Formula 1 is full of complex lingo and circuit-specific narratives that can confuse and baffle the occasional viewer or new fan. Why is the Hungarian Grand Prix known for its quali bias? What makes the Singapore Grand Prix the most physically challenging race? And why do teams take different rear wings for the Canadian Grand Prix?

With 22 circuits, there can be a lot to take in, so we’ve organised for you to join us in Lando and Oscar’s engineering briefings, in partnership with Google Chrome, where we’ll walk you through this weekend’s key trackside topics so that you can enjoy the Canadian Grand Prix to its fullest.

The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve comes with many considerations, from the varying track temperature and weather conditions to the high number of chicanes and bumpy circuit surface. All of which makes for a busy practice programme for the team in the garage. But why?

Henry Fidler is leading this weekend’s engineering briefing and he’ll be explaining these considerations and their implications. He’ll also go into the surprising significance of a reconfigured pit-entry and the role it could play in this weekend’s grand prix.

It’s time to begin. Grab a coffee and follow us through the glass doors and into the Paddock Performance Centre. Take notes if you need them, but please keep them to yourself.

Engineer: Henry Fidler
Event: Canadian Grand Prix
Circuit: Circuit Gilles Villeneuve

Background

The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve features six pretty big braking zones. With the exception of the longer back straight between T10-T13, those braking zones are separated by quite short straights. There isn’t much of an opportunity for the brakes to cool down between braking events, and that typically causes high wear – because wear is higher when brake temperatures are already high at the initial braking point.

Those high temperatures will be higher if you’re following another car, and this is a circuit where you do often get a lot of following. The temperatures can be especially problematic when following in the three DRS zones, where you will have higher end-of-straight [EOS] speeds and be braking harder to have a lower cornering speed, because you’ll also have less downforce in the tow.

If you add all of that up it has a cumulative impact on brake temperatures, all of which can add up to a painful race if you’ve not got enough margin in your brake cooling – which is why we’ll study that very carefully across Friday, with a mix of laps in clear air and also following.

Why the weather could impact our decision making

The wrinkle in this is the potential for rain. The forecast this weekend is unsettled, which has an impact on brake cooling. It can be very difficult to get the brakes into the right temperature window to be performant: you run a lot of cooling because you need it for the race, but there’s a risk that, if it rains on Saturday, you’ll struggle with too much cooling and cold brakes in qualifying.

The weather might also affect our choice of rear wing. We have an updated wing for this race. The new wing has a similar downforce level to one we have run in some previous races but made to work with a new beam wing and with optimized geometry. At this point, it’s not clear whether this wing will be the optimum choice, or if we should run the slightly higher-downforce wing. In the aero-scans, it isn’t obvious which is better, and so we’ll likely try both versions during practice.

Potentially, one wing may be faster in qualifying, while the other is quicker for the race – but another consideration is that having good straight-line speed is also important for the back straight. Regardless of lap-time, you don’t want to find yourself as the slowest car on the straights because that might lead to quite a painful Sunday.

It is a quandary that we’ll study across practice – but if it’s very close, the likelihood of rain will generally push towards the higher downforce choice of any two levels.

Tyre choice

Along with brake performance and aerodynamics, another pillar of our practice programme is studying tyres. As was the case for last year’s Canadian Grand Prix, we have Pirelli’s three softest compounds on offer. 2022’s race was interesting in that no one ran a Soft tyre on Sunday, and everyone went into the race with either Mediums or Hards. There’s a good chance it will be similar this year – but we’ll need to assess the tyres to be sure.

Generally in Canada, the limiting factor is rear degradation. We’re expecting reasonably low temperatures, which provides more rear grip and helps with degradation – but if the temperature does drop, then the risk of graining increases – and the Soft tyre is most likely to grain, so there’s generally a reluctance to run the Soft during the race – but we’ll want to have some data from practice to properly make that determination.

Why the number of chicanes is significant

The other prominent characteristic of the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is the number of chicanes. It’s important to ride those kerbs, because there’s a lot of corners characterised by a change in direction and, ideally, you want to straighten out those, to carry more speed through the chicanes and gain time, and that entails running the car towards the softer end of the spectrum.

The impact of the bumpy surface

Another thing that drives you to have a more compliant car is that this track is very bumpy in general, particularly in braking. There’s a lot of time to be found in giving the driver confidence on the brakes, and you run soft because of that. Lifting the ride height comes with a performance penalty in the aerodynamic sense, but what we gain from compliance and giving the driver confidence generally outweighs the negative.

In addition to the bumps, there’s also a lot of combined entry points where the risk of locking the front wheels is very high. Lando has driven in this race several times but it’s a new experience for Oscar. It’s difficult to be consistent here with the bumps, so we’ll aim to give him a very compliant car to begin with in practice.

Setting up the car

How compliant we make the car is an interesting topic. It’s sensible to give Oscar a softer car to start with, and gradually make it stiffer – but equally there’s value in having a set-up that’s not too far away from Lando’s – because then Lando provides a good reference of what the car is capable of doing in any given corner and under any given conditions. It’s a tough call to make and relies on the race engineers’ judgement.

A new-look pit-entry

Finally, the pit-entry has been reconfigured this year. We’d always want the drivers to do some practice with that, but it has slightly more importance in Canada, because the race is right on the cusp between one and two stops. The strategists will want a very precise number for pit-loss time, because that will be a factor in determining whether to do one-stop or two.

Briefing complete. Time for Lando and Oscar to head out onto the track in the extended FP2 session so we can collect some data and put our hard work to the test.