Track Too Quick Throwing Out Different Problems

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Qualifying this weekend will be very interesting throwing up some new problems drivers and teams would never have faced before. The problem is the circuit is too quick being only 3.5 km in distance with only 4 braking points .As you can see from the diagram above the cars are at full throttle for nearly 75% or 2.5 km of the circuit.

Qualifying 1 with all 20 cars vying for clean air and space within front of them will be very difficult to find. Teams normally back each other up making space for flying laps avoiding the turbulent air of other cars around them. Looking at the practice sessions the cars are getting in the way of others with no fault of their own which is impeding some of the results.


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Another factor is when a car does a flying qualifying lap the lap before is used to charge the onboard battery. On other circuits this is a comfortable time period, but here it isn't. If your flying lap is compromised it would take the remainder of that lap plus the next one to recharge your battery boosters.

From watching qualifying it looks like whoever gets out first or last is going to have the overall advantage and I would guess last on the track would be the best spot to try and grab. A huge gamble though as mistakes could happen resulting in the driver having to drive an extra two laps to recharge.

55 seconds is the time we are seeing right now per lap and expect that to drop in qualifying. George Russell driving in the Hamilton's Mercedes has won both speed sessions, but Bottas had some issues with his car today. This evening in Bahrain in session 1 Bottas had some debris impeding his times and in session 2 even though the lap time he posted was deleted for breaching track limits he is almost .3 of a second quicker than the rest, so lap times mean nothing until qualifying begins.

This year we have seen so many new circuits and each one has been so different but none as quick as this one. A car with full fuel is going to do a sub 1 minute time around 58 seconds or so. Being the race is only 87 laps the race will comfortably finish within the 90 minute window. This is as long as there are no accidents this week.

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