Welcome to The Briefing, where we’ll be answering the key on-track questions ahead of the Dutch 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, ahead of FP1, we spoke to Tom Stallard.  

Circuit Zandvoort shares many similarities with the Hunaroring, where we last raced, as both are primarily made up of short straights and tight corners, but there are some notable differences, including the Dutch circuit’s longer-than-normal pit lane and its famous banking. With no upgrades to speak of, finding the optimal setup for these will take up a lot of the team’s time in practice. They’ll also be preparing for the likelihood of rain.

In this weekend’s edition of the briefing, Tom will explain what this consists of and how the team will make their decisions.

So, Tom, first race back after the Summer Break. Can we expect a new-look MCL39?

No! Nothing new for Zandvoort, so in that regard, it’s a very simple weekend, with not a lot of testing to do. We do have a high downforce wing that hasn’t raced yet, however. It was introduced in Spain, though ultimately, we decided not to use it in that race. We’ll probably want to use it here.

What’s the likely alternative?

Higher and lower. We have both the maximum downforce wing and a medium downforce wing. The maximum downforce version is the one that ran in Hungary and Monaco. It could be in contention were a wet race a bolt-on certainty. Medium downforce seems unlikely because it would cost lap time, but it’s good to have the option in case competitors go that way. It gives us the potential to stay in bed should we not want to be disadvantaged for straight-line speed.

What are the priorities for setup work in practice?

The main thing at Zandvoort is to dial in ride height. Skid wear is quite difficult to predict because of the banking. There is contact there, but also on a main straight that has a ridge running down it, just to the right of the grid boxes on the outside.

If you drive on that, you’ll have more floor wear, so there are tricks with the line to learn how to get the best out of the car – but we’ll also need to learn where to put the ride height and how stiff to make the car.

The track has a lot more right-hand corners than left. Does that encourage the team to experiment with camber?

Asymmetric tyre presentation is certainly something we’ll look at – but we can’t do too much because there are enough left-handers and you have to get through those. It’s not clear cut. All of the high speed goes right, which means you damage the front-left quite a lot. Asymmetry would protect that on a long run – but traded against that, the car might not be so good in Qualifying. Something to study during practice.

Last year, the race was a Medium>Hard one-stop, but Pirelli have gone a step softer in the allocation this year. Is it going to make a difference?

Last year the race was C2>C1 but obviously we don’t have the C1 this year, which will make a one-stop race much more challenging. Another factor to consider is that the pit-lane speed limit has been raised from 60km/h to 80km/h, which reduces the pit-loss time and thus reduces the penalty for two stops.

Both of these factors push it closer to a two-stop, and I think we may see something like we had in Hungary with a mix of strategies. Were you racing on your own, you would two-stop – but overtaking is going to be difficult, so, again, it’s not clear cut.

That said, I’d be surprised if teams didn’t want to carry forward an extra set of Hard or Medium tyres and instead took five sets of Softs into Qualifying. I could only really see that if there’s a lot of confidence that Qualifying is going to be dry, but the race will be wet – and at the moment the opposite looks a little more likely. What would be interesting is if anyone has enough confidence in a wet Qualifying but a dry race, and so takes only three sets of Softs into Qualifying.

Last year, the C2 was a good race tyre, and this year, we think it’s even better, and there’s a lot of confidence in it. Keeping both sets looks like the simple choice. The question will be whether people want, or also want, two C3 sets, because they think the race is going to be showery, and the C3 will be better in those conditions. Someone will gamble, because the weather forecast makes it look like the sort of race where having plenty of options will be an advantage. We’re going to be looking at the forecast a lot today!

The forecast does suggests we’re going to have showers on and off all weekend. What does that do to your practice plans?

It makes understanding wear on the skids quite challenging, and Zandvoort is a track where you see a lot of skid-wear, because it doesn’t just happen with DRS activated.

We would want to do some running because we have to hand back a set of Inters after FP3 if any of the prior sessions are wet, so we may as well use them, but the priority will be getting the driver up to speed on the Inter, rather than experimenting with setup. The tricky thing with rain today is guessing if FP3 will also be wet. If FP3 is wet, we’ll want to have saved some of that Inter so that the driver can get warmed up for Qualifying, and thus we wouldn’t do too much on Friday – but we’d end-up regretting that it FP3 stayed dry! So, there’s a balance to be struck.

The tricky thing is running in crossover conditions when the track is drying. You have competing interests at that point, because you really want to understand how the car works in those crossover conditions, because they could be very important on Saturday afternoon or Sunday – but at the same time, the tyres will be damaged very quickly at Zandvoort in those conditions.

There is usually a reluctance to use a full Wet during practice. We only get two sets for the weekend, and they’re not replaced. It’s unlikely we’d need that tyre in the race, because visibility is generally too poor before we get to the point of needing that tyre – but that isn’t necessarily true in Qualifying. So, it’s not completely out of the question to see the full Wet do some laps in practice.