Mirabeau, Loews, Rascasse. Over the next weekend, Formula 1 cars will return to race through the streets of the Principality, facing corners which are as historic as they are anomalous. The Montecarlo Grand Prix is in fact characterized by the presence of the most tortuous sections of the entire Formula 1 championship, with turns whose minimum radii of curvature have the lowest values.
The hairpin turn of the old station, the chicane of the port and the Antony Noghes turn were classified with the highest value on the decimal scale of the curvature steps, while the Rascasse was exceptionally attributed the value of 11, beyond the full scale for its anomaly that differentiates it from all the other corners of the championship. The minimum radii of curvature are also surprising, less than 10 m in four points of the track, up to the absolute minimum of 5.81 meters.
Similar hairpin bends require the adjustment of the minimum turning radii of modern single-seaters, designed to race on radically different circuits. For this reason, the current technical regulation exceptionally provides for the possibility of adapting the front suspension group of the cars in view of the next event in the Principality, the only exemption in 2021 from the limits imposed by the development freeze. In detail, for the Monte Carlo race it will be possible to use new arms at the front both for the suspension group and for the steering assembly. However, it remains forbidden to make changes to the hub carrier on the wheel side, to the attachments of the same arms to the frame and to the internal components of the suspension, including dampers and elastic elements such as springs and torsion bars.
The changes will therefore mainly affect the length of the elements of the front suspension, in order to favor steering between the tortuous hairpin turns of Monaco. It seems, however, unlikely that we will see a drastic revolution, considering that most of the resources of the teams have already been invested in the 2022 cars. The project interventions granted for Monaco, however, represent an additional variable on the eve of the Grand Prix, an obstacle to the drafting of predictions. The competitiveness of the individual teams, in fact, will not depend exclusively on the performance highlighted in the last few rounds, but also on the specific set-ups validated for the Principality, less constrained by the typical compromises of the other tracks between cornering and straight and between pace in qualifying and race pace.
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