23/10/2018
NEWS STORY
F1 technical boss, Ross Brawn, believes that less data from practice sessions could lead to improved racing come Sunday afternoon.
In his post-US GP debrief, the Briton points to the lack of dry running on Friday, which, combined with different weather conditions on Saturday and Sunday, left the teams heading into the unknown come the race, which in turn led to one of the best, most unpredictable races of the season.
"The three drivers on the podium crossed the line within the same three seconds," said Brawn. "They all ran different tyre strategies, through choice in the case of Raikkonen and Hamilton, and by necessity for Verstappen who started from the penultimate row of the grid.
"That's unusual in Formula One, where the level of sophistication in terms of simulation and strategy is so high that one doesn't usually get such a variance, especially when it involves the top three teams," he admitted. "This was probably down to the fact that no one had been able to run dry weather tyres on Friday as the track was wet throughout the three hours of practice. That meant the teams had less data than usual on which to base their race plans, and thus the margin for error increased.
"So, does less data produce a better show?" he continued. "It's definitely more uncertain and therefore another topic for discussion when looking at ways to make our sport even more exciting, from the first lap to the last, as was the case in Austin."
While it was the weather that compromised dry running on Friday, Brawn is clearly looking at the option preferred by the sport's owners, that of restricting track time either by dint of reducing the length of the practice sessions or scrapping Friday running entirely.
"To use a football metaphor, when two teams play perfectly, a nil-nil draw is the logical conclusion," said Brawn, a die-hard Manchester United fan. "In Formula One, when the simulations are all worked out to the smallest detail, then they all converge towards the same best possible strategy."
However, with a number of teams against the idea of two-day race weekends, Brawn admits that less actual track time would merely cause the bigger teams to spend more time and money on simulations and the like.
"I think you will just have more simulations and more computers running in the background, trying to emphasise how to put the car on track," he admitted. "But the more you limit track time the more variability you have."