Welcome to The Briefing, where you can get a jumpstart on the British 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, in partnership with Google Cloud, we spoke to Henry Fidler, who revealed that there is a lot to consider for our home Grand Prix. He explained why there’s more of a race bias at Silverstone than in previous years, the compromises we may have to make with our setup, and the importance of gearing. Henry also added that weather could change all of this but reassured us that the team is well-prepared for all eventualities.

1. There’s more of a race-bias than in previous years

Silverstone is an interesting circuit, with the modern layout demanding several compromises. Most of the lap is high-speed but we do spend a lot of time in the low-speed corners, which are very long and feature combination steering/braking. We do prioritise the high-speed a bit more than we would elsewhere, but it isn’t all about the fast bits.

The circuit is moving more towards a race-bias than it has been in the past, but it’s still a relatively Qualifying-biased event: overtaking is difficult, it’s likely to be a one-stop race, and with degradation being quite low, there is not a lot of opportunity to build up a tyre delta to overtake a car like you could in Spain and Austria. Track position is more important here, so qualifying well is vital.

Silverstone is quite open, quite high, which means it’s exposed to strong winds – and the lap can be very dependent on wind strength and direction. Last year, we had a strong headwind through Copse, Maggotts and Becketts and into Stowe, which means those corners all became power-limited rather than grip-limited.

2. Deciding whether we can run stiff and low or if we have to make compromises

We’re expecting similar wind conditions this year, and that drives you towards running a smaller rear wing – because with a headwind you can still be flat in those corners, and wouldn’t be gaining lap-time by increasing downforce. So, in dry conditions, we’ll be starting out with the medium-low downforce rear wing that has been used in places like Miami and Imola. Though if we’re expecting rain, that moves us the other way, towards a higher downforce set-up.

Copse corner [Turn 9] is an interesting one because it’s very high speed and quite bumpy. In general, since its recent resurfacing, Silverstone is one of the smoothest tracks we go to. It has very little track warp or camber, which encourages you to run very stiff. And because of all the high-speed corners, you want to run high roll stiffnesses as well, to make the car as agile as possible through the rapid changes of direction.

Copse though, has bumps, and the thing about those bumps is that, the closer you are to taking that corner flat, the more bumps you’ll experience. It’s less harsh in the race because you’ll be lifting – but in Qualifying, last year, it was very difficult to be flat through it. We were flat eventually, but it’s a struggle because of the grounding through the corner making the car very unstable.

So, one of the things you want to work out is the trade. Do we go very stiff and very low, and lift in Copse to be fast everywhere else, or do we compromise a little bit to get more performance through Copse?

The situation changes as the track grips-up, and as you use more energy towards the end of Qualifying. If you’re going quicker when you enter the corner, then you might need more of a lift, because the grounding will otherwise be worse. It changes the balance of the car quite a lot and it’s something to understand.

3. Gear choices are important at Silverstone

Another thing we want to study is gearing for that section. It might be that eighth is your optimal gear going into Copse, but even if you’re flat-out, you’ll naturally scrub-off speed through the corner and your optimal gear coming out might be seventh. You don’t want to downshift while flat-out as that risks damaging the gearbox, so it might be you choose to carry seventh gear and accept a small power-loss going in for better power delivery on the way out.

Likewise, carrying that eighth gear into Maggotts [Turn 10] and Becketts [11], would require an extra downshift, and sometimes the drivers think that’s OK, and sometimes it isn’t. It’s one of those things we learn as we go through practice. We’ll probably start out with seventh gear into Copse and lifting, so the driver has the flexibility to do what they want, and then at some point through the weekend, as we go faster and faster through the corner, there will be the discussion point about whether we think seventh or eighth gear is the right thing.

4. You can’t ignore the low-speed sections of the circuit

We will be spending quite a lot of time thinking about those high-speed corners but you can’t simply ignore the low-speed stuff. Turn 3 [Village] has no straight-line braking, just braking and turning at the same time. Turn 4 [The Loop] is the same, and the entry to Turn 6 [Brooklands] also. These are very challenging. If you’re biased towards being strong in the high-speed sections of the track, there isn’t a lot you can do here, but you’ll still try to extract the maximum performance you can in these sections. It’s particularly important if there’s a chance it might be hot on Sunday: if the low-speed performance is poor, we’ll struggle with the tyres.

5. Wet weather is likely, and that would change our plans, but we’re prepared

Is it going to be hot on Sunday? It doesn’t look like it at the moment! Of course, much of our ability carry out our programme today is weather-dependent, and the forecast says we’re in for quite a lot of rain over the weekend. If we have a wet track across these practice sessions, it will hamper us quite a lot and determine how much running we do.

Even if we have a wet track all day today, we will do some running, because the rules this year say, should the track be declared wet on Friday, we have to hand back one set of Intermediate tyres before Qualifying, whether we use it or not. So, at some point we may as well use it and get some learning in.

It may be one of those occasions where everyone sits in the garage until the weather conditions look right for the Inter, and then everyone rushes out at the same time. If conditions are extreme, it’s a little less likely we’d go out – though we did run with the full Wet tyre in Canada.

What can we learn in a wet practice session? Well, it’s useful to know what kind of conditions suit an Inter, when it is too dry or too wet for that tyre. Knowing what conditions on track correlate to what tyre we should be putting on, is a useful reference point for when we’re in Qualifying and have to go out.

For the drivers, there’s some benefit in just learning where the slippery parts of the track are. We did run the Inters last year in FP3, so they have got some pretty recent experience in those conditions.

The other benefit is just learning about degradation. The Inters can degrade quite differently to dry tyres across a race stint. So, it’s useful to know what tyre limitations to expect on the Intermediate: if it does rain on Sunday, are we going to see front-left graining? Could it be more of a rear limitation? That’s useful learning we’d take from a wet Friday.

Rain tyres also change our ride heights, and with the cars being so sensitive to running as low as you can, particularly at the rear, understanding what different ride-heights you would run on an Inter, compared to in the dry. Getting some running also helps us to assess the level of risk we would be taking by assuming one set of conditions, based on a forecast, when potentially you might hit the other set of conditions. Very important to have data in order to make good choices.

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