Ladies and Gentlemen,

And then there were four left…

Sixteenth round of the championship coming up this weekend at the Circuit of the Americas for the USA Grand Prix. And get ready for something completely different because the forecast for this race calls for full 3 days of heavy rain.

Fancy a wet race for the first time this season? Actually, it could be a lot more soaked than we might like it. The National Weather Service has issued a warning to all outdoor activities in the area as “the heaviest rains would likely start on Thursday and continuing through Sunday with potential flooding Saturday and Saturday night”.

If understandably drivers don’t like to drive blind through walls of water, we fans like wet races because rain is ‘the big equalizer’, a chance to see driver’s skill to overcome their equipment limitations. Rainy races always bring surprises and excitement. But in fact, cars with more efficient downforce perform better in the wet and teams do not run bespoke wet-weather aero packages, they simply apply more of their available downforce but not necessary the maximum, instead they move the aero balance to the rear to make the car stable under braking and on corner entry making the car to understeer and more comfortable for the driver. Teams generally reduce the angle of the front wing to achieve this effect, which will reduce front grip relative to the rear. They generally avoid adding rear wing because this introduces drag which slows the car in the straights.

Romain Grosjean: “If you trust the your rear turn-in it means you can brake later and turn in sharper, and normally things go well from there”. Regarding driving style the French driver says: “you don’t change your style dramatically, but everything is a bit more smooth, I put less pressure in the brake pedal”. Since the car goes to ‘parc ferme’ after QF and you can’t change setting before the race, the drivers basically have to get used to driving a car that’s optimized for the dry, they can only make small adjustments to engine, differential and brake settings from the cockpit and try to cope as best they can.

Because this is expected to be a full-wet weather weekend engineers will have to work with their drivers to adjust the car mechanically and not only aerodynamically, that means chassis modifications such as springs, shocks and roll-bars (softening suspension and damping). The biggest challenge for the drivers is brake pedal feel as with new new generation of cars the rear brakes are very difficult to master because they are connected to the energy recovery system. Drivers have to constantly work on the brake-bias adjustment as they struggle to avoid locking up the front tyres in the process. Indeed wet-weather driving is the most difficult challenge faced by F1 drivers.

In other news Bernie is saying the supply of engines for the Red Bull teams ‘has been sorted out’ but it’s still a secret how exactly that’s going to happen. Ferrari will provide their units to Toro Rosso and Red Bull is now back in negotiations with Renault. It seems Bernie was able to convince the energy drinks company owner Mateschitz that if he retires his teams from the Championship he will have to pay a huge contract settlement plus he will not be able to collect his share of winning prizes from the last 3 years as it’s stipulated in the money-sharing F1 scheme. I’m sure those are very convincing arguments…

Now we know what’s coming, we are wet-weather ready for the USA GP, this might be the opportunity to make (or lose) a lot of ground on the CFA standings!

‘Till tomorrow

Cato