Bridgestone Motorsport Canada Feature
03/06/2008
Formula One is a test of skill and talent at many levels, but one person who receives the greatest amount of focus is the person behind the steering wheel; the driver. How a driver undertakes the art of threading a Formula One car through the twists and turns that make up a race circuit is an activity requiring great skill. It’s also an activity where there is no single answer for the best way to go about it.
Driving style is something which differentiates drivers. Just as the teams’ designers can produce very different looking cars which can be lapped within hundredths of their competitors, so two drivers in the same vehicle can practice the art of driving in a very different manner, yet achieve a very similar lap time.
For Bridgestone, working with all of the teams and every driver in Formula One means that many different driving styles are seen, as the differences of driving style can be detected by how the driver has used his tyres.
“As all Formula One cars and drivers use Bridgestone tyres we get a very good insight into the differences between the twenty drivers who compete at motorsport’s pinnacle,” explains Hirohide Hamashima, Bridgestone Director of Motorsport Tyre Development.
“Driving style makes a big difference. For instance, a driver’s input from mid corner to exit is often quite illustrative of how tyres are being used. If there is one progressive steering input from the corner apex to the exit, this will usually not cause as much tyre wear as a style that involves many changes.”
Of course, a driver has a big say in how a car handles as drivers work with their engineers to create a setup which is both fast, and suiting their driving style.
“Every driver has their own preference for how they prefer their car setup, and setup includes aspects like camber, toe-in, and roll stiffness amongst others, and these all have an influence on how our tyres perform and react to the road,” explains Hamashima.
“In simple terms we hear of drivers who prefer a car that tends towards understeer or a driver who prefers a car that oversteers. On a basic level, the first car will wear the front tyres more than the second one, where the rear tyres get more use.”
Another area where driving style has an impact on tyre performance is in terms of warm-up. A driver who is more aggressive with his tyres will get them to their best operating temperature quicker than one who is not so aggressive.
“Warm-up is an interesting area, and will be more so in the future when Formula One no longer has tyre blankets,” says Hamashima. “Being aggressive will get heat into the tyres quickly, but if a driver is too aggressive he will wear his tyres quicker than a driver who is more sympathetic. Aggressive drivers also need to know how to control their cars in situations of lower levels of tyre grip.”
At every Grand Prix, Bridgestone has two compounds of their dry grooved Potenza Formula One tyres as well as the wet and extreme wet tyres. Both of the dry compounds have to be used, and whilst sometimes it is clear which is the favoured compound at a particular track, sometimes the choice is not so clear cut.
“Compound choice is certainly related to a driver’s style and personal preference,” says Hamashima, “and we have seen occasions where the softer compound provides the best solution for certain drivers, but the harder compound is more constant in its behaviour, so a driver loses less time due to unexpected responses.”
As well as compound choice, there is also the factor of how much air you put in the tyres. “Tyre pressure is also another area where driver preference plays a good part, and pressure has a big influence on how a tyre performs,” explains Hamashima.
“We issue a safe range of pressures for our tyres and the teams must keep within this range, but there is still good scope for drivers to dial-in to get their preferred response. In basic terms a higher pressure within the safe limits we give will provide more stability, whilst a lower pressure means the tyre heats up slower, but it also degrades less, and is less sensitive to bumps.”
Another aspect which can be seen as part of a driver’s signature when behind the wheel is where they position the car on the track.
“The actual line a driver takes into a corner or a sequence of corners also plays a part,” says Hamashima. “However, in most cases in modern Formula One there is only one main line, particularly because of the marbles and dirt off line, although there are rare exceptions, and of course variations around the basic racing line.”
It’s not an easy job being a driver, and the difficulties of getting the car to do exactly what you want it to do on track are compounded by having very expensive electronic devices scrutinising your every move.
Where once a driver’s word that, for instance, ‘I was taking that corner flat,’ would be taken more or less by his engineers, now the telemetry will show just how fast, with how much throttle and how much steering angle a driver is using.
Feedback from the engineers to the teams’ technical boffins and the drivers themselves is useful data in the pursuit of a fast lap and technical and personal advancement.
But, despite all the data available, drivers do still like to have their cars set up in different ways, and sometimes it’s the confidence a particular set-up produces in the driver and the consistent performance that set-up allows the car to give the driver rather than a set-up which on the computer simulation may supposedly offer the fastest solution.
“Drivers are contesting the drivers’ championship and all drivers are human beings with their own wants and needs from their car,” explains Hamashima. “Drivers also need to harness their competitive streak correctly to make the best of their equipment. This is part of the interest in Formula One and Bridgestone is happy to work with so many top drivers and learn from all the different driving styles.”