Welcome to The Briefing, where we’ll be answering the key on-track questions ahead of the Emilia-Romagna 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, we spoke to Adrian Goodwin.

Imola is one of Formula 1’s most historic circuits, a tight and twisting thrill ride around iconic corners including Acque Minerali, Rivazza and Piratella. With that history comes some modern-day problems to tackle. The circuit is narrow and packed full of high-speed corners, making overtaking tricky – although its high levels of degradation can make this somewhat easier. With the help of Adrian, we’ll explain how we plan to handle those challenges and more.  

We’ve completed six rounds without seeing a significant upgrade to the car. Is Imola where it all changes?

No! Nothing new for Imola – but this is a busy period of the season, and if time allows, we do have a few test items to put on the car during practice, to sign off with a view to using them later in this triple header. The most obvious will be a maximum downforce rear wing. We’ll give that a sanity check here – probably at the start of FP3 tomorrow morning, when we’re under less time pressure.

We do have a new tyre here, with Pirelli’s C6 making its debut. Did the team try it out in the Bahrain pre-season test?

No – but we did try it last season, in Abu Dhabi, at the end-of-year test. We compared it to the C5, with some continuous laps, as well as a single performance lap. It was going to be too soft for Bahrain, which is a very aggressive circuit, and we wouldn’t have learned anything more than we did at Yas Marina.

It is reasonable to assume the C6 will be a Qualifying tyre only?

This is something we need to double-check today. Is it something that you might only fit at a very late Safety Car, or is it a credible race tyre? I think, based on Abu Dhabi, it’s not expected to be the latter. It seemed to have better peak grip, but it went away quite quickly, and by the time we got into continuous laps, we had already used the best of it.

We’re also trying to learn about it as a Qualifying tyre. Can you repeat a lap on it, or is it just a single push? We’ve got our expectations that it’s a single-lap Quali tyre - but part of our running today will be to demonstrate that - or not.

The C5 compound – last year’s Soft, this year’s Medium – didn’t do many laps here last season. Is a lot of learning required for that compound also?

We didn’t really use it last year and it was treated as a pure Quali tyre. We need to develop our understanding of it during practice - but to a certain extent we also need to find out how far the C4 Hard compound can go.

This is the third consecutive race in which Pirelli have moved a step softer in their range. It didn’t have a significant impact on strategy in Jeddah or Miami: is there anything to suggest Imola will be different?

It is possible. It may prove that we have to go too long on the C5 to make it work. That’s an interesting bit of uncertainty we’re taking into the weekend, and a question to answer today. Imola is not normally the easiest track for overtaking - but it is also one of the higher degradation tracks, so you can generate a pace delta. That makes it more of a question mark than the previous two circuits.

We’ve got some idea of the C4 from last year - Lance Stroll and Kevin Magnussen both did a 37-lap stint – so it’s just about whether the C5 can do the rest of the race to make it a one-stop.

Imola is a track with several tight chicanes. How do you set the car up to run the kerbs, and what compromises do you need to work on today?

We still need to run the car low and stiff, because it’s a modern Formula 1 car and that’s what makes them quick. Roll stiffness is something we might consider adjusting to allow us to run those kerbs more effectively. It’s a combination of that and then how much we’re willing to give up in heave stiffness in low speed.

This is a quite technical circuit, so having a sharp, responsive car is usually a benefit in the short corners. That’s something that makes us want to push the roll-stiffness up a bit - so there’s a trade you have to make for the rest of the circuit. It won’t be exactly the same trade as last year, because the cars are different. The MCL39 is a little bit better all-around, which influences what we do.

What level of downforce will the team run this weekend?

We’ve got a choice of two rear wings at this point in the season, and for Imola we’ll be running the medium downforce version rather than the low downforce alternative. We think the medium wing will put us in a sensible ballpark with competitors, and while we’re not expecting to move off that, we may move around within its envelope, with the options we have for the size of Gurney and various beam wings.

The start-finish straight is the only DRS zone and presents the only real overtaking opportunity. Do the team drop downforce to target good end-of-straight speed, or add it, to get a good exit out of Rivazza and onto the straight carrying lots of speed?

The straight - though it’s not really straight - is one of the longer ones, but you still have to get good drive out of the last two corners. You could never make that time back with the gains in straight-line speed made by running lower downforce.

There’s also a requirement to protect the tyres. Because the pace delta is very important here, running a bit more downforce will prevent the car from sliding, and act as an enabler.

The track is famously bumpy. What do you have to do to cope with this?

Ultimately, we have to run the car a bit softer than at other circuits. It’s not like Australia, which is very smooth and we can just pin the car down, it is more like Bahrain levels.

It has an impact on the drivers too. It’s similar to Monaco in that there’s a lot to gain from having the driver out on track, dialling it in, getting the balance right, and being comfortable with the car. It is such a high-precision track, with a variability of lines and big penalties if you get it wrong.

When you think about ride heights, is legality or driver comfort your number one aim?

A sensible legality limit for skid wear is the deciding factor, and the drivers are used to how much we need to push that level now. There are a couple of high-speed corners where the car bottoms out, and we do need to be careful with that. There are bumps in Turn 5 [Villeneuve], and out of Turn 9 [Piratella] and a compression at T11-T12 [Acque Minerali]. They’re all limiting factors and areas we’re always thinking about when setting up the car across the sessions today.

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