Nicholas Latifi, Williams, Mugello, 2020

Run of triple-headers helped Latifi’s development

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In the round-up: Nicholas Latifi has developed quickly as a rookie partly thanks to F1’s intense run of nine races in 11 weekends, according to Williams’ head of vehicle performance Dave Robson.

What they say

Latifi made a strong start in qualifying at Mugello, said Robson:

He did a very good job, his first run was Q1 was very good. He was able to kind of chip away at it. I think, unfortunately for him that final lap I think some of the understeer, probably we misjudged how much front wing to add during the session, which is one of those things that at other circuits we would have had a better idea of. So we probably misjudged that a little bit.

But on top of that, I think he didn’t quite get the tyre preparation he was after, just a little bit of traffic. So it comes back to the tyres again and getting those the front tyres working at the start of a lap. I think that’s where the main problem was, probably we did misjudge the front wing.

But he is getting better and better and the momentum and stringing these triple-headers together is actually probably a pretty good thing for him.

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

Snapshot

Start, Le Mans 24 Hours, 2020
Start, Le Mans 24 Hours, 2020

The number seven Toyota of Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway and Jose Maria Lopez leads the Le Mans 24 Hours by two laps over its sister car approaching the halfway mark in the race.

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Comment of the day

While more motorsport disappears behind paywalls, the British Touring Car Championship has made a smart move by staying on free-to-air television, says Adrian:

Excellent news about the BTCC staying on free to air here in the UK. The full day live coverage of the three races and all of the support categories (Ginettas, Porsches etc) is well presented and very watchable. The highlight show is also well produced.

Glad to see that is not going behind a paywall.
Adrian Hancox (@Ahxshades)

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Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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19 comments on “Run of triple-headers helped Latifi’s development”

  1. Here here, I’ll second COTD. And its Thruxton today, which is always a better, especially the F4 races.

  2. “Red flags make F1 feel more like NASCAR, and that’s a good thing (Autoweek)”

    As I don’t have a desire to marry my sister….no, it’s not.

    1. I’m still trying to work out whether the writer of that article is serious or being sarcastic.

      Hopefully it’s the latter. If not please never allow him to publish an article about F1 ever again.

      1. @dbradock judging by his other articles, I get the impression that his proposal to use the red flag in the way that NASCAR has “competition cautions” is entirely serious.

      2. It’s sarcastic @dbradock :)

        Quite right too, those red flags and restarts were a disgrace.

      3. @dbradock The worst part is that F1’s new owners seem to feel the same way and are of course completely serious. It’s no coincidence that the race director will trow a safety car or red flag every other race nowadays.

    2. Reversed grid sprint races, red flags. There must be a circus in town. Oh wait, thats another thing they can … up; these horrible street circuits of Formula E. They can use them in F1. So you look at cars chasing eachother between walls of iron fences and lines on the tarmac going in all directions. Maybe throw in some cheerleaders

      1. I think the author was serious but being tongue in cheek at the same time, knowing that F1 will not likely resort to Nascar-like techniques such as he has spelled out. The only thing I agree with him on is that I don’t think they should be able to touch the cars (other than with necessary cooling fans for eg) and shouldn’t be able to change tires. They should resume racing as they were.

  3. Funny how an experienced driver racing supercars (‘follow as close as you want’ kind of cars) is saying he wants tyres that will be good for one lap and then you’d have to manage wear, because otherwise there is no passing on track.

    And we here are just talking about getting the aero in shape so that cars can follow each other, and then getting the tyres back to their “normal racing tyre” state – i.e a tyre drivers will be able to lean on for half a race.

    Good god. Are we just going circles here people.

    1. Yes. This is motorsport, of course we’re going around in circles.

      …I’ll get my coat.

    2. I like(d) the variation before in Supercars: sometimes the tyre deg played no part in the race, sometimes you gained many seconds by undercutting your opponent. Making soft tyres that force everyone to chance them twice in a 120k race (or just cruise around) does not sound very interesting.

  4. Seeing the WEC close up in the pits so far has been a treat. Such amazing looking racing machines. Lemans is amongst the greater of the great Racing facilities across our planet. Love seeing this night racing again. I find it interesting how little actual track lighting there is. Compare to American series where night racing is happening most tracks are like emergency rooms with stunning lighting. The cars tonight are fantastic. Good like F1 is. PLUS for the first time in many decades Motortrends TV coverage is wall to wall but with crazy amounts of commercials. Almost as crazy as the TDF coverage.
    Lemans is such an important race track has been and always will be. The WEC is developing Hydrogen powered racecars for next year series, It’s like what ? Sounds like seeking a new power source to racing may educate the young who will be buying that new car to racing now but will be more common in 2025. They will have it figured out. Rather a positive sounding idea. I suppose there are side effects does anyone know the bottom line on using Hydrogen and can it be a problem in the unseen moments if racing.

    It’s the constant desire to change what works well enough right now. Learning through Racing or racing while learning will Hydrogen become that new branch of performance racers seek world wide.

    1. Holmzini, whilst there is an independent team which is working on a hydrogen fuel cell car, it’s not certain that it’ll be used in 2021 – meanwhile, the ACO isn’t going to be introducing a category for hydrogen fuel cell cars until 2023 at the earliest.

      Hydrogen, as a fuel, is generally not considered to be that brilliant – the energy density in gaseous form is very poor, so you usually have to use extremely high pressures (hence the large and rather heavy pressurised tanks), and almost all commercial production of hydrogen comes from fossil fuels (usually steam reforming of methane).

      Overall, it’s a fairly inefficient fuel source – the Royal Society pointing out that it’s only around a third as efficient as simply using that same energy to charge a battery powered car – that isn’t the saviour that it claims to be right now.

  5. I couldn’t disagree more with the Autoweek-post: What a bunch of I don’t know what, but I, like @dbradock above, can’t decide either if the author attempted to be serious or sarcastic when doing the article. Merely seeing the headline already made me question the whole point of this article. F1 should never head towards Nascar as F1, after all, is the highest level of circuit-racing, while Nascar is, well, Nascar. I’ve made the following points a few times before, but here they’re once again: Keep on allowing tyre changes during red-flag stoppages so that more sets are likely to be used than left unused and also because of a potential safety risk not allowing could create if the set in question happens to be extremely worn, or flat-spotted, etc. Only ever do rolling restarts after every red flag-stoppage to both minimize an unnecessary increase in the overall race time and make it fairer to all drivers, one standing start per race is enough. Allow overtaking from SC1 again to minimize the risk of a pile lap happening again on tracks where the control line comes long after the final corner. Apply VSC when suitable, not full SC for every single situation for the sake of it, also to save overall race time, as VSC allows for getting back up to racing speed quicker, thus, doesn’t break the flow of the races as much. Otherwise, what’s the point of its existence if it isn’t going to be used for its intended purpose? F1 isn’t Nascar and never should become like that series.

    1. Martijn Schenderling
      20th September 2020, 8:46

      Well, just leave it up to Liberty and we’ll have Nascar-ish F1 in a few years. Maybe throw in some elephants and clowns and they’ll have their circus

      1. @Martijn Schenderling LOL.

  6. Was some trying to take the BTCC rights away from ITV? Or did they just simply need to renew thier deal?

  7. Whatever happened to the virtual safety car? I can’t recall it bring used all year.

    1. @homerlovesbeer Beats me. It should be the favored one whenever suitable rather than a full SC for the sake of it.

Comments are closed.