Lotus-Renault GP F1 Team News & Updates: FOTA Fans Forum in Britain

23/06/2011
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21/06/2011
James Allison - "FIA note will cause all teams to change...
16/06/2011
LRGP launches Youtube channel - share your...

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FOTA Fans Forum in Britain Ahead of the British Grand Prix, another FOTA Fans Forum took place yesterday, this time hosted by McLaren Mercedes in Woking. Once again, high profile figures of the industry took part in the event and among them LRGP's Technical Director James Allison who gave his opinion about current technical hot topics including the impact of DRS, KERS and tyre degradation.

Fans were in for a big treat just a week before the next Grand Prix which will take place at Silverstone.

Here are James' answers to the questions asked yesterday…

With the introduction of tyre degradation, DRS and KERS in 2011, it would seem that less driver skill is required in order to overtake. How can we get that back?
I reject the premise to some extent because I don't think driver skill is in any way reduced by this year's rules. There is more overtaking, certainly, and that was the intention of the rules this year. But in no way does that diminish the driver skill, it just means there is more overtaking. There might have been a little bit too much overtaking at the odd track this year, but if you look at the season as a whole, the races we've had this year, there have been several absolute crackers. At most tracks the overtaking remains extremely challenging and while there is an element of the DRS in particular that offends the purist, which I completely understand, I think the overall balance is of a sport that's more thrilling to watch. If I use my wife or my mum as a yardstick, as opposed to someone who's really into the sport, I've seen my wife in particular willing to sit through a whole race. There's excitement from start-to-finish and I think all of us know that that hasn't always been the case in the past. Some tracks we went to with a heavy heart because we knew that it was going to be an extraordinarily boring affair from beginning-to-end. We haven't had that this year and that's a good thing.

What does the panel think of the double DRS zones that we had in Canada?
The FIA have done a pretty good job at trimming it this year. It's their first time round with all the circuits this year. By and large they've set the distance variable pretty well.

What issues have you had adjusting your cars for the off-throttle diffuser ban at Silverstone?
We're all a bit coy with one another about the power of these devices. It will vary from team-to-team. I won't give you our number, but I'll give you a sense of it: if you imagine they're worth 0.8s compared with having no blown diffuser. We're now going down to about half of the previous authority of it. You've still got plenty of blowing going on because you've still got an engine running and that exhaust is still going right into your floor. We're not able to optimise the use of the engine to make it also efficient as a pump when we're on partial throttle. That's the new interpretation that's being applied.

How fast could an F1 car go and what would it look like if the rules were completely open?
I think it would be an extraordinarily dull sport if the rules were completely free. You'd have little beetle-like things that would be fully skirted up to the floor with fans sucking all the air out from under them and sealing them to the ground. Drivers would go round every corner with their feet hard on the throttle and I think we need to be thankful that there are a decent set of rules to restrict us.

With fuel being finite, are you looking at what to do afterwards, whether that be hydrogen, electric-driven engines and so on…
I think F1 will be one of the smaller problems to cope with when fuel runs out! The 2014 engine is already moving in a direction that recognises the way in which the world is going. Fuel is becoming increasingly expensive; at some point the world will reach peak oil production and then decline from there. The 2014 engine is all about recognising those realities and we will have electric energy in the car in quite large measures. We already have it to a small degree now. When we get to the point that non-petrol cars are a part of our sport, you'll really need to look at what's going on in road cars to determine that. I don't think there are too many analysts who expect hydrogen cars on the road in the near future, although fully electric cars will have an increasing role in city centres. The technology with electric cars isn't there yet to put the performance that we need on the road, so I don't think it's coming in the next five years and I think you need to look to the road cars to see what it will look like when it does come.

Are there any plans to share technical data with fans through the Internet?
There is so much all the teams do that is more or less the same. All of us could talk about the technical detail of the sport without betraying any particular secrets of our particular team because we'd just be revealing things that go on in the sport that are interesting, which we're all doing.

Why aren't there more women involved in F1 engineering?
I certainly feel no duty to employ women over men. I get mildly annoyed by the stereotypes of woman being good multi-tasking decision-makers and men are good at parking, although that bit's obviously true! We react to the quality of the applicant and what's fantastic is that as the years have gone on and F1 has become more and more impressive, the quality of applicants – both men and women – is always increasing. Some of the people who apply to us now, the quality of their intellect and what they bring to us is breathtaking. We see more and more women applying to us now and more women with real quality and as a consequence we're seeing more and more women employed in our company at a technical level.

What are the main differences between team-mates that you guys see?
It's very easy to think a driver is a constant when he's not. His ability waxes and wanes with his confidence. When he thinks he's going well, things will go well for him because his confidence is up. One of the things that makes this sport so interesting is the dynamic between the team-mates. It would be a much less interesting sport if every team only entered one driver because that would be one area of wrangling that would be gone. Some of the relationships get quite fraught and some are more friendly, and I find it absolutely fascinating.

Would you like to see refuelling brought back?
Personally, I think it would be the wrong thing to do. Having a race with no refuelling means you tend to do your racing on the track, not via pitstop strategy; the refuelling makes the pitstops slow and much less of a spectacle than the current ones, which are a frantic explosion of activity, and, from a team point of view, it costs quite a lot of money to shunt the refuelling equipment around the world and have the people look after it. Also, it's stuff that we don't design, we have to buy it from an outside supplier. When it goes wrong, and no matter how much love and attention you festoon upon it, it goes wrong at some point, it's an extraordinarily bitter feeling to see your opportunities in the race squandered by something that you don't have direct control over.