What do you want to ask the F1 drivers at pre-season testing?
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The first test of 2018 kicks off at the Circuit de Catalunya tomorrow. We’re going to be at the track throughout both tests and are expecting to get opportunities to hear from all the drivers.
Naturally we’re not short of topics we’d like to talk to them about! However we’d also like to hear what matters to you.
What do you most want to know about the drivers’ views on the upcoming season? Which are the most important topics to put to drivers at the moment? And who are you most interested to hear from?
Please share your ideas below throughout the tests – we’ll keep an eye on what you come up with.
I would love an explanation from an F1 driver how technical feedback works. How do they know about the various inputs, how do they know how to link certain car behaviours and handling characteristics to elements on their car? Do they get better over time due to experience or is it an intuitive thing? Do they need technical understanding or not?
You won’t be short of Halo questions, I’m sure of it. However, one thing I’d like to ask most of the grid is whether they’d prefer the canopy style windshield IndyCar has been testing, and of course why or why not. Maybe they could compare and contrast it and mention how it’d be better or worse than the current halo. And another question could be, how would they modify the halo to make it integrate better with the car while still mantaining the protection?
Aside from the Halo questions (sorry, I had to haha) I’d love to hear from Charles Leclerc on how he’s handling the pressure of being F1’s next hot young star. He destroyed everyone on F2 last year, even more than Vandoorne. So he’s expected to deliver with a heavily improved Sauber.
Finally, even if you don’t pick my questions I wish you guys a nice trip and enjoy your stay, you earned it!
I was wondering about technical feedback recently just as @hahostolze suggested, so if you could ask them about it that would be greatly appreciated. My question in that area is, how far can you go back when you want to give a comparison to your engineers to what feeling would you like from the car, given the constant development throughout the season? Or can you even reference back to earlier cars? Just as an example, could the Mercedes drivers suggest at this test some setup based completely on the W08 if they don’t like the current car’s handling on the first day?
Ask the drivers which one they’d prefer for f1 if given the choise: a 3 litre V12 engine, 80s style 1.5 liter turbo engine with unlimited boost or the current hybrid engines.
Ask someone if they’ve banged their head on the halo yet!
More seriously ask them who their favourite non-F1 driver and team is.@Carlitox Regarding the IndyCar canopy, this was put to Perez:
@FJBH10 Gasly tore his race suit on it!Thanks for the suggestions on technical questions, those don’t come up quite so much. At this time of year you don’t tend to get much detail about that because so much of what they’re doing is systems checks and so on (or not running at all, as was the case today…)
Please keep your questions coming for the rest of the test and next week’s.
Massive thanks for asking my question Keith. Interesting response, since the target of each protection system is different (the Windscreen aims to deflect showers of small debris, typical on oval pileups, while the Halo aims to deflect loose tyres). He may have a point there.
Best of luck on the coming days!
@carlitox I should say I can’t remember if that was a question we asked or if someone else did, but there’s the answer anyway!
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