MOTORSPORT: F1 wakes up to need for overtaking

The Formula 1 organisation’s technical heads and the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), the world governing body of motorsport, are rushing to meet an October deadline on rules for 2021 that will produce more overtaking in grand prix racing.

They have concentrated on research into the wake created by an F1 car that reduces the downforce of a following car and makes passing difficult.

F1 was under fire for arguably its dullest season until recently, with Mercedes domination continuing into the sixth year of the V6 hybrids until Red Bull’s Max Verstappen won two of the last four GPs before the mid-season break that ends with this weekend’s race at Belgium’s Spa circuit.

A half-size model of a generic design that F1’s chief technical officer Pat Symonds and his team, and those at the FIA, came up with through the use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been tested recently in a wind tunnel.

“We’re more interested [than teams] in what is happening to the turbulent air behind the car,” Symonds said.

“We chose to run that model quite a long way forward in the wind tunnel, so this gave us the opportunity to best inspect the wake of the car.”

The wind tunnel, in Switzerland, is owned by the Sauber company, but the F1 team it had, now called Alfa Romeo Racing, was precluded from gaining any advantage from the secret testing.

The FIA’s head of single-seater technical matters, Nikolas Tombazis, said Sauber’s wind tunnel had an excellent ‘rake system’ that was particularly good for the purpose.

Symonds said there was “a 5-10 per cent wake disruption, compared to the current levels of 50 per cent”.

“The results are beyond what I thought we could achieve.

“With the configurations we have got at the moment, the results are exceptional.”

Symonds said that teams, while not directly involved in the testing, “are fully informed of what is going on”.
He said it had not been necessary to place a second model behind the first to test the wake.

“What we’re trying to do is use CFD as our real simulation tool and this is just the correlation,” he said.

A report on formula1.com says that, while the sidepods and rear wing are expected to remain like those in the images that have been revealed, the front wing is expected to evolve further.

While Symonds and co. may have come up with something that will produce more overtaking, fans will be stuck with pretty similar power units after F1 motorsports director Ross Brawn was rolled long ago by the participating manufacturers on plans for an alternative cheaper engine with a more traditional sound.

Toyota has claimed the first clean-sweep of the World Rally Championship podium in four years and its lead driver is a big step closer to ending the 15-year reign of French drivers.

Not so long ago it seemed the drivers’ championship again would come down to the final round – Rally Australia at Coffs Harbour in mid-November – but Ott Tanak now has a 33-point lead with four rounds remaining.

The Japanese make, winner of the manufacturers’ championship last year in just its second season back in the sport with a team run by Finnish four-time world champion (with Mitsubishi) Tommi Makinen, is now just eight points behind Hyundai in the team standings.

After the complete dominance of the Toyota Yaris on the multiple surfaces of the weekend’s Rally Germany – Tanak won by 20.8 seconds from Northern Irishman Kris Meeke with Finn Jari-Matti Latvala another 15-2 seconds back – Toyota has 281 points to Hyundai’s 289.

It was the first clean sweep of the podium since now-departed Volkswagen’s in Germany in 2015 and the first by Toyota in the WRC since 1993, although it spent almost 20 years out of the championship.

Tanak has 205 points in the driver standings to Hyundai’s Belgian Thierry Neuville’s 172, while Citroen’s Sebastien Ogier – champion the past six years (for Volkswagen and M-Sport Ford) after Sebastien Loeb’s nine straight titles for Citroen – has 165.

Punctures cost Neuville and Ogier about 90 seconds at the weekend, while Tanak survived a brake problem close to the finish which prevented him going all-out for bonus points on the final Power Stage.

The Estonian’s victory was his fourth in the past five rounds and completed a hat-trick for him at the German event.

Despite having one hand on the season trophy, Tanak claimed “the championship is still tight … nothing is coming easy”.

“We were not always the fastest but we were more consistent,” he said.

Hyundai i20s filled the three positions behind the Toyotas, with Spaniard Dani Sordo deliberately leaving the final service late to gift Neuville fourth place.

Citroen’s Finn Esapekka Lappi similarly assisted Ogier to finish seventh, also gifting Norwegian Andreas Mikkelson sixth.

Both Citroen drivers struggled with understeer throughout the event, although Ogier had been third until his puncture, while Neuville had been challenging Tanak until his rear left tyre punctured early in a long stage on Saturday.

“It’s a lottery and we were really unlucky,” Neuville said.

Tanak admitted “you need to have some luck”.

The events before Rally Australia on November 14-17 are in Turkey on September 12-15, Rally Great Britain in Wales on October 3-6, and in Catalunya in Spain on October 24-27.

Toyota is dominating the Australian Rally Championship too, with Harry Bates scoring his fourth victory in as many rounds in his Yaris AP4 at the weekend’s Eureka Rush at Ballarat.

The 24-year-old son of multiple national champion Neal Bates was fastest of the ARC competitors on all but one of the stages in the difficult wet conditions for a comfortable win over Simon Evans, another multiple champion, in a Les Walkden Subaru WRX STI and Lewis Bates, younger brother of Harry, in another Yaris AP4.

Molly Taylor hit a tree stump, badly damaging the factory Subaru.

Visiting New Zealander Hayden Paddon, driving a Hyundai i20 R5, clinched the Pacific Cup despite breaking a suspension bolt after hitting a rock hidden inside a corner and a later spin that cost him a minute.

Paddon – a WRC regular until the end of last year and still with ambitions on the global stage – was more than 5 seconds faster than Harry Bates on each of two runs of a 2.61km special stage in Ballarat on Saturday.

Commenting on the event on Facebook, 1970 Australian champion Bob Watson said: “The difference between Hayden Paddon and Australia’s best was very obvious … Paddon nine out of 10, the next best seven out of 10.”

The only remaining ARC round before Rally Australia is in the Adelaide Hills on September 20-22.

Six days after his only win of the IndyCar season, Will Power was the first retirement from the 15th round at Gateway, Illinois, hitting the outside wall barely 20 per cent of the way into the 500-mile (800km) oval race.

Power said his Penske-Chevrolet had been “great” but “I came out on cold tyres and just got a little bit out of the groove, and it’s like ice”.

“[Firestone] brought a new tyre and it really sheds the rubber. My bad for getting up there. You can’t put an inch on that stuff; you just go straight. It’s ridiculous,” he said.

Japanese driver Takuma Sato, blamed for triggering a multi-car crash the previous weekend at Pocono, Pennsylvania, and trailing the field at Gateway at one point, won in a Honda-powered Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing entry by 0.0399sec from oval track specialist Ed Carpenter in his own Chevy-engined car.

Brazilian Tony Kanaan finished a couple of seconds away in third for AJ Foyt Racing with Chevy power.

Penske’s championship leader Josef Newgarden was involved in a last-lap incident that dropped him to seventh but has a 38-point lead over French teammate Simon Pagenaud, who finished fifth.

Alexander Rossi was 13th for Honda-powered Andretti Autosport and slipped to third in the title race, 46 points behind Newgarden.

New Zealand’s five-time and reigning champion Scott Dixon (Chip Ganassi Racing/Honda) was classified 20th because of a radiator issue and trails Newgarden by 70 points, while Power remains fifth, 147 points off the lead.

The remaining races are at Portland, Oregon, next Sunday, and Laguna Seca in California on September 22.