Curly’s Corner: A Nerd’s Eye on Formula 1 – Spain & Monaco Grand Prix

Fernando Alonso had an even better view of the action.  This is a great view as you can see that at no point is the nose of the VF-18 pointing to the left.  Again, we can see that Grosjean has chased the car to the outside of the track. Grosjean catches the tank slapper, but once he hits the paint, the car immediately snaps right.  He hits the painted line and the lack of grip on that paint sets the car off into its spin. At this point, he is just along for the ride.
And this is where Grosjean has to make a split-second decision.  Notice where his helmet is pointing. He’s looking at the wall of cars coming up the hill directly at him.  See, Grosjean’s car is at an incredibly vulnerable angle right now. He is broad side across the track and sliding towards the racing line.  Worse yet, he is sliding, nose first, into a blind, fast corner, on the opening lap. He is going to be completely unsighted as cars head up Turn 3.  He has two choices: hit the brakes and either skid across the track into an even worse situation, or hit the gas and attempt to get out of the way. Grosjean chose the latter.

 

I believe that Grosjean thought he could send the car into a full spin on the outside of the track.  This would have been the best thing to do in this scenario.  Fewer cars are going to be at that part of the track.  Unfortunately, the layout of the corner just sends him back across the track and into oncoming traffic.

Keep in mind that despite all of the advances in Formula 1, the front of the car is still relatively weak.  It’s been years since we’ve seen an F1 car get T-boned, but we do know what happened to Alex Zanardi when this same situation happened to him in 2001 (WARNING: the linked video is incredibly graphic).  Yes, motor racing safety has made leaps and bounds in the last 17 years, but the fact remains that Grosjean getting t-boned could have been a career ending crash.  Impact structures, anti-intrusion plates, and carbon fiber advances can only go so far: it’s still a large amount of energy being applied to a small area. Obviously we will never know what would have happened if Grosjean’s car had been clipped in the front instead of the back.  He could have walked away. He could have broken his feet, ankles, or legs. Perhaps he would have ended up like Zanardi and spent the next two weeks in a coma, and the following six months learning how to walk with prosthetic legs. Maybe he would not have survived at all. The one thing we can be certain of, is that Romain Grosjean did not want to find out.  When he spun into traffic, he panicked and slammed his foot on the throttle. And while the armchair critics can all sit around and look down their noses at a professional driver who made a mistake, they can all piss off if they think they would not have panicked in the exact same situation.

 

If the penalty for panic bailing is a three-place grid penalty and two measly Superlicense points, I’d say Grosjean came out well ahead.

Random Observation

It’s been five races in 2018 and we’ve seen five safety cars.  This is becoming quite the trend. I’m not sure when was the last time that there were 5 Safety Cars in as many races, but it’s not within recent memory.  Safety Cars are annoying, but I would argue they’ve improved the show. Between bunching the field, throwing a wrench into team strategies, allowing drivers to save fuel, and altering the tire temperatures, Safety Cars add a nice layer of unpredictability to a race.  While the SC and VSC didn’t affect the winner, the VSC helped Mercedes pull off the 1-2. Without it, Bottas would have needed another stop and Vettel would not have been blocked by Perez. This would have put Vettel 2nd and Bottas 3rd or worse. Source

Monaco: A Tale of Two Bulls

There really was only one story in Monaco: Red Bull Racing.  On one side of the garage were the highest of highs: Daniel Ricciardo finally broke through to win the most prestigious race of the year and claim victory at the Monaco Grand Prix.  In the sister garage, Max Verstappen’s team settled for a lowly 9th and were left to wonder what could have been.

 

We’ll start with Max Verstappen.  After Baku, Max was in the dog house with Red Bull Racing and needed a solid race to recover points.  He mostly delivered that in Spain with his 3rd place finish. He should have been prepared to do the same in Monaco.  Monaco in particular was the perfect track for Red Bull to begin closing in on its rivals. The tight, twisty confines of Monaco require tons of efficient downforce and the RB14 has that in spades.  Sure enough, the Red Bulls were 1-2 in every practice session. However Ricciardo was outpacing Verstappen and for Max, this simply wouldn’t do. He started to push, harder and harder, looking to squeeze out that last 1/1000th of a second to beat his teammate.  Unfortunately, Max pushed just a bit too hard.

We’re not kidding about that 1/1000 of a second either.  Verstappen’s best lap was exactly 0.001 slower than Ricciardo’s in FP3.  That’s how close they were and how hard Max was pushing when he crashed in the Swimming Pool.  Source

The crash was a disaster for Red Bull.  There was no way the car could be repaired in time for qualifying, which meant one of their cars, a car that would easily land on the front row, was starting dead last.  Turns out there is a worse place to be than the dog house and Max just found it. Max quickly realized there was only one person to blame in this situation; himself. His other incidents throughout the year could be somewhat rationalized since they involved other drivers.  Clipping the barriers while completely on his own left no excuses to hide behind.

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