AT&T Williams F1

Hockenheim is the next stop on the calendar. Dominated by slower speed corners, with just a couple of higher speed ones thrown in to mix it up, we asked our Chief Aerodynamicist, Jon Tomlinson, for his technical insight.

The Hockenheim circuit layout is dominated by slow and medium speed corners, together with some high speed straights. The pitstraight, through turn 1 and up to turn 2, is fairly high speed. Turn 2 is reasonably slow, however (taken at about 100kph), but leads onto the fastest section of the lap consisting of a long sweeping straight where speeds reach in excess of 300 kph. This is followed by an extremely tight hairpin, taken at a speed of about 60kph. The remainder of the lap, and in particular the last few corners, consists of mainly slow and medium speed corners, however, and they invariably have a reasonable impact upon lap time.

Aerodynamically, the car is typically set-up at a medium downforce level. This is to give a sufficient level of downforce for grip in the slow speed corners so that minimum time is lost, but also to give a lower level of drag due to the long straights. Ideally, the car would be set-up with maximum downforce for the slow speed corners and minimum drag for the straights. Of course, this isn't possible - increased downforce generally comes at the expense of increased drag.

A compromise is, therefore, required between having more downforce, or having reduced drag. Fortunately, the team were able to investigate this at the test last week at Hockenheim, and formulate the best compromise set-up for the quickest lap time. This means that the engineers will now be able to concentrate on valuable chassis set-up and tyre comparisons during Friday's practice sessions.