the double left-hander of Pouhon, are some of the best and the second sector is really amazing and nice to drive. It’s the kind of track where you can adapt with different lines and different approaches, either taking a quicker entry or sacrificing the entry for a better exit.
There are no easy overtaking opportunities, unless a driver makes a mistake, but this year with f-ducts it might be possible to take a slipstream. So the last chicane might be an overtaking possibility and maybe Les Combes after the long run from Eau Rouge.
A ‘typical Friday’ at the track
Friday at a Grand Prix is always a hectic time, even though the end-of-day press release usually just talks about a ‘normal Friday’. There’s a massive amount of work to shoehorn into just three hours of track time. Tyre compounds need evaluating, data needs collecting, and the drivers must find a good set-up direction for the rest of the weekend. But what exactly does it all involve?
To tackle these tasks, both Robert and Vitaly usually work together and pool their data to ensure the team gets through the workload. Of course, there are some things that both drivers need to assess, such as the feel for tyres, but it’s not necessary to repeat everything with each car.
On Friday, the cars run with varying fuel loads across the sessions, usually starting with low fuel runs to allow the drivers to assess set-up changes and get an understanding for the car. The high fuel runs will be used to assess tyre degradation, brake wear and race pace, and will help the engineers plan the race strategy. In this way, the team works with both qualifying and the race in mind.
As well as dialling the car into the track, Friday represents the only real chance to test and validate new upgrades. For example, the team developed some new gearbox parts recently and ran them on the car on three different Fridays before finally racing them. Of course, the main development item in Spa will be the validation of the f-duct to see if its performance matches the factory simulations.
Perhaps the main challenge facing the team on the first day of practice is evaluating the tyres compounds, especially because the allocation is so restricted. In FP1 just one set of prime tyres are available, which can only be used in this session, while for FP2 there are just one set of primes and one set of options. Each driver never has more than one set of each compound available during either of the Friday sessions, which means fresh rubber is always in short supply.
In terms of tyres for this weekend, Bridgestone has supplied the hard and soft compounds because Spa’s high-speed corners always produce high degradation rates. And it’s not uncommon to have low ambient and track temperatures at Spa, which could make it difficult to get heat into the tyres and get them working at their best.
The Friday set-up programme for Spa is likely to see quite a bit of experimentation with aero levels. Both the first and final sectors are dominated by straights where top speed is important, while the middle sector requires downforce to cope with the high-speed corners such as Pouhon. The team will therefore experiment to see which direction brings the biggest gains in lap time.
And what about the greatest corner of them all? These days Eau Rouge is no longer the challenge it once was, simply because the cars have so much grip available. That’s not to say it shouldn’t be treated with respect on Friday morning, but it won’t take long before the cars are taking it flat.
At the end of the Friday sessions there’s still plenty of work to be done. The team can change anything on the cars overnight and it’s not uncommon to see the mechanics burning the midnight oil as they strip and rebuild the cars. The occasional all-nighter isn’t out of the question either. The usual routine involves a change of engines and gearboxes to fit the race units, as well as replacing radiators and some suspension components. And of course, it’s the time to make those important set-up changes that are needed for Saturday morning.
The final Friday challenge is trying to interpret the timesheets and gauge competitiveness. It’s certainly not an easy task, with lap times on low and high fuel loads varying by as much as four seconds, but the engineers usually have a fair idea of the pecking order by the end of the day. By looking at the short and long run pace of others, an assessment can be made of overall competitiveness.
