Japan - Race Engineer's Notes

Suzuka and its Challenges

Round 15 of the FIA Formula 1 Championship takes us to Suzuka Japan, ‘The Land of The Rising Sun’.

Incredibly popular with most of the World’s greatest drivers, Suzuka provides a monumental challenge for both drivers and engineers. The 5.8km circuit has many blind corners due to its spectacular escalation changes, where judging your entry and exit points can be very difficult in an F1 car.

The contrast in each of the three sectors provides a big challenge in setting the up the cars, as considerable compromises have to be made.

Aero Characteristics of Circuit 

Sector One consists of the infamous ‘S Curves’, a series of five magnificent quick left right corners. The S curves demand high downforce for a car to be stable through this turbulent sector, quite the opposite of the other two sectors.

Sector Two begins as the cars enter turn 8, the Degner curve. The cars approach at 280km/h before a quick dab on the brakes and into the tight consecutive right handers of T8 & T9. The circuit opens up from here, which demands little downforce and less drag as the sector ends at the 130R turn in.

Sector Three begins just before the terrifying 130R corner. I believe that the cars will have more than enough downforce at these speeds to get round flat out (Even with a low downforce package). As with Sector Two, Sector Three mainly requires low downforce as there is so much time to be made with a higher straight line velocity (Rather than higher velocity through the corners).

As you can see S1 demands a lot of downforce, yet the other two sectors are suited for top speed. A medium downforce package will be most suitable for Suzuka.

Tyres & Strategy

Prime – Hard (ORANGE)
Option – Mediums (WHITE)

Tyre wear rates at Suzuka are quite high, hence Pirelli nominating the two hardest compounds for the weekend.

In 2013, the majority of the grid ran a two stop race with the same compound selection. Starting on the Option before two Prime stops was the typical strategy.

In 2014 I would like to see a few drivers attempting to push the medium tyres a bit longer, so that they can run a one stop and take the hards all the way to the end. The 2014 Pirelli’s are quite lenient when you run a less aggressive car set up, and as we saw in Singapore, it could be possible to push for a one stop… Even if it does require a bit of “Grandma” driving…
The average strategy looks like it will be a two stop race again.

Mechanical Set Up

The continuous high speed direction changing in Sector One requires a very stable and predictable car. Being able to stay on the optimum racing line is critically important through this sector, because as soon as you go off line for one of the S curves, you will be punished all the way up until mid-way through sector 2.

A low roll centre, precisely set up anti-roll bar and cambered tyres are some of the things which will be required for a quick Sector One.

A low roll centre will ensure that the car is stiff and responsive for the harsh direction changes. It is important to mention that too low of a roll centre can cause the car to become too ‘stiff’ and could therefore cause major problems in getting tyres up to operating temperatures. A stiff chassis causes minimal roll and therefore makes the car slide around much more as the tyres can’t bite into the tarmac.

The anti-roll bar settings are crucial in making sure that there is maximum lateral stability. Too much roll will cause poor change in direction abilities and too stiff will cause sliding.

As the cars go through the S curves and 130R, they will be subjected to around 3-4G’s of lateral force. This induces a large amount of rolling torque, and it is very important that the tyres maintain maximum surface area in contact with the ground, which is why cambers will have to be carefully calculated.

Thanks for reading. Please keep an eye out for ‘Japan – Race Engineer’s Quali Notes’ on Friday night, UK time (BST).