It is a moderately active Wednesday in the Red Bull Ring paddock. Those who work in the garages are present in full ranks, but the top management will arrive on the track only tomorrow afternoon, anticipated by the drivers by a few hours.
Without the stress of racing days, one of the most popular topics in Spielberg today was the arrival of the weekend with the format that includes the Sprint Qualifying, which will debut in the next round of the World Championship, the British Grand Prix.
“It is not just a matter of planning a race of one hundred kilometers – confided an engineer – the whole format of the weekend changes, we have been busy for weeks to review all the weekend’s activities”.
In a hyper-structured world like that of Formula 1, every change is carefully evaluated, and discussing in the Austrian paddock many aspects emerged that at first glance are not evaluated like until now. The whole weekend activity plan will actually change, a brand new weekend that we analyze in detail.
Same gearbox and power unit for the entire weekend
The first effect that Sprint Qualifying will cause is the change in the free practice format, which will be reduced to two sessions instead of the usual three. This will force the teams to change the activity in the FP1 session, which will in fact be the only hour of track activity available before the qualifying session, scheduled for the afternoon.
The main objective on Friday morning will become to prepare the car for qualifying, an absolute novelty with many obstacles, starting with the conditions of the track which in the first practice session is usually not very rubbery and in rare cases also dirty.
From the simulations completed by some teams it emerges that in FP1 a set of hard tires will be used for the first thirty minutes, to then move on to a qualifying simulation with a set of softs. On some tracks less severe with tires, the first half of the session could be completed with mediums.
Another aspect that emerges are the difficulties associated with using the engine-gearbox group from free practice, as is the case today. The teams use the race gearbox (which must be used for 6 GPs) on the single-seaters only on Friday evening, and the same happens for the engine from the moment in which the power unit number 2 is debuted, which is preserved for qualifying and the race, leaving the mileage of the two sessions on Friday to the previous engine.
On weekends with the Sprint Qualifying, rotation, which usually takes place on Friday evening, becomes complex, as it should be completed between the end of the FP1 session and the start of qualifying.
At Silverstone the free practice session will end at 15:30, while qualifying will start at 18:00 (local hour).
“The actual working time that you can count on is an hour and a half – confirmed an engineer – I don’t think the teams will run the risk of having unexpected events. Technically, you could try to change the engine and gearbox, but it would be a very extreme operation.”
Saturday morning dedicated to long-runs
In qualifying, the teams will have 4 sets of soft tires at their disposal, plus an additional set for the drivers who will arrive in Q3. There will therefore be no choice of compound with which to try to pass Q2, as there will be an obligation to mount that specific set at the start of the race.
From Friday afternoon the cars will in fact be under parc fermé rules, and from that moment interventions will be allowed only on consumables and damaged components. One aspect, the latter, still at the center of confrontations between teams and the FIA.
Saturday morning will be the time of the second free practice session, an hour of activity on the track that will not allow the usual work on the setup, in fact already frozen the previous day.
The teams seem oriented to use this session for a long-run with medium tyres (the compound that should be used in the Sprint Qualifyng) and with a load of fuel necessary to cover the hundred kilometers planned.
In the first stages of practice it is likely that the teams will complete laps with one of the soft sets used in qualifying the previous day and then mount the ‘yellow’. The forecasts indicate that the long-run with the mediums will be completed in thirty minutes, leaving the possibility for the teams to be able to dedicate the final twenty minutes of the session to laps with maximum fuel load and hard tires, thus simulating the conditions of the race on Sunday.
Free tires at the start of the qualifying race and the GP
In the Sprint Qualifying (as well as in the Grand Prix) the teams will have the freedom to choose the tire compound with which to start. As mentioned, the trend of the top teams in the Saturday race should be to use medium tires, but it is not excluded that among those who start from the rear there may be some drivers willing to bet on soft.
At the start of Sunday’s race, the drivers will have a set of mediums and a new hard set at their disposal (the total number delivered by Pirelli for the weekend to each driver goes from 13 to 12 sets, 2 hard, 4 medium and 6 soft), and it is likely that the initial choice will be that of the medium, a less complex compound to bring to temperature, a fundamental aspect in the first laps of the race.
With twice as many starts and first laps of the race, it seems that teams are taking into consideration the possibility to bring at the track an extra front wing for each driver, but apart from this precaution, the transport of material should not suffer any impacts.
In the case of Silverstone, however, the weekend program will change the logistics. “These are times that we usually have in Bahrain or Abu Dhabi – underlined the head of a team – in fact the activity on Friday will be all in the early and late afternoon”.
The postponement is aimed at triggering the qualifying session at a time when it is more likely the public will be able to watch the event taking place (for the first time) on a working day.
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