Bit of a different piece from me today. I haven’t talked about it much, but recently I’ve started following Formula 1. The sport is exciting, the story lines are engaging, and I’ve started watching at a moment in F1 history when the competition is particularly fierce. The 2021 season saw a serious title fight between the star drivers of two of F1’s most heavyweight teams, with seven time World Champion Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes facing off against the young gun Max Verstappen of Red Bull. The fight was back and forth all year long, and coming into the final race the rivals were neck and neck in points. The battle ended up being decided on the final lap of this final race in Abu Dhabi with Max overtaking Lewis to secure the championship. You couldn’t ask for a more dramatic (or controversial) introduction to a sport.
This year’s season has only just started, but we’ve already got another exciting title fight brewing on our hands. Just like in last year’s closely contested title, this year has seen hard racing between defending World Champion Max Verstappen and Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc already in just the first two races, which bodes well for more excitement. Accompanying this has been discussion of new tactics introduced by Leclerc to neutralize the advantage Max’s Red Bull has possessed in straight-line speed over the Ferrari at these two races. I have to confess, I’ve found this commentary to be a bit disappointing. There’s quite a lot of interesting things going on with Leclerc’s tactics, especially considering the history of F1, but I really haven’t seen anyone laying it all out and producing a proper narrative around this. In order to explain what I mean though, I’ll have to fill in some context for people who, like me, are new to the sport.
A Quick History of F1 Aerodynamics
Since the 1970s, F1 cars have relied on complicated aerodynamic bodywork packages to produce high levels of “downforce”, a term that essentially describes a force that is the opposite of lift, the force that enables birds and airplanes to fly. Without going into too much detail, the idea is that the cars create a low pressure zone of air underneath the car in order to suck the car into the ground. This enables F1 cars to take corners at much higher speeds than they could with simple “mechanical grip”, or in other words the friction between the asphalt and the tires caused by the weight of the car. Aerodynamics are a way to effectively increase the amount of weight a car has, which then increases the amount of grip a driver has to work with when taking a corner, which means they can maintain higher speeds through the corner. On the road circuits that F1 races on, cornering speed is by far and away the limiting factor on lap times. Therefore as the sport has continued to evolve, F1 teams pour more and more time and resources into extracting as much downforce as possible from the aerodynamics of their cars in order to go faster around a track and win races.
The issue with this is that high downforce cars produce a wake of what is termed “dirty air” for the cars behind them. Think of this as being like the wake a boat leaves behind, except it’s a wake of disturbed air full of turbulence and vortices following behind a car. The aerodynamic packages of these cars work best in clean, undisturbed air, so when a car following another car in close proximity tries to take a corner, the driver has to make do with less grip produced by the car’s aerodynamics. The driver can’t take the corner as quickly, and therefore it’s more challenging to close on the car ahead of him and overtake.
Naturally, F1’s governing body, the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (or the FIA if you’re not up for French pronunciation) has spent quite a lot of time trying to resolve this issue, because overtakes are one of the primary elements that make racing exciting. One of the solutions to foment more overtaking that has been introduced is DRS, or the Drag Reduction System.
Those of you with some familiarity with physics probably know that the very aerodynamic elements that increase downforce on a car also increase drag, slowing a car’s top speed. As I’ve mentioned, F1 teams accept this tradeoff because cornering speed is the primary limiting factor on lap times, and because they can still achieve high top speeds with their 1,000 horsepower engines. However, if you ask any F1 team whether they’d like to have their cake and eat it too, you’ll be wondering where your wallet has gone and why the team is converging on a bakery. This is essentially what DRS represents in F1. All the high downforce you can ask for in the corners, but on the straights you’re allowed to open a hole in the rear wing of your car to reduce drag? Yes, please!
In order for DRS to improve overtaking instead of simply improving lap times, the FIA has gated usage of the system by restricting it to being used only on straights that are specified “DRS zones”, and furthermore by maintaining that drivers may only activate the system if they are following behind another car by less than a second when they cross a designated “DRS detection point”, a line on the track usually located in the braking area of the preceding corner. DRS has been around since 2011, and in that time it’s become one of the primary tools for overtaking, with a fairly straightforward usage of “get close to the guy ahead of you going into the DRS Zone, push button as you get on throttle, attempt to overtake”. However, in the 2022 season opener at the Bahrain Grand Prix, Leclerc proved that this unsophisticated overtaking tool could be employed in a far more creative and interesting manner. But, his innovation hasn’t been to find another way to overtake with it. Instead, the Ferrari man has been using it to defend his position.
The Magician from Monaco
Imagine. You’re Max Verstappen, defending World Champion, and you’re beginning your title defense in the first race of the season. You’ve qualified second behind Charles Leclerc on pole. The Ferrari man appears to be the main challenger for your title as the season begins. After an explosive start to the race, Leclerc has pulled ahead a bit. You’ve had your first pit stop, though, and you’ve got fresh tires. You now begin to gain on him, eating into his lead lap by lap. You know that your Red Bull is faster down a straight than his Ferrari, which has higher downforce and is better in the slow corners. What you need to do to pass him is to get on a straight that’s a DRS zone, and you can chase him down enough to make a lunge into the next corner to complete the overtake. And this is exactly what you proceed to do, flying up from behind the Ferrari down the pit straight to slip by him. You’re well past Leclerc going into the corner, and as you open up onto the next straight, you’re leading the race. At least, you were leading the race, until the Ferrari blasts by you with its own DRS flap wide open to reclaim the lead. Charles Leclerc is playing magic tricks on you.
This is what happened to Verstappen twice in the Bahrain Grand Prix that opened the season, which Leclerc went on to win. So what exactly happened? Well, the long pit straight where the starting line is situated at the Bahrain International Circuit is not the only DRS zone on that track. There’s two other zones on the circuit, one of which is on the next big straight after the pit straight, where Verstappen was overtaking Leclerc. The DRS detection point for the next straight is in the braking zone at the end of the pit straight, where the Red Bull driver was making his lunges past the Ferrari. In an interview after the race, Leclerc explained that he knew that if Verstappen was ahead of him when the two passed through the detection point, he’d get DRS on the next straight, so he purposefully lifted off the throttle early to let Verstappen past before they hit the detection point, and then just retook his position as race leader with DRS down the next straight. Even though the Red Bull has better straight line speed than the Ferrari, DRS is more than enough to neutralize that advantage.
Leclerc employed this same tactic in the next race, which occurred just this past weekend in Saudi Arabia. Just like at Bahrain, there’s a DRS zone that leads into the DRS detection point for another zone on the subsequent straight. This time, though, Max Verstappen was wiser to the idea, and he began challenging Leclerc at his game. Leclerc was able to parry Max’s first attack with the same deft braking he used in Bahrain, but the second time around Max didn’t just shoot past him. He and Leclerc engaged in a duel of braking, Charles trying to get Verstappen to overshoot him into the DRS detection point as before, and Max trying to keep Leclerc in front of him. Both of them locked their brakes as a result, but Leclerc, exercising quick, opportunistic decision making, jumped back on the throttle and took off before Verstappen could recover. Leclerc tricked Verstappen again, giving up on getting DRS, but keeping his position anyway, and opening up a nice gap to boot. Verstappen clawed his way back into the fight over the next two laps, though, and on his third attempt at an overtake kept everything beautifully under control, carefully staying behind Leclerc going into the corner, and opening up with DRS on the following straight to finally claim the lead for good. The Magician from Monaco has learned that the same trick won’t work twice.
Narratives and Meta Discussions
Now, the jury may be out on whether or not “the Magician from Monaco” (a epithet I’ve brazenly stolen from the chess world and Mikhail Tal) is really the best moniker for Charles Leclerc, but I think it describes well how Leclerc approached these first two races in the 2022 season. And with the way I recounted the story of the battle between the Red Bull and the Ferrari, can’t you just feel the excitement? The shock, the delight of such a clever ploy so well pulled off for a race win? The stubborn, steadfast way that the “young bull” Verstappen adapted and overcame Leclerc’s quick-witted trickery is just as satisfying. At first he chases after the red Ferrari like a bull enraged by the cape of the matador, but by the end he displays patience and fortitude in securing his own triumph. There’s been far too little narrative building lauding the characteristics of these drivers in the media around F1. At least, not that I’ve seen. If someone out there is telling stories this way, point me to them.
From what I can tell, though, it’s just not out there. There are a lot of questions and narrative angles that are simply being left completely unexplored. No one is asking Leclerc how he thought up the idea for such tactics. What was he really aiming for with this? Was this tactic developed specifically to deal with the Red Bull’s straight line speed advantage over the Ferrari, or did he think of it for some other reason? And, why is Leclerc so good at this sort of driving, at turning things into a mind game? After all, Verstappen himself tried to use this very tactic at Saudi Arabia last year against Lewis Hamilton. Max had overtaken Hamilton in a rather questionable manner earlier in the race, and he was asked to return the position to Hamilton by allowing him to go past him. Being a hyper-competitive race driver, Verstappen decided to do this in a manner which would allow him to quickly retake the lead: he’d let Hamilton overtake him just before the very DRS detection point he’d later duel Leclerc at, and take back the lead (legitimately this time). Unfortunately for Max, things didn’t go according to plan, and there was contact between his car and Hamilton’s. He wasn’t able to give away the lead and then retake it the way he’d aimed to, and Hamilton eventually went on to win that race. Why aren’t there any juxtapositions of Verstappen’s employment of this sort of DRS game of “chicken” and Leclerc’s usage? Why wasn’t it effective for Max, when Leclerc has been able to use it so brilliantly? Was Hamilton simply better at parrying such ruses?
Most of the discussion around this topic have centered on safety and general race craft. The safety concern is a legitimate one, as the incident between Hamilton and Verstappen shows. But, I can’t help but be disappointed that the only examination of what this really says about Leclerc as a driver has focused on rather vague lines of thought like “how good is Charles Leclerc”. Commentators are more interested in talking about whether or not these tactics should be allowed than they are discussing the brilliant and innovative approach that Leclerc took to a tool that is mostly used the way a chimp uses a rock.
Based on my background, I know very well just how compelling such narrative devices can be. I grew up gaming, and as a teenager I was watching esports and listening to the commentary from a cast of commentators who use their gamer tags on broadcast. These were people who named themselves after famous fictional characters they relate to, or monikers they gave themselves over the course of their own lives that encapsulate their outlook and attitude towards life, demonstrating an appreciation for good storytelling. To me these esports commentators have established a higher standard for narrative and showmanship on broadcast and in shoulder content than what is typically seen in traditional sports. They have built large personal followings on social media platforms by producing content on their own that deepens and broadens the discussion of teams and players in the games they cover. Consistent coverage of the distinguishing characteristics of star players in particular builds up an appreciation of these stars that goes beyond what their achievements on paper tell you about them. After all, not all championships are created equal. If Verstappen had won last year with by far the best car and little serious challenge from Hamilton, would his victory have been as compelling as it was in all its hard-fought glory?
I think that this kind of content is something that is really missed in F1. The success of the Drive to Survive series on Netflix shows that there’s a lot of room for narrative-driven story telling in the sport, and the criticism leveled at the show by hardcore fans and even the drivers themselves shows that there’s a need for more serious and sophisticated narrative-building that accurately reflects what really happened, instead of reducing everything down to a level that casual fans with no background in motorsport can appreciate (at the expense of accurately depicting events at times). If a newcomer to motorsport can do it, where are the truly knowledgeable motorsport veterans who can lay things out in a compelling, entertaining manner like I do above? Where’s the content that really brings to life the amazing stories you can find in F1 and other motorsports?
Asking for a friend here, and for myself.