Oct 27, 2011
Our engineers have been studying the Buddh circuit in India for several weeks now, using various simulation tools and the two race drivers have tried their hand at it on the race track simulator. We asked our Chief Engineer, Laurent Mekies how the virtual circuit matched up to the real one now that we are here on the ground just outside Delhi.
“The track layout looked very nice on paper and interesting from our simulations, with lots of high speed corners, which will give a very high speed around the lap, certainly one of the highest average speeds of any race this year. I am sure the drivers will enjoy it, as they like high speed corners and these days, there are not so many of those on the calendar. They have also included a very long main straight, which combined with the two DRS zones will provide a great mix of corner speed and overtaking opportunities. I am therefore expecting a very good show, on a track whose layout lies somewhere between Suzuka and Korea with the high speed corners of the former and the very long straight of the latter, which gave us such an exciting race a fortnight ago.
“One thing we can be sure of is that there will be a very big improvement in track condition from FP1 through to the race on Sunday. You can see the air here is quite dusty, partly because the circuit building work has been going on right up to now, so overall grip is something we still have to discover. You can simulate everything, but you cannot know what type of grip the tarmac will give you. Because of this, Pirelli has, by its own admission, taken a conservative approach, bringing the Soft and Hard compounds. We have run the Soft a lot and know it very well and it is natural to also bring the hardest of your compounds to a new and unknown venue, so we expect a big lap time difference between the two. It will be interesting to see how the Hards work, because although temperatures are expected to be quite high, the actual track temperature might not be because of the cloudy skies.”
One anomaly this weekend is that it is the Soft tyre that has been nominated as the Prime, while normally the harder of the two compounds is designated as Prime. “The only reason it is this way round here is because of the rules,” explained Mekies. “They state you have two sets of Prime and one of Option per driver on Friday. On top of that the rules allow Pirelli to supply one more set of Prime tyres at any race it feels necessary for Friday, for example early in the season or, in this case for a new venue. As the Soft compound is probably going to be the best of the two for this track, inverting the tyre denominations is the quickest way to give teams more time on the Soft, as the only other method would have involved a change in the rules.”
Credit: Scuderia Toro Rosso (www.scuderiatororosso.com)
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