2021 Belgian Grand Prix - Spa-Francorchamps, Aug 27 - 29

[Mr.S]

You will roughly end up in a similar position - You gain more on S2 with a bigger wing but you lose on S1 & S3. I will normally suggest a lower downforce set-up as a smaller wing, slipstream & DRS gives huge advantage to the car behind & leave the front-runner a sitting duck if the pace of 2 cars are roughly equal. But then you get the added variable of rain & a stint with inters or wet in a track as long as Spa can mean multiple seconds here & there. In wet & changing conditions, the higher downforce package should work best. I think Bottas with his penalty will go for a lower downforce package, Hamilton higher. Verstappen possibly lower if his pace is less than that of the Mercedes, don't know about Perez or the mid-field guys !

If it’s a wet qualifying, could be a good opportunity for Verstappen to gamble on a wet race, with full wet setup. When it is dry tomorrow, get the car out of parc ferme, change the PU and take the penalties and have a low drag car.

F1 ain't a video game. It it is dry, Verstappen will lose many tenths on the wet set-up plus huge drag which will make him slower on the straights. His PU is 1 race old so it is not like he will gain a lot by changing to a new one. Besides Mercedes are going for a new PU so everyone may have some problems till the end. 23 races is too much for 3 PU Units, it was okay till 18 races. Once you go to 22-23-24 races, 4 PUs should be allowed.

[Jolle]

You will roughly end up in a similar position - You gain more on S2 with a bigger wing but you lose on S1 & S3. I will normally suggest a lower downforce set-up as a smaller wing, slipstream & DRS gives huge advantage to the car behind & leave the front-runner a sitting duck if the pace of 2 cars are roughly equal. But then you get the added variable of rain & a stint with inters or wet in a track as long as Spa can mean multiple seconds here & there. In wet & changing conditions, the higher downforce package should work best. I think Bottas with his penalty will go for a lower downforce package, Hamilton higher. Verstappen possibly lower if his pace is less than that of the Mercedes, don't know about Perez or the mid-field guys !

If it’s a wet qualifying, could be a good opportunity for Verstappen to gamble on a wet race, with full wet setup. When it is dry tomorrow, get the car out of parc ferme, change the PU and take the penalties and have a low drag car.

F1 ain't a video game. It it is dry, Verstappen will lose many tenths on the wet set-up plus huge drag which will make him slower on the straights. His PU is 1 race old so it is not like he will gain a lot by changing to a new one. Besides Mercedes are going for a new PU so everyone may have some problems till the end. 23 races is too much for 3 PU Units, it was okay till 18 races. Once you go to 22-23-24 races, 4 PUs should be allowed.

Not to have a new PU for the race, but to have a replacement for the one they lost at silverstone. If you take your car out of farc ferme you can change the setup. He has to take a penalty at one point at the coming 5 or 6 races anyway.

[Jolle]

I'm quite sure that they'll exhaust all other possible solutions as there are plenty. It is important to not act upon emotion so drastically, especially if such emotion is as strong as that of shock or horror. The biggest issue with the eau rouge-raidillon section is that cars that lose traction end up crashing and rebounding off the barrier and onto the track because it is so close the track, and cars stopping o the track whilst others approach is the most dangerous situation in motorsport. This is sadly what happened in the Hubert crash and the Aitken crash. Another case is this W series where drivers go off the track ad others follow straight on with little deterrence/deceleration even in a full spin. Thus, a good change would be to remove/reprofile the tarmac run-off and to extend the runoff area on the outside of the corner exit- the issue is that there is a slope right behind the fan section after the barrier and a house, but if they put their minds to it they could find solutions for slope stability. In the Spa 24h there were quite scary accidents at the bus stop when the weather changed suddenly and drivers were on slicks. But there is a lot of run-off to the side and beyond the first part of the chicane. But there are other solutions ofcourse.

I wasn’t (or aren’t) acting upon emotion, I’ve been saying it for years. Eau Rouge is one of the most deadly corners on the current calendar and has serious issues that can’t be fixed with extra runoff or something like that (because of the situation right around the corner) and other measures to make the combination safer have been looked at extensively by many experts over the years and in particular after Huberts crash. The “ignition” of both accidents was quite similar, the W series crash was lucky in that sense that the pileup happened earlier then at the F2 race in 2019.

This corner combination is just waiting to take someone’s life again.

Let's just agree to disagree then. The issue with the barrier is inarguable, and the only solution cannot be to alter the actual corner when there is a clear issue with barrier proximity, they already extended the runoff and tyre barrier on the inside of the Raidillon section after Hubert's car had crashed in 2019 now it is time to extend the runoff and the outside barrier for the Raidillon section.

The corner itself or it's geometry cannot be solely the issue, and I mean that with all due respect to the drivers who had their lives affected by the corner but plenty of vehicles have done 10s of thousands of laps flat out at that corner even in wet conditions including today in the F3 race going side by side, all this in the past month alone - and there have 2 big incidents at that corner due to barrier proximity, which is an issue not unique to eau rouge at this same track. Imagine a car smashing into the barrier at no name corner and spinning back on track with others following closely behind - it'd be nightmarish, there is so little runoff and room for error.

The eau rouge section has the same problem Tamburello had, nature is in the way of having sufficient run offs at the right places. Tamburello almost claimed the lives of Piquet and Berger only to be changed after Senna’s death.
Eau Rouge is more history then actual excitement at the moment, F1 cars are flat anyway there. But the chance is quite high that the next motorsport death will be at that corner.

[Just_a_fan]

Hope everyone is having a good Friday, what's the weekend looking like after Friday practice? Currently at carfest south.

Carfest? We went to the first one. Great time had by all.

For the weekend, we are clay shooting on Sunday morning and having Sunday lunch in the local. Will watch the "highlights" in the evening unless I can find a stream to watch on my phone. Will try to watch qualifying tomorrow but yeah, whatever.

First race after the summer break and you go clay shooting ?

I enjoy clay shooting with a group of friends. It's usually more fun than F1 these days.

[Just_a_fan]

What about 90s style helmet cam?

Of course 1994 is also famous for not having eau rouge. (And seeing the accidents from today and two years ago, I think it might be time to say goodbye once again)

It had Eau Rouge - that is the left hand kink at the bottom of the hill. The only thing they did was slow it down by making it a real corner rather than a fast kink.

[SiLo]

Does anyone have any long run data? I've been looking around but I can't find any.

https://www.formula1.com/content/dam/fo ... /image.png

From Lawrence Barretto on the official F1 website.

Thanks!

[Jolle]

What about 90s style helmet cam?

Of course 1994 is also famous for not having eau rouge. (And seeing the accidents from today and two years ago, I think it might be time to say goodbye once again)

It had Eau Rouge - that is the left hand kink at the bottom of the hill. The only thing they did was slow it down by making it a real corner rather than a fast kink.

You know what I meant

[politburo]

I wasn’t (or aren’t) acting upon emotion, I’ve been saying it for years. Eau Rouge is one of the most deadly corners on the current calendar and has serious issues that can’t be fixed with extra runoff or something like that (because of the situation right around the corner) and other measures to make the combination safer have been looked at extensively by many experts over the years and in particular after Huberts crash. The “ignition” of both accidents was quite similar, the W series crash was lucky in that sense that the pileup happened earlier then at the F2 race in 2019.

This corner combination is just waiting to take someone’s life again.

Let's just agree to disagree then. The issue with the barrier is inarguable, and the only solution cannot be to alter the actual corner when there is a clear issue with barrier proximity, they already extended the runoff and tyre barrier on the inside of the Raidillon section after Hubert's car had crashed in 2019 now it is time to extend the runoff and the outside barrier for the Raidillon section.

The corner itself or it's geometry cannot be solely the issue, and I mean that with all due respect to the drivers who had their lives affected by the corner but plenty of vehicles have done 10s of thousands of laps flat out at that corner even in wet conditions including today in the F3 race going side by side, all this in the past month alone - and there have 2 big incidents at that corner due to barrier proximity, which is an issue not unique to eau rouge at this same track. Imagine a car smashing into the barrier at no name corner and spinning back on track with others following closely behind - it'd be nightmarish, there is so little runoff and room for error.

The eau rouge section has the same problem Tamburello had, nature is in the way of having sufficient run offs at the right places. Tamburello almost claimed the lives of Piquet and Berger only to be changed after Senna’s death.
Eau Rouge is more history then actual excitement at the moment, F1 cars are flat anyway there. But the chance is quite high that the next motorsport death will be at that corner.

There is actually plenty of space, so much so they allow fans to watch the race from there, simply take that space and increase the runoff, perhaps increase surface abrasion of the tarmac as well. These are real engineering solution rather than some patchwork of adding a chicane. Tamburello itself may not have been the entire problem, other corners at imola took lives as well because the cars back then had limited safety features and tore apart under load very easily - just watch the Ratzenberger crash, his car tore in half and his head snapped back due to the impact, look at the strength of the monococque today, and the halo + HANS device it is not even comparable. Also you not watch any other series than F1?. Even though the last open-wheel death was at eau rouge-raidillon, Spa had not had a driver die in a race there since the 70s atleast even with all it's configurations and many open-wheel deaths happen in American oval racing again due to barrier proximity. We have seen many recent bad accidents at Silverstone, Monza, Imola, Mugello with no casualties and perhaps that is just fortunate.

[BassVirolla]

mediocre drivers getting caught out by the track conditions is what happened (it started to rain)

Six in a row getting off track or spinning... I would like to doubt that's only related to skills.

They were all just surprised by the rain or did not account for it going into that corner, three lost the car in the exact same fashion and a total of 6 or so had to lose control of their car until those further back realized what was happening - it's that simple.

I don't doubt it. I would like to doubt it.

[maxxer]

Carfest? We went to the first one. Great time had by all.

For the weekend, we are clay shooting on Sunday morning and having Sunday lunch in the local. Will watch the "highlights" in the evening unless I can find a stream to watch on my phone. Will try to watch qualifying tomorrow but yeah, whatever.

First race after the summer break and you go clay shooting ?

I enjoy clay shooting with a group of friends. It's usually more fun than F1 these days.

Ach yeah you are right about that these days Have a good hunting and come back when this topic is 100 pages long

[nevill3]

Raining hard at the moment, qualifying could be delayed if the rain doesn't let up

[Artur Craft]

Not sure what it was of the era, but the cinematography was a lot better from the mid ‘80s up into the ‘90s.

I think I’m being objective when I say that too.

You´re!

Btw, it´s raining at Spa and QLF will be wet

[falonso81]

Seeing the SC go round the track makes me wonder. Is this road car relevant to judge the track conditions for the F1 cars? Would it be more relevant if they had an F1 car (maybe a last years car or something) to go out there and judge the track conditions?

[Big Tea]

If a team sent a car out in qualli with Gurney flaps on, qualified well, then for the race sent the car out with the same part on, but attached with say double sided tape and it flew off after lap 1, would they be penalised? (as long as the car was not then under weight)

[Jolle]

Seeing the SC go round the track makes me wonder. Is this road car relevant to judge the track conditions for the F1 cars? Would it be more relevant if they had an F1 car (maybe a last years car or something) to go out there and judge the track conditions?

It’s mostly for checking standing water, an experienced driver like they have will be able to judge it well without a formula car. And, a road car can drive through standing water while a F1 car will spin.