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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, where we’ll walk you through this weekend’s key trackside topics so that you can enjoy the Japanese Grand Prix to its fullest.

The second part of this Asian double-header continues in Japan, and even though the circuits share a continent, they’re almost nothing alike. The Suzuka International Racing Course requires an entirely different setup to the Marina Bay Street Circuit, and comes with a whole host of different challenges and fresh questions.

Aerodynamics and efficiency are key at this high-speed yet technical track, whilst factors such as wind and rain can also play a role across the weekend. Having travelled directly from Singapore, it should make for a busy few practice sessions as we work to home in on our setup and settle on a first-choice race strategy.

If that wasn’t enough, Oscar will be taking on our final major upgrade package of 2023, which Lando got his hands on first in Singapore. Both have plenty of testing to do on the updated MCL60, in addition to all of the usual Suzuka prep.

In partnership with Google Chrome, Jose Manuel López will lead this weekend’s engineering briefing, where he’ll be explaining all of the above to you and more. 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: Jose Manuel López
Event: Japanese Grand Prix
Circuit: Suzuka International Racing Course

Appreciating the incredible Japanese fans

It’s great to be at Suzuka. It’s a fabulous and demanding track – but before we get into the technical stuff, it’s worth pointing out that it’s a very happy pit-lane because the fans here are brilliant: very respectful of F1 and possibly the most committed we see across the calendar. Our preparation for this race stretches back a couple of months but I suspect, for some of the fans, it goes back even further. The outfits and signs are excellent, the attention to supporting particular drivers and teams is really well received. It’s a wonderful atmosphere for the Japanese Grand Prix weekend, and while everyone working in the paddock is very busy, you have to find time to look up from time to time and properly appreciate it.

Switching from Singapore to Suzuka

It’s a big jump from set-up in Singapore to set-up at Suzuka. We’re coming from a track characterized by its low-speed corners, that’s very bumpy, with heavy kerbs and demanding in terms of ride, to one with much higher speeds, where making the car as stiff as we can is important. We’re also moving up the tyre range from the Softest tyres to an allocation that’s much stiffer – and so last week’s Hard tyre, the C3 compound, becomes this week’s Soft tyre.

Another area of study is brake performance. It’s challenging in Suzuka for the opposite reasons it was challenging in Singapore. There, the brakes get very hot from constant use. Here, we’re worried they’ll be too cool because there are only three big braking zones – Degner 2, Hairpin, Chicane – and some small dabs elsewhere – T1, Spoon. It means we have to do things to keep the temperatures up – enough to have good performance in qualifying but not so much that the brakes overheat during the race if we’re stuck in a train of cars.  So, plenty to look at today.

Efficiency is key at the Suzuka International Racing Course

Suzuka is dominated by a mix of high and medium-speed corners and a very long, power-limited section from Spoon – Turn 14 – all the way to Turn 1, separated by the low-speed chicane in the middle. It means we need a very efficient car, the aero platform is very important, so you’ll see cars running as stiff as they can get away with to make the aero platform more solid. We have the very high-speed corners with a quick change of direction through the Esses in Sector 1 and Turn 8 (Degner 1) is really fast as well. So, compared to Singapore, minimum speeds are different, downforce levels are different, and car set-up is different.

That said, while high-speed at Suzuka is what everyone notices, the two low-speed corners are important. T11 (The Hairpin) and T16-17 (The Chicane) are always in our plans because they are key to having a good weekend. Slow corners are always disproportionately important because – obviously – you spend longer going through them. So, we have to make judgements about how much we’re prepared to give away to accommodate them. The Chicane, for instance, demands a soft car that can ride kerbs. It’s at the opposite end of the spectrum to the Esses, which require a very reactive, very stiff car that switches direction very quickly and doesn’t run kerbs. It’s a matter of finding the right compromise.

Similarities between Suzuka and Silverstone

In this regard, Suzuka shares a lot of commonalities with Silverstone. That’s definitely something we reference coming into this weekend, as the British Grand Prix has a lot of high-speed and medium-speed corners, pushing a lot of lateral energy into the tyres – but also a low-speed section around the start-finish section of the lap.

Testing out our upgrades

The guys have been busy in the last couple of days, fitting the aero package upgrade to Oscar’s car. Lando ran this in Singapore and now Oscar’s car will use the same thing. We’ve been staggering these upgrades all season due to resources and time at the factory and the pace at which parts can be built, rather than for any performance logic. It was a big push to get enough parts ready a race ahead of schedule to have them available for Lando in Singapore.

We learned a lot in Singapore by following a practice run plan designed to help the aerodynamicists, who were very busy with the flo-vis. That was very important to understand the airflow around the car and see how the real world correlated with what we had seen at the factory.

The Marina Bay Street Circuit is a difficult place to properly understand an aero package, however. It’s surrounded by walls, it’s very bumpy and - while we’ve got an excellent start to understanding what we have, and were very relaxed about running it - we’ve still got plenty of analysis to do to fine-tune our understanding. So, we’ll be seeing a lot more flo-vis on the car this weekend, as we do more correlation tests and CSL [Constand Speed Limit] aero runs. Having both cars in the same spec should double the data we can generate and confirm that all the models behave as expected.

We’ll start practice running the cars with different rear wings, one with the high downforce wing that ran in Zandvoort and Singapore, the other with the one used before that. We’ll also try out various beam wings and gurney flaps. There’s a very complex set of options, but in the broadest terms, we’ll be testing the cars at the bottom end of the highest downforce wing and the top end of the next step down. 

Wind can play a part

Another thing we’ll be keeping an eye on is the wind direction. The lap is highly influenced by whether there’s a headwind or tailwind through the Esses. We’re close to the coast here, and it does move around – but that super-quick section is very sensitive to conditions, and we will tweak our level of downforce to suit whatever wind direction we’re expecting for qualifying and the race.

Devising a strategy

Suzuka tends to be a multi-stop race, but how many stops is something we would like to confirm today, if we get enough dry running completed. It’s tough to have a reference here, because last year was very wet and we didn’t come here in 2020 or 2021. Going into the weekend, we see all three compounds as potential race tyres – but that is something we need to confirm on track.

We also have some experimental 2024 C2 compounds available. This isn’t the full in-session tyre test that was originally planned, so there are not the usual rules about when we can use them and for how many laps. Having them at a high degradation circuit like this one will be useful for development – but also allow us a few more runs in preparation for this weekend.

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