Mark Hughes on the factors that influenced the balance of power

Mark Hughes, an expert from the British publication The Race, tried to analyze the factors that influenced the balance of power in Miami.

In Formula 1 there is always a certain basic balance of power, but sometimes it is influenced by external factors, so the usual picture does not fully develop.

In some cases, these factors are noticeable and quite obvious. These could be, for example, mistakes in choosing the moment to enter the track in relation to the condition of the surface, or certain technical problems that hinder the favorites. But sometimes it happens that certain factors are present and exert their influence, but it is not entirely clear what they are related to.

That’s exactly what happened this weekend in Miami, although even on such a day Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing did the best work.

At times on Friday it seemed that Lando Norris in the modernized McLaren car was perfectly capable of competing with Red Bull and Ferrari, but Mercedes also showed good speed in some episodes, but in other cases they could not do not rise above the average. level. But Aston Martin unexpectedly failed.

But Daniel Ricciardo, driving a Visa RB car, surprised everyone when he showed the 4th fastest time in the sprint qualifying, but the next day he couldn’t even get out of the first part of the Saturday qualifying.

“For some reason it was extremely difficult to get the tires working properly throughout the lap,” said Max, who won pole position for the seventh time in a row. – From time to time some minor issues arose, making it extremely difficult to complete a perfect lap.

It wasn’t very pleasant to drive; you always had to guess how the car would behave. The track is very slippery, the tires are not performing well and the combination of all these factors led to real problems.”

Charles Leclerc, who set the second fastest time in qualifying, agrees: “The tires were very unstable, especially in the second sector. In many corners I just didn’t understand how the car would behave.”

But it seems that Lando Norris dealt with all these deviations best and set the fifth fastest time in a modernized McLaren car.

He supported Verstappen and Leclerc that it was easy to make a mistake, but that didn’t bother him much: “You go 2 km/h faster or even 1 km/h into the corner, and the difference is that you still Always drive near the limit or have already exceeded this limit, because then you lose a lot of time. And then you go through a bend and it seems to you that next time you can brake a few meters later, but then it turns out that this is impossible.

I think this is because the track is too hot. The characteristics of the asphalt surface may also have played a role.

In general, even if it seems to you that you have not yet reached the limit of what is possible, this is in fact not the case. And it’s not the tires; it’s just too hot here.”

This seems like a very good explanation, especially because it fits in well with Pirelli’s findings that the asphalt surface is 30% more abrasive than a year ago. This may be due to the fact that the coating has been treated with water under very high pressure. When the gaps between the fine gravel particles become larger, the chemical interaction between the rubber and the asphalt surface weakens.

The limiting level of grip at such high tarmac temperatures (+45 degrees) was reached relatively quickly, but the usual approach racers take, figuring out how hard they can attack and gradually increasing speed, didn’t work this time.
This determined the balance of power, but the riders did not feel like they had reached the maximum.

Another specific problem with the high temperatures was that the soft tires had to be handled very carefully during the pit exit lap to prevent the rear tire surface from overheating.

The unusual performance of the tires, as well as the weekend format, which included a sprint, led to the teams adapting less well to what was happening than normal. In reality, this is probably mostly the case.

Mercedes struggled on Friday as they couldn’t get the medium tires to work properly, and neither George Russell nor Lewis Hamilton could qualify for final sprint qualifying, but they managed to find the tires on Saturday. Hamilton even set a fast lap in the final session of Saturday’s qualifying session on the Medium.

As a result, Russell will start seventh, Hamilton eighth. However, both he and his partner showed a worse time in the final qualifying than the same Lewis on soft tires in the second session.

“We found it difficult to keep the tires within the optimal temperature range,” said Mercedes chief racing engineer Andrew Shovlin. “But it seems that not only our team had these problems, but when we found the right approach to the tires we were able to show good results.”

Success at the Miami circuit went to those who managed to achieve more or less stable car performance, better than their rivals, and these were Max Verstappen and Red Bull. Even if he wasn’t very happy with it himself. But everything in this world is relative…