Welcome to The Briefing, where we’ll be answering the key on-track questions ahead of the Australian Grand Prix.

Each week, powered by Google Cloud, we’ll be speaking to one of our trackside experts to walk you through the biggest talking points and provide you with a simplified guide of what you’ll need to know to jump straight into the action. This week, it’s Henry Fidler, Oscar’s Performance Engineer.

For the first time since 2019, we’re starting the season at the Albert Park Circuit, and we’ll be looking at how this will impact the team’s preparations. We’ll also discuss how we prepare for track evolution at a street circuit, whether graining will affect our race strategy and we'll explain the aerodynamic package we’ve brought to Australia.

For the last few years, we’ve had a Bahrain test followed by a Bahrain Grand Prix. How different is it doing a Bahrain test, followed by an Australian Grand Prix? Were the team able to do any Albert Park prep?

It’s an interesting question. It’s difficult to do prep for Australia in Bahrain because the circuit is so different – but also because conditions in Bahrain were…unusual, with some very cold weather. Bahrain tends to be characterised by rear surface overheating, whereas Albert Park is all about graining, so there was little we could learn for Australia.

At the same time, we spent less time in Bahrain optimising a Bahrain car than we usually would, and more time learning about the new toys and tricks that we’ve got on the MCL39, compared to the MCL38. So, we learnt a lot about what’s in the toolbox this year, and what we might adjust when we got here.

Is the aerodynamic package in Bahrain different from what we’ll see here?

The rear wing we ran for most of the test in Bahrain was a medium downforce specification, though we tested a low downforce version also, which it what we’ll start with today. The ideal level in Melbourne is probably somewhere between the two! The ideal setting, in terms of lap time, is probably at the lower-end of medium, but we think that will probably be a little too slow on the straights compared to everyone else, and leave us vulnerable.

The four DRS zones do tempt you to run with higher downforce because, for Qualifying, the DRS will be open on all of those straights – but it’s a circuit where overtaking isn’t too difficult and that much downforce may be painful in the race – because if you have too much load, you’ll end-up being a sitting duck.

What’s the most important job in Free Practice?

Tyres! As always, the main thing is to learn about the tyres. Last year the big issue for everyone in the race was graining on the front-left. There was a little on the rears but we were most worried about the front-left. Conditions are different this year – it’s quite a bit warmer, which could easily move the limitation from the front to the rear – and the tyre compounds are slightly different too, so it’s important that we learn what our main limitation is going to be, and optimise our set-up around it. If we can delay the graining phase by even a few laps, it’ll make a big difference to our race pace over the course of a stint.

At some circuits, graining can clear up after a few laps – but that didn’t seem to be the case last year in Melbourne…

Graining here leads to very high wear – so while you might get through the graining, by the time you do, there’s not a lot of tyre left, and you’ve already lost so much lap time it doesn’t look very good. So, we’re unlikely to see the type of graining where you suffer for five laps, it cleans-up and you get to go fast again.

How will what you discover impact strategy on Sunday?

It might not impact how many stops we do, but it could certainly impact which tyres we do them with, and thus what we keep in our allocation. Most cars did a Medium-Hard-Hard race last year, but it could be Medium-Medium-Hard. We’ll have a better idea this evening.

At this stage of the season, is the team likely to stick with its own plan, or look at what competitors are doing, in terms of the tyres they use in practice and the wing levels they run?

At this stage of the year, we’re more likely to do our own thing. I don't think it's going to be night and day different from last year, and we know that, historically, some teams have been better than us at managing front graining, and that might lead them down a different path. We would be nervous at the start of the season, when we don’t really know too much about the car, to stray beyond doing what we think will work for us.

Albert Park is, essentially, a street circuit, and evolves quite quickly as the racing line is swept clean and the surface rubbers-in. Is high evolution tricky at the first race of the year, when the team is still learning about the car?

I think it is slightly harder because we’re on this steep learning gradient with the car. On the other hand, since the track was resurfaced, it’s pretty smooth, which means we can run the car quite stiff, and most of the corners are medium-to-high speed, so we’re not making massive compromises around the speed regimes in certain corners. We know that we can run with high-roll stiffness, we know we’ll compromise on kerb-riding and things like this.

Also, what we’ve found in previous years here is that, as the track grips-up, it doesn’t massively impact the kind of graining we see, or the balance of the car. So, the tyre limitations remain pretty similar through the weekend. Speaking ahead of FP1, Conditions might be a bit more extreme in first practice, but it will bed-in relatively quickly. That means, aside from the normal uncertainties, I don’t think it’s a hugely challenging weekend from the point of view of the circuit we’re at.

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