14: Track and Driver in .NET

Painting USS Code 39 in .NET 14: Track and Driver

Once a driver learns his way around a track he can then start playing with his car s set-up, which lets him work out whether he prefers more grip for the corners or more speed on the main straights Sometimes a driver may even want his car to be more difficult to drive if the trade-off is that it s quicker Being comfortable is not always the name of the game in Formula One

Believe it or not, a track can change its characteristics massively throughout a race weekend Before a race weekend, the surface is quite dirty, its surface covered with dust, debris (like fallen leaves and small stones) and oil Over the course of a race weekend, as cars circulate around the track, the surface gets cleaned up dramatically The car s tyres also put rubber down through the corners and in the braking area which makes the track more and more grippy with every lap The improvement of the surface as the race weekend progresses is why, for example, going out at the end rather than at the beginning of the one-hour qualifying sessions is a big advantage Every single layer of rubber that is put down means more and more grip on the racing line However, this extra grip on the racing line does have a downside: As soon as you get off-line, where cars haven t run time after time, you have much less grip than normal The dirt and dust won t have been cleared, no rubber will have been laid down, and worse than that marbles will be strewn across the circuit surface (Marbles are tiny balls of rubber that the tyres throw off as they wear down, and they ve been known to trip up plenty of drivers who run wide at a corner) You may occasionally notice some of the better drivers having a close look at the run-off areas around the outside of the track They re not checking to see whether these areas are safe enough; they re trying to work out where the access roads are that lead back onto the track This info is important to them in case they make a mistake in the race and spin off Michael Schumacher, who started this trend when he came to the sport, has been known to win some races by easily finding his way back onto the track after spinning off He was only able to do that because he had checked out all the run-off areas before the race

Although a brief look at the Formula One history books show that some of the tracks still in use today were on the calendar during the first year of the Formula One World Championship in 1950, any driver who was transported back in time would hardly recognise the circuits In fact, only the Monaco Grand Prix circuit has remained virtually identical to its original configuration and that s because the streets of the principality haven t changed much over the years

The reasons for the changes are usually based on safety grounds although the Hungaroring circuit was made less tight by 1986 because an underground spring had been successfully rerouted to allow a better track configuration

Circuits have had no option but to introduce chicanes (two slow corners, going left then right or right then left at the end of straights to slow cars), slower corners, and less challenging layouts because car speeds have increased dramatically over the years The biggest problem hasn t been out-and-out straight-line speed; that s remained pretty much unchanged since the 1950s The problem is that cornering speeds are now so much higher Drivers who spin off in corners travelling at 150 mph, for example, have a much higher chance of hitting the barriers than drivers travelling around the same corner at 70 mph The flat out straights of Monza, the fastest circuit on the calendar, have been broken up by tight chicanes to ensure that they don t blast through the long corners at breakneck speed If you look at any old track and its modern version, it is the addition of chicanes that have had the biggest impact Figure 14-1 shows the layout of the Silverstone track as it has appeared in the past and as it is today