F1 Explains: Sainz + Bortoleto on flying laps, race starts + clean v dirty air

0:02Around 50 kilometres from the Belgian city of Liège is the small village of Frankenschamps. It's home to stunning dark green spruce trees which tower up to 50 metres high. There's rolling hills, stunning scenery, gorgeous countryside and what some say is the greatest racetrack in the world. Shortest name, longest lap And the most respected circuit on Formula 1's calendar

0:31Carlos Sainz:And into the wall, who was that? Coulthard, Coulthard in the wall David Coulthard in the wall, will stop the race They'll have to red flag this And Lewis Hamilton comes through And in the most extraordinary circumstances imaginable He wins the Belgian Grand Prix Can he do it? Yes, he's done it A brilliant move there Either side of Zonta And Hacken and brilliantly takes the lead win number six of the season and championship lead extended for Oscar Piastri. But of course, a track can't create magic moments without our 22 superheroes. And this week on F1 Explains, it's all about them. Although when is it not?

1:13We're putting your questions to two F1 drivers. And in the hot seat, one of the sport's most promising young stars. Back-to-back titles in F3 and F2 for the boy from Brazil. He's heading to Formula One as the champion. Yes, Gabriel Bortoleto, the 21-year-old who's now firmly established himself in F1 with Audi. This is better than driving the car itself, right? Doing podcasts. Yeah, it's crazy. I love it. And also on the way, a race winner. Carlos Sainz wins the Mexico City Grand Prix. He's trying to help Williams take their place back among F1's elite. Hello, Carlos Sainz. Welcome to F1 Explains.

1:53Let's do it. Let's do it. It's time to ask the drivers. Welcome to F1 Explains.

2:09I'm Christian Hugill and welcome to the Formula One paddock here in Belgium. If you've been following Formula One for a while, you will know that this racetrack, beautiful Spa, is known for, well, over the course of a four-day race weekend, having four different seasons. Europe's in the middle of a bit of a heat wave at the moment, and that seems to be the weather we're going to get this weekend. It is baking hot. There's a slight chance of rain on Friday, but other than that, it looks like we're going to have sunny skies in Spa this weekend. My first time here. What a thrill to be at what we've just said is one of the greatest racetracks in the world.

2:48And what a cool thing we're doing. We're putting your questions directly to Formula One drivers as one walks past us now in the paddock. Arvid Lindblad looking cool and chilled in the heat as cameras follow him. Arvid Lindblad is not one of the drivers answering your questions on this week's F1 Explains, but we do wish him well nonetheless. Instead, as we've just said, it's Carlos Sainz. He's on the way in just a second. and we spoke to him at Silverstone a couple of weeks ago. Carlos on absolutely great form, and we also put some F1 Explains admin to him. If you were listening to the episode we did with his manager a couple of weeks ago, you'll know what we're talking about there.

3:23That's on the way. But first, we stood outside Audi, where we had a tour just a few weeks ago on this very podcast with Alan McNish. Now we're going back inside to speak to the driver who scored all of their points so far this season, the very impressive Gabriel Bortoleto.

3:43Gabriel Bortoletto, welcome back to F1 Explained, a second appearance in two seasons for you. We enjoy having you here. Thank you. I enjoy being here. That is good. Well, thank you for having us at Audi in your lovely motorhome, which we got a tour around the other week on this podcast. We've got some questions for you. The first being from Sean, who is from Southern California, where I'm going on holiday in the summer. So I'm excited for that. Nice. You didn't know that, did you? Sean says, newer F1 fan here and huge fan of the show. Thank you, Sean. My question is, how do the drivers know when they can enable overtake modes and the active aero components?

4:16Great question. How on earth do you know, Gabby? So there are two different things. Overtake mode, you don't enable it. You get automatic when you are within one second of the car ahead. So you have a zone, normally before the last corner. And then when you cross this line, if you are within one second to the car ahead, you get the overtake. and then the overtake mode you gain like half megajoule more to recover and spend so basically in a simple way you get more energy to spend in the next lap so you can just use more power of your engine basically the slm zone the sm the straight line mode is basically you can use every lap anytime you just need to press the button that in my case i have behind my wheel and as soon as you press it in this specific zone's FIA set, the wings open it and then you just press it again to close and it closes and you break.

5:12You have to remember to press it again to close. Well, it happened a few times that I forgot and then I locked up massively and I went straight. So it's not ideal. Ideally you close, yeah. No, sure. And when this came in at the start of the season, obviously last year we had DRS, the drug reduction system. How long did it take you as a driver to get used to this new way of working? To be honest, it's not massively different because the DRS was trying to do basically the same thing. The only thing is that DRS was only open in the rear wing and not the front wing. So this is just like a mix of both.

5:43And you have a bit more through the lap. Last year we had a few less zones. And you mentioned that your button is behind the steering wheel. Can you guys choose where your button goes? Absolutely. You can choose anywhere in the steering. What made you choose there? It was already my DRS button from last year. So I just kept it there. Our next question is from Lewis in South Australia. This is a brilliant question i particularly like our questions for things i'd never thought of before obviously in practice sessions you guys do practice starts we all know how crucial the race start is on a sunday lewis asks i want to know how do drivers know when to go on a practice start do their engineers say go or is there a sign somewhere no so basically we wait the car ahead to clear if we have no one ahead as well so we press a button in the steering as well that simulates like the start line you know the start line oh sorry the yeah the start lights that we have the one two three four five and then out and that's how you do it how important are those practice race starts we know how important it is on a sunday obviously you do so much simulation work in formula one to simulate the real thing how helpful are the practice starts on friday to simulate what you're actually doing on a sunday yeah super important uh i think you know also because from this practice start, you understand how much you have grip available on the tarmac, how much you need to set up your clutch drop because that's how we do it.

7:10Now we have like basically the drop that we need to drop to a very precise point. And then if we drop a bit too deep or too shy, we basically have a good like run out of the grid box or we have a very bad one. So you need to nail this. And with practice, you just understand a bit better. And once again, it's something that's been changed for this season, the start procedure. Has there been much to get used to from a driver's perspective? Because we've got the bigger batteries, they require some charging up at the start, don't they? How has it changed for you at the start this year compared to last?

7:44It changed a lot. Yeah, you need to spend a bit more time loading the boost of the engine in the starts and loading the whole, putting again in a simplistic way, you have this engine this year is much more complex. so you need to spend a bit more time loading everything to work and then you just yeah spend a bit more time last year was basically two three seconds and this year you need about seven eight seconds to have the full procedure done it's such a lot of stuff to think about but i'm guessing it becomes second nature to you so that you're not actually thinking about it you go into a sort of autopilot mode with this sort of thing you try to sometimes it becomes a bit uh too much as well and And then if one thing of the procedure goes wrong, you can really mess up your whole thing.

8:31So ideally it's autopilots. Yes, we hope that doesn't happen, of course. Ben is in Ottawa in Canada. Ben says, hi, everyone explains team. I love the podcast. Thanks for all the great episodes. I'd love to hear what a typical Formula One driver's race weekend looks like from start to finish. It will be fascinating to hear what it's really like behind the scenes. Thanks again for making such an informative and entertaining podcast. Ben, we appreciate you. Thank you. We have a Formula One driver here. I appreciate you could describe your weekend in great detail, but we've got a limited amount of time.

9:00So a sharp summary. Guide us to a race weekend. So let's put it this way. Wednesday, sometimes we have events for sponsors. So we arrive somewhere in the world where we need to do this event. Normally, they try to put us close to the track. Then we do these events for, I don't know, three, four, five, six hours on a Wednesday. And then we go relax in the hotel. Thursday, we arrive at the track in the morning. We have all the media commitments, this podcast, interviews with journalists, explain a little bit of how the team has been doing and everything. We have time with engineers to organize the weekend and what's the plan for the weekend.

9:37Meetings with engineers, jump in the car, driver check, test everything is a ride. Then leave to the hotel, sleep, wake up, Friday arrive, few meet and grits sometimes, you know, with sponsors. then we have time with engineer then free practice one debrief free practice two debrief understand if we need to improve the car back to the hotel sleep saturday come back meetings more meetings fb3 meetings uh quali meetings and then you love a meeting a lot of meetings yes we have a lot of meetings. And then Sunday, drivers' parades, meetings, strategy meetings, race, post-race meeting, and then home.

10:25Of all of that, what would you say is your favourite meeting? I don't like any. Oh, shame. I think the strategy meeting is always interesting. You decide what you're going to do on Sunday. It's cool. And on your favourite day of the weekend, I'm guessing it's Thursdays because you get to talk to the likes of me. Absolutely. You could read me so well, my friend. Exactly. This is better than driving the car itself, right? Doing podcasts. Yeah, it's crazy. I love it. Sincerity in your face. And yeah, I can tell you're lying. Excellent. Right. Our next one is from Kayla from New Jersey. She says, does every day driving in a normal car affect a driver's ability to race?

11:08So if they drive a normal car often, will they get used to it and it negatively impacts their racing skills? is it hard to adjust from driving an f1 car to a normal road car or are professional drivers able to separate the two i'd love to hear how your brain adapts to the different types of driving thank you i love the podcast how often are you in a normal car quite a bit i like to drive um but no it doesn't affect you because it's so different it's a completely different world you are not racing you are not fully squeezed by the belts and in a tight seat and pushing to the limit you are just going around that is so different that is like uh yeah you don't even correlate things you know it's not that i'm driving like another racing car and then i need to jump in a formula one it's like a road car with a formula one car it's completely two different beasts when i was very young i raced karts i wasn't very good people like you who are very good climb the motorsport ladder people like me drop out the motorsport ladder and end up talking about it the one little i'm sure i had more opportunities this is well you're very kind of you but uh the one that tiny little thing i got was when i was racing karts i get into my car for a split second and the lightness of the steering would for a split second take some getting used to do you ever have little moments like that where it's like ah this is different to the car yes the brake pedal as you know very well the brake pedals can be very hard in race cars and then in the road cars you tap it a little bit and the thing is already like yes pushing your head straight to the steering wheel so yeah these type of things maybe you but you already know as well like i jump in my road car i've driven it so many times that i know how the brake pedal there works so i just know i don't need to press it as hard as a race car you know but yeah you get the feeling a bit different for sure finally gabby before we let you go um a couple of weeks ago on f1 explains we had a tour of your shiny new hospitality building that we're sat in now that comes with you to all the race weekends in Europe from your boss, Alan McNish.

12:59We got a tour into the kitchen and me and Alan didn't know what for phallet pasta was, I'm ashamed to say. This got quite a lot of traction on social media. A lot of traction. Elena from Audi is giving you something. Would you just like to explain what this is, Gary? It's a type of pasta, this one. What specific pasta is it? It is. It's like the one you have here on the smoking. Yes, it is Fafale Pasta. Yeah. Now, firstly, thank you to Audi for presenting this to us in an honorary way, given all the furor that was caused by me and Alan not knowing what Fafale meant. Obviously, you're Brazilian, but I understand you lived in Italy.

13:46Yeah. So you should know Pasta really well. Yeah. So you're going to be our voice of authority on this subject. How do you pronounce Fafale? In Italian? Well, yeah, just because this has been causing great controversy. Go again. Farfalle. Farfalle. Farfalle. Elena at the back, who is actually Italian. Farfalle. Farfalle is nodding ahead. Farfalle. Farfalle. I've got it. For the avoidance of doubt, I now know what it is, and I know how to pronounce it. Have I done okay? Unbelievable. Great. It's like crazy how good your Italian is. Thank you. I appreciate that, because we've come a long way in the last few weeks.

14:24You do look slightly bemused, but I appreciate you playing along with us here. Everything, man. To make you happy. Enjoy. Thank you. You do make me happy. Enjoy the Belgian Grand Prix. Thank you for coming back on F1 Explains. We've enjoyed your time a lot. Thanks, bro. Appreciate it. It was great to speak to Gabby. He's such a nice guy. He's as nice as he comes across. Thank you to Team Audi for my pasta. That's really appreciated. Hopefully we can put that one to bed now after all the conflicting emails of how to pronounce it. But good Lord, it's amazing what captures you lots of attention. Gabriel was amazing.

14:58And we've got another Formula One driver for you. Carlos Sainz coming up in just a moment.

15:12Welcome back to F1 Explains from a baking hot spa here in Belgium. Before the break, we heard Gabriel Bortoletto, but he is not the only Formula One driver answering your questions on this week's F1 Explains, because a couple of weeks ago at Silverstone, we had a chat to the smooth operator that is Mr. Carlos Sainz.

15:36Hello, Carlos Sainz. Welcome to F1 Explains. Let's do it. Let's do it. Our listeners have been asking us questions about driving a Formula 1 car. This, to me, seems a topic you're quite well qualified to answer them on.

15:49Carlos Sainz:I think so. I should be able to help on this. I hope so. Let's go for it. I really like our first question. It comes from Pravi and it says, Hi Carlos, how does a flat out flying lap in qualifying really feel? It's a combination of taking a lot of risks. But at the same time, like if you know how to play an instrument and you just want to play a certain song and you need to memorize what you want to do through that minute and a half. so you know what a perfect lap looks like in your head you know exactly where to break where to release the break where to go on throttle so you need to memorize and let's say focus on hitting those points but then at the same time if you can find something extra by taking a bit more risk in a high speed corner or breaking a bit later than what your plan is then it's that's where feel comes into place where risk and reward comes into place into into play and where you need to balance playing the instrument, like I call it, at the same time that you take probably a bit more risk than what at the beginning you were going to think you were going to do.

17:00I think that's my favourite analogy for driving a Formula One car I've ever heard, playing an instrument. It's quite a romantic way of describing it.

17:07Carlos Sainz:It is, because we've done so many laps during the weekend, we know what a perfect corner should be like. We know that corner, if you turn in at the exact point, like here, turn nine, cops sometimes you can do it flat if you turn in you get a bit of a gust of headwind at the apex you know the perfect lap the perfect corner is flat out and so you know you need to play the instrument and turning at that point downshift or whatever you know but most of the times you rely more on feel and you say i'm not having the right tire temperature the right balance this lap and you have to lift a bit more or less.

17:49Carlos Sainz:So there's a level of improvisation plus a level of trying to do what you want to do. What instruments would it be? What do you need to use? Feet and hands. Piano, maybe? Piano is good. No, the drums. Patricia Jamie's doing drums analogy there, yeah. I think about the piano because the piano is playing the notes with the fingers and you have in front of you like a, you read through the sheet that you have to play. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And don't get me wrong, I've never played the piano in my life. You can ask this more to Charles, but I think about it like that, that I know what I need to do to do a perfect lap.

18:32Carlos Sainz:So I will go into the quali lap with knowing what I want to achieve and how I want to play. But then I leave it a bit too instant to know how much I want to push it. I love this analogy. I'm going to be using this again. I'll be quoting this for many years to come. Steffi is from New Zealand and says, why do drivers occasionally say the car feels different in FP1 when they may have raced the same car just five days earlier? What changes between the end of one race weekend and the start of the next that make the same car feel so different? It's a great question. Great question. It could be various things.

19:08Carlos Sainz:So for us, tarmac is where the tyre touches the ground. So if the tarmac changes and there's a completely different level of grip, and the change in tarmac changes the feel of the car a lot. So for example, Silverstone, we had an amazing levels of grip here. It's the highest grip of the season, together with the Jeddah and the new tarmac in Suzuka. Like we have a lot of grip here and the car feels amazing pretty much straight out of the box. But then you go to other tarmacs that are a lot rougher, older, Bahrain, Barcelona, Austria last week. and the car immediately slides more. So the balance is already, it doesn't matter if you have good balance, you have the feeling that the car is worse.

19:50Carlos Sainz:And then sometimes you always start with a bit of a different setup because you try and adapt the setup to each track characteristic. You haven't nailed that setup and the car feels strange. Or sometimes you put in a new front wing that the team has produced over those two weeks. And the new front wing is delivering a bit too much front load, a bit less front load and the balance is not as you expected so multiple factors it must be so irritating when you've had a really great weekend and the cars felt amazing and if and if it's a double header for example and then a few days later you're like oh no i want it to feel like it did the other day i had exactly that situation in austria we were coming off barcelona where the car car wasn't competitive but the balance was okay i was happy with balance and then put the car on track in Austria I didn't do FP1 look who was in the car in FP1 it was already complaining a bit about the balance and I go I do my first lap to Austria and I'm like what the hell is this like this has nothing to do with what I drove exactly that and we we ended up finding out why developed during the the the weekend we managed to find what was wrong and why was it not delivering in the same kind of balance.

21:05Carlos Sainz:But yeah, interestingly, that situation happened to me just a week ago. Steph is in Utah and Steph says, my question is about clean air and dirty air. This is one of our most frequently asked questions, this Carlos. When you're catching another car, when does the air stop being clean and start to become dirty or turbulent and therefore bad for the aerodynamics of your car? It's one of these phrases that gets thrown around in an F1 race weekend all the time. They're good, our listeners. Yeah. And this is probably what you guys is going to surprise you the most okay this answer so we start feeling dirty air around eight to nine seconds of the car in front which doesn't sound long but is that it looks a long way away the car yeah okay so the car might already done a corner count to nine seconds then i go through the corner okay that's that's the gap that there is i'm not saying that it's detrimental for performance but you feel it you feel it's giving you one kph on the straights because he's breaking the air on the straights but he's also breaking the air in the corners so you have a tiny tiny tiny bit less downforce in the corner nothing probably around a track like searstone our simulation suggests the ideal more or less to do a qualifying lap is seven seconds behind the car which gives you a tiny bit of slipstream maybe like one or two kph on the straights and then even though in the corners you will not have as much pure downforce you don't lose as much as what you're gaining on the straights so seven seconds is still a distance which is huge and that is more or less what why you will see us in qualifying never wanting to be first car out because first car out you're punching a hole you're punching a hole of air and then everyone behind you benefits from you punching the hole and then you will also not want to be closer than five seconds because then five seconds down you are suffering the dirty air in the corners too much and you're not and you're still gaining on the streets but suffering too much in the corners and we should say on a straight that's a slipstream but almost the same air can become a disadvantage on a corner when that air becomes turbulence so in the With straights, that turbulent air is always going to help you.

23:19But on the corners, it doesn't.

23:20Carlos Sainz:But in the corners, it's always going to make you worse. Yes. Because it's downforce, no? You're removing downforce from the car, which in the straights is what you want. But in the corners, you're removing downforce from the corners. It's something we get asked a lot, the difference between clean air and dirty air and turbulence in a slipstream. And fundamentally, it's just you get the turbulent air on the corners. It's the same amount of turbulence. It's just one is in the corner, one is in the straights. But it's the same effect. that's why that's why an F1 car is designed to be driven in cleaner that's where you have the wind in the wind tunnel cleaner and the moment it's turbulent and it's slipstream it's difficult Carlos just before I let you go a few weeks ago on this podcast our special guest was Carlos Onoro who you will know yes he's your manager yes and of course your cousin he gave us absolutely fascinating insights for those that weren't listening he said this he knows perfectly well and when we are working I treat him exactly the same way that I would treat my partners when I was working for a big consultancy firm back in the day but then if we are having lunch on a Sunday in August in Mallorca and I run out of coke and I want another one he's my younger cousin you know stand up and go stand up and go get me another coke please and it's funny because he does it and he laughs you know and and that's the sort of good relationship that that we have and we maintain and and i think it's key carlos your response to this is absolutely true the cabron like i would say in spain it's a little insult you know that we use in a familiar in a in a in a polite way so it's not a swear word or anything it's a swear word but it's like the but in a nice way like the problem with insults in spanish that you can use them in a cute cute way sure okay so uh it all depends on the tone and the tone is cute like a amicable tone okay so to get back on track of carlos this you can confirm despite the fact that he is your manager and you are one of the world's most elite athletes you are still sent to get him a refill on his drink?

25:35Carlos Sainz:Yes, especially when I was younger. Now that I'm 31, a bit bigger, and I can face him head to head, I can maybe say no, it's your turn. But if I'm normally being a nice cousin, I know it's my role as a younger cousin to normally obey what the older cousin says. And it's how in my family, how we were brought up, you always respect the older ones, you know. And yeah, he's seven years older, so I need to respect the ranks. And it's obviously working. You work well together. You still talk to each other when you're in cousin's time. Whatever you're doing, it's working. Yeah. When we were younger, he didn't bully me, but he was...

26:18For legal reasons, we should say he definitely didn't.

26:21Carlos Sainz:He was using that advantage for himself to get even more cokes, let's say. Like him and my other older cousin, that was his age, both to male of seven years older than me, I remember, yeah, they were being quite sometimes, yeah, not bully, but you know what I mean, just being the older brother, the older cousin. Rascals, we'd say, in the UK. It's quite a George Russell word, that, but rascals, lovely. Carlos, insight in many ways. This has been a pleasure as always. Thank you. Thank you. Cheers.

27:04And there you go. When we recorded that interview with Carlos and Ordo, we didn't know we'd be talking to his baby cousin just a few weeks later. And the absolute smile that was on his face as he heard what his cousin had said about him, it's clear how well the two guys get on. Oh, and we've had on this podcast this week two of the paddock's most classy operators, as another one walks past us, Carlos' ex-teammate, Charles Leclerc. The one thing I don't understand about Charles Leclerc is, I keep banging on on this podcast how hot it is today. It's absolutely baking. Charles never looks hot and bothered.

27:36I mean, maybe just when he's come out of the car, but he walks into the paddock looking cool, relaxed, calm, and sun-kissed, but not hot and sweaty. A man who just always looks effortlessly good, Charles Leclerc there, Carlos' former teammate. We wish him well this weekend. I hope you've enjoyed this episode, where we put your questions to Formula One drivers. Of course, keep sending in those questions. F1explains at F1.com. we'll be answering those questions for you all the way through to the end of the season one more episode next week before the summer break when the f1 circus rolls into hungary we look forward to that then we're having a few weeks off for a holiday as i mentioned to gabby i'm off to the states for a little bit of a holiday i'm sure he was delighted to hear about my plans and then we're back after the summer break answering your questions right through to the end of the season so we need those emails to keep coming f1 explains at f1.com of course you can check out our other podcast as well, F1 Nation, which will have a debrief of all the action here in Belgium on Sunday and into Monday.

28:32And there is, of course, Beyond the Grid, producer Jamie, who's been out recording one this morning with... Alan Permain, Racing Bulls team principal. Alan Permain was on good form, I presume? Excellent form. As good form as Racing Bulls are on at the moment. Lovely, Jamie. They're on a good run, as you say. An exciting podcast for you to listen to. That's the Permain thing. Anyway, that's probably enough from us, I think. Back next week, F1 Explains at F1.com is the email address from me Christian Hugill here in Belgium enjoy the Grand Prix and we'll see you next time bye for now