Wurz of wisdom - Malaysia
"Ok, let’s do a journey into a driver’s mind on this great and very demanding track. But before we start, let me generally explain the challenge of Sepang. The track was quite flat once, but has become kind of bumpy over the years. Even so, it has everything a driver likes, everything that challenges an engineer and it is also hot and physically demanding.
My favourite section is the quick left-right chicane, turns five and six, which is quite similar in terms of driving style to the chicane section at Bahrain. Probably the key corners though are the first two. You might say that they are ‘Mickey Mouse’, but from a driving and engineering point of view they are not easy at all.
We arrive at turn 1 in top gear at more than 185mph. The braking point is very late, as the grip is very high here, so all that matters really is to be precise when you jump on the brake pedal around 80 metres before the corner. Braking at the beginning is not that difficult – standard high-g with lots of pressure on the pedal. Once you come closer to the entry, then you have to control the brakes with much more care.
Why? Simple: if you keep braking too hard for too long you use too much energy from the tyres for straight line deceleration and that would mean the car and tyres will start to understeer. Or, even worse, if you keep braking too hard at turn in, and you under-rotate the front wheels then once you come off the brake the car will automatically make a snap or sudden move, which is not good. So now the clever ones of you tell me “well Wurzy - you shouldn’t brake too long and too much anyway”. Blindingly clever that comment is, but it’s easier said than done to have the car set up for such things. Naturally you want to carry lots of speed into the corner, taken in second gear, with a very long apex. To carry lots of speed we need the car to be neutral, not understeering, but also with quite a stable rear end. If you get that, it would be brilliant, but as only very few drivers have the luxury of such a car, the rest must
improvise with the driving style.
The entry point to this corner is a point for setting up the car. Well, it is for me, anyway. If you are watching on telly you will see many drivers will slightly vary the entry line (very little variation, less than 1 metre makes a difference, but it might be difficult to spot). After this, we come to the real strange corner, turn two. It’s really difficult. As a driver you like to cut the shortest way through such a tight corner (some of us use first gear, some second), but it has a big change in height (camber change) in the apex. The track literally drops down and the inside wheels are in the air. So all my colleagues know that cutting too short is not good. You have to accept here that this corner feels slow. It feels horrible, actually and never well balanced. If you accept this and drive patiently then you might not lose too much time. You can’t really win time here, only lose it by trying too hard or being too aggressive.
That makes it a tough corner for the engineers, too. The super-slow entry means the car is always doing something, mainly understeering, but once the front goes in and over the camber change and lands, the rear becomes a problem. The moment when the rear drops over the camber change and is in the air is exactly when the driver wants to pick up the throttle. This causes chaos to many aspects: the diff is confused, as one wheel is light or in the air; the traction control is also confused and might act strangely. On top of this, the driver will make a correction on the steering wheel, because at this time the front wheels are loading up after coming down from the camber change in the track.
All this at the same time on this so-called ‘Mickey Mouse corner is a lot. It’s not a man’s corner no, but a clever driver just rolls the car around, accepts the situation and just makes sure his exit is clean. Sounds easy, doesn’t it?"
