but this will be very difficult in Australia<\/a>, as the track has so few big braking zones.<\/p>\nThe challenge of doing this effectively was already vexing teams in pre-season testing in Bahrain, where they had six full days of running at the same track, and in Melbourne, they will have to get on top of it across just three hours of practice before qualifying.<\/p>\n
Speaking at an event organised by BP, Audi\u2019s official technology partner, Hulkenberg said \u201cdon’t get the best picture and not necessarily the reality\u201d from Bahrain.<\/p>\n
He believes \u201cit’s going to be a lot harder to learn all that and to perfect it in only three practice sessions\u201d but as a result, he is \u201creally curious\u201d to discover the true picture as it is \u201cfar more unknown now\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou get so honed in and so driven on that track,\u201d Hulkenberg said about what had been learned from Bahrain.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut here is a completely different circuit: the cornering speeds, it’s much more flowing, much higher speed corners as well, completely different asphalt. On the energy side as well, it’s going to be a lot more clipping here than it was in Bahrain.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a very, very different set of circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cThere are not that many heavy brakings compared to Bahrain. That’s why we know we go from one extreme to a very different extreme.<\/p>\n
\u201cTeams are going to play with that, different strategies, different techniques and practice. That’s why you have two cars. We’re gonna test, find out, learn, look at results, re-do again \u2013 and come up with the best strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n
That suggests teams could split their programmes across the two cars more than usual in practice, to zero in on the best compromise as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n
The uncertainty and intrigue has been a major theme across most teams in the build-up to the first race weekend.<\/p>\n
Hannah Schmitz, Red Bull\u2019s head of strategy, said \u201cthere are even more variables to understand\u201d than normal, and McLaren chief designer Rob Marshall noted the need to \u201cdial in the optimum settings with much less time and under the pressure of a race weekend at a very different circuit to what we have experienced throughout pre-season\u201d. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Teams cannot forsake the usual, critical demands on the car side just to focus on energy management either. For example, Williams chief trackside engineer Paul Williams pointed out that the combination of a smooth track surface and high lateral load means teams will have to observe how much graining occurs on softer compounds – something that was a non-issue across two weeks in Bahrain.<\/p>\n
Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu called it \u201ca completely different ball game completing six days of testing at one circuit, to going to Melbourne and hitting the ground running in FP1\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we were doing for half a day in Bahrain, we\u2019ve essentially got to do in two runs in FP1, that\u2019s the big challenge this year,\u201d said Komatsu.<\/p>\n
\u201cMelbourne as a circuit, in terms of energy recovery, which is critical this year, is going to be much more challenging than Bahrain.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we all expect a huge challenge, but we\u2019re preparing as well as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Formula 1\u2019s season opener in Australia is such an unknown for teams and presents such a different challenge…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-518445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}