gshevlin wrote: ↑01 Dec 2024, 17:17
With a lot of the prize money dependent on the team finishing position in the Constructors Championship, the team has the responsibility of ensuring that both drivers get the maximum out of the car. It is not just the responsibility of the drivers.
Teams have designed and optimized cars to suit the lead driver's style. When Jean Alesi and Gerhard Berger tested the B195 at the end of 1995, they found it totally incompatible with their driving styles. The car had been optimized for Michael Schumacher's driving style.
That's not true. Gerhard Berger said: "I told the chief technicians - I've flown off three times now and I'll take it on my head, but you must realize that the car has a problem, and perhaps you could kindly fire up the computers again. The mystery could indeed be solved. The car went "in stall" at full speed on bumps, like an airplane in which the aerodynamic effect abruptly breaks off. If this bump was in a fast bend, the car snap oversteered. This characteristic of the Benetton was certainly not new. In 1995, Johnny Herbert was hit a few times because of this and then no longer dared to push the limits. And Michael Schumacher had a kind of extrasensory reflex for the situation, which he then explained: he automatically anticipated the counter-steering on the bump and had already memorized this process (note - which brings us to adaptability, among other things). At this point at the latest, I took back the last remnants of my reservations about Michael Schumacher. Anyone who could handle this car so confidently, even at the limit, had to be absolutely top class". Taken from Bergers Biographie "Zielgerade".
So the reason Berger and Alesi couldn't cope with the Benetton was not that it was designed for Schumacher's driving style, but a stall on bumps in fast sections. Such stalls in the underdloor area have always existed and still exist today. And then as now, there are drivers who can cope with it and those who cannot. Those who can cope with it have a superior feel for the car, more courage, superior vehicle control and better adaptability and there are very few drivers, namely the absolute greatest of their time who can cope with these kind of problem. Senna was one of them, because the Williams of 1994 also suffered from this until Barcelona, Schumacher and a Max Verstappen as well and, as with airplanes, slightly unstable cars are more responsive and a top driver can drive around the problems and then exploit the better responsivness accordingly. In general, it has been a persistent rumor for many decades that designers "build cars for a driver". Certainly there are drivers who prefer an understeering car and others want it to be completely neutral, which is difficult to achieve, and still others like an oversteering car. And of course the driver contributes with his messages and wishes to the fact that a car develops in this or that direction (which is also the reason why teams with drivers who have completely opposite preferences - see Benetton with Berger and Alesi to stay with this example, where Berger preferred a more understeering, Alesi preferred a more oversteering car - usually get worse because the drivers give contradictory feedback and express opposite wishes. One wants to go this way, the other exactly the other way. This confuses the team and engineers and you can't make any progress. Ultimately, however, designers and engineers always develop a car so that it becomes faster and don't tailor it to one driver or his driving style. As I said, this is a cliché that has persisted for decades and is particularly popular with drivers who lose to their team-mates. An engineer or designer will always choose the option that makes the car faster, regardless of which driver it suits, and ultimately it is up to the driver to identify the weak points or potential for improvement of the car (where Schumacher in particular was very good) and to influence them and then adjust the car with his engineer to suit his driving style and the track.
To go briefly into the matter between Hamilton and Russel - I think you can already tell a lot from what has been said, but basically every racing driver and person loses speed with increasing age. This is biologically based, because at the age of 40 the ability to estimate distances at high speeds decreases, which is also the reason why fighter pilots in most countries "retire" at the age of 45. Of course, the decline in this ability costs a racing driver precision and therefore also lap time. If you have a car that is not aerodynamically stable, you can only avoid a mistake like the 1995 Benetton if you drive with absolute precision. Because then the same thing always happens and the car becomes predictable, so to speak. That was the case with the Ferrari F310 in 1996. On this car, the flow at the front edge of the underbody tore off in waves. Because Schumacher drove with absolute precision and the car always reacted in the same way, the car became predictable for him. For Irvine, on the other hand, who was far less precise, the car always reacted differently and was unpredictable. Of course, if this ability decreases and you can drive less precisely, a car that is predictable for one driver becomes unpredictable for another. Age is also inevitably linked to this due to the biologically unavoidable decline in this ability, which is one of the reasons why older drivers find it harder to adapt to a "problematic" car, in addition to the "normal" loss of laptime due to this lack of precision. Another point is that older drivers simply take fewer risks. As you get older, the daredevil attitude is lost to a certain extent, you are more aware of your own vulnerability and mortality and are also more responsible in this respect. There are inevitable biological and psychological points that inevitably make a driver slower after a certain age. How much slower, whether 0.5 or 1.5 seconds, always depends on the physiology and life of a person and their psyche. One person's "deterioration" is faster, another's slower. One person is more willing to take risks, the other is not. Both determine how much a rider slows down in old age, but they do slow down. Everyone. And also a LH, who is now exactly at the age when these things start to become noticeable.
