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 Monaco Grand Prix?

With 23 circuits, there can be a lot to take in, so in partnership with Google Chrome, 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 Azerbaijan Grand Prix to its fullest.

Jose Manuel López is leading this weekend’s engineering briefing. We’ve only enjoyed one prior experience of the Miami Grand Prix, and so there’s still some figuring out to do, especially after the introduction of our first upgrade of the season last time out in Azerbaijan. And with only one practice session in Baku with which to test it, there’s a lot to still a lot of data to be gathered on it in Miami.

In the Florida free practices, the team will be looking to test out the improvements and see how the updated MCL60 compares to its predecessor, 2022’s MCL36, around the Miami International Autodrome.

Looking to explain what they’ll be testing and why is Jose Manuel López. It’s time to begin, so 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: Miami Grand Prix
Circuit: Miami International Autodrome

Background

In Baku, we introduced our new aero package. It seemed to do what we were expecting, but with just the one session before parc fermé and qualifying, we didn’t really have an opportunity to study it – both because we didn’t have the time or the laps to experiment but also because the cars aren’t built with the usual Friday package of sensors qualifying is on Friday afternoon.

Here in Miami, where we have the three practice sessions once again, we’ll have the opportunity to do more runs, gather more data and really do the learning that we would ordinarily have done with a new package.

There’s are many things we couldn’t do in Azerbaijan that we can do here – for example, use cameras trained on the front wing to see how it behaves when the car is running. We could not do that in Baku, simply because it would have taken too long to strip the equipment off and get the car down to its racing weight. This, however, is a normal Friday evening process for the crews.

Downforce and ride-height

One aspect of our evaluation will be splitting the cars in FP1, running two different rear wing configurations, examining how this package operates at different downforce levels, one of which being the wing we expect to run for the rest of the weekend and one will be just for evaluation purposes.

In that same vein, we’ll do a ride-height test with both cars at the start of this session, a once-past at a ride-height that isn’t what we plan to run, but just to test the car in a different configuration, in a test driven by the aero guys to confirm the car is behaving as they expect with a specific ride height.

All of this data will help us in the long-term – but we’ll also get some pointers that will help us optimise the car for this track, and then for the start of FP2, we should put both cars in what we think is the correct race spec – assuming there aren’t any burning questions arising from FP1.

Quali spec or race spec?

We have a similar issue here to what we had in Baku. According to our aero scans, the best set-up for qualifying is not quite the same as the best set-up for racing, with the ideal downforce level a bit lower for the race, where speed on the straights to attack and defend will be important.

Are we likely to lean more towards favouring the race or favouring qualifying? Right now, I’d say that we’re very open-minded with that question. Once we’ve learned what we need to learn, studied all of the data tonight, we’ll be able to decide.

Studying the surface

We’re also very keen to learn about this new surface. It’s the second week in a row that we’ve had fresh tarmac to study, and what we see here actually looks quite similar to what we had in Baku – but walking around it is no substitute for having the drivers do laps. Only then will we really know how smooth it is, and how grippy.

The grip level is something else we will be very interested in  – last year we saw really, really low grip – but we won’t know how grippy until the cars drive. At the same time, it looks very dark, which means it will get very, very hot.

Those temperatures are going to have a big impact on tyre performance. Add in the number of high- and medium-speed corners, and we’re expecting to see more degradation here than we did in Baku – but how much more is something we’ll only know when we’ve been out.

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.