DRIVER PREVIEW QUOTES - HAAS F1 TEAM
Romain Grosjean - “It’s a really cool track, especially the fast part through Maggotts, Becketts and Chapel corners. When you have the grip in the car there, you really get the sensation of the g-forces. Everything’s pushing down. You really want to get the first part of the flowing corners right. If you don’t, you just lose a lot of time. When the car is very stable and has good balance, you can go flat out and really push it to the limit. That’s where F1 is at its best. I think probably Baku we were flat out for longer periods of time, but Silverstone is a power track as well. You need good power to get a good lap time there. There are a few straight lines and a few overtaking opportunities but, mainly, Silverstone is about the grip of the car through the high-speed corners.
There are a few spots (to overtake). On the straights and through the high-speed corners, you have an opportunity if your car is much better balanced than the car in front of you. After turn three or turn four, there’s the long section after the slow-speed corners, and that’s a good opportunity as well. But the thing about Silverstone is really the difference between a well-balanced car and an unbalanced car, that’s where the opportunity lies.
Silverstone is in the UK, and the UK weather is known to be sometimes rainy, sometimes dry. That plays a part. It can change a lot between qualifying and the race, and then even in the race itself. You can also have a good car in qualifying, but if it’s not quite perfectly balanced for the race, you’ll pay the price. That’s where success lies, and probably why most of the winners didn’t start from pole position. I think Silverstone is a track that the team knows very well and it’s in line with Barcelona. We can use the knowledge from Barcelona and use it at Silverstone for the normal baseline setup and, hopefully, get it right from the beginning. You want as much downforce as you can get.”
Esteban Gutierrez - “You approach Turn 1 after the main straight, which is usually flat out and on the limit. You go into Turn 2, which is important to prepare the line for Turn 3. It’s a high-braking corner, pretty slow, but then goes into another hairpin - a very slow-speed corner. After exiting Turn 4, you have Turn 5, which is also flat out, and it’s important to have a good balance and good traction. Approaching Turn 6 is a medium-speed corner and you enter with a lot of speed. Entry is more important than exit. Then you have Turn 7, which is a pretty long corner and pretty challenging for the tyres because you arrive with the tyres warmed up on the surface and you’re trying to get good traction out of there. Then you come into the back straight before Turn 9, which is one of the nicest corners on the circuit. It’s a very high-speed corner and then it starts my favourite section, approaching into the series of corners which is 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14. It’s very important to have a good rhythm. You enter with a lot of speed and you can’t lose the line. You want a good exit out of the last corner. Then it’s down another straight. You approach Turn 15, which is a very nice corner, very fast, braking very late and with a lot of lateral while turning into the corner. Then you approach the last part of the track, which is the chicane, and a very long exit after the chicane, which obviously makes traction very challenging.”
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Article Posted By: Amy Hawk
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