Welcome to The Briefing, where you can get a jumpstart on the Australian Grand Prix with our guide to the key topics.

Every race weekend, we’ll speak to one of our engineers to discuss the key talking points ahead of the upcoming Grand Prix and simplify them so that you can dive straight into the action with a better idea of what to expect and what you should be looking out for.  

This week, powered by Google Cloud, we spoke to Tom Stallard, where he compared Albert Park to Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah Corniche Circuit, explained why the weather conditions in Australia are easier to navigate, and highlighted the importance of understanding our tyres this weekend.

1. The weather conditions should be more straightforward

Following a couple of warm events, we’re expecting a fresher weekend here, so in terms of cooling the car, it should be fairly straightforward. We also won’t face the strong winds that were a significant factor in both Bahrain and Jeddah. There was rain in the forecast at the start of this week but that threat is diminishing, and we’re expecting it to stay dry – so hopefully it’ll be a relatively straightforward weekend as far as the ambient conditions go and a good opportunity to learn more about the MCL38.

This will be particularly useful for Oscar. Last year was rain-affected, and given it was Oscar’s first time at this track – driving to the shops doesn’t count – he didn’t get dry running during practice. The competitive sessions were dry, and it was pretty clear he was still improving as the race progressed. We expect more stable conditions to play into his hands.

2. There are similarities between Albert Park and the Jeddah Corniche Circuit

As far as set-up goes, Albert Park is pretty much a copy/paste of the Jeddah Corniche Circuit. It doesn’t have much in common with Bahrain but there are distinct similarities in a few of the corners here with what we faced last time out in Saudi Arabia.

The track is essentially unchanged from last year, though there are a few new kerbs to take a look at in practice. We have the same set of four DRS zones, with two activation points – so both of them are double-DRS – that we had last year. DRS is highly significant here.

In essence, we’ll run the aerodynamic package from Saudi, perhaps with a few small tweaks to optimise it for this circuit. In Qualifying, the four DRS zones mean pretty much every straight-line part of the circuit is run with DRS open. This will make everyone keen to run a bigger gurney, which magnifies the impact of DRS. The compromise is going to be in discovering how large a gurney you can run while retaining reasonable end-of-straight speed.

This leads into the question of whether you bias your set-up towards racing or qualifying. That’s a little bit tricky this year. Albert Park used to have a pronounced qualifying bias, but since the circuit was modified a few years back, and with this generation of cars, it’s more of an even split – again, much like Jeddah. Overtaking is no-longer incredibly difficult – but what is pushing more of a qualifying bias is how very close the field is in 2024. Seems obvious to say it, but the more the cars are running at the same speed, the more advantageous it is to start closer to the front.

3. Understanding the tyres will be key

The biggest issue for practice is understanding the tyres. That’s usually the case but more so this weekend as we have a softer tyre allocation than in previous years, with the C3, C4 and C5 on offer. We’ve had all of these compounds in Australia before, just not all at the same time. It makes the one-stop race – which has been the preference – very difficult. The C3 tyre is our Hard compound, but only one car did a long run with it last year during the race and that didn’t look super-competitive. Given practice was wet last year, we have a lot to learn today.

We’d also like to learn about qualifying performance with the C5. We had that tyre here in 2022 but the cars have developed a lot since then. We need to understand how to prepare it for a qualifying lap, whether it is still suitable for a push-cool-push run and all of those usual qualifying questions.

We assume that C5 would be a very difficult tyre to race, and with the potential for a two-stop Grand Prix, it’d be very brave to go into Qualifying with the maximum five sets of Soft tyres in a 5-1-1 allocation – but there may be a split between teams who takes two Mediums forward and those who take two Hard sets. Teams will be watching each other today, and it isn’t something we’ve already decided. Our laps in FP1 on the longer runs will help us come to a decision.

This is going to be the priority today: learning about the Medium tyres for the race and how good is it going to be. Other than this, it’s a standard Friday plan. We’ll be doing set-up development but there’s no massive tests planned as the first two races haven’t delivered anything that’s surprised us. We’d like to practice a double-shuffle pit stop too – but that might be held over until Saturday as there’s a lot to get in today.

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