Wurz of wisdom - Indianapolis

"To find Wurz of Wisdom on Indy… God, that’s maybe a bigger challenge than any of the corners out there! But hey, I have an idea: why not start with holding a real race there this year…? Ok, I accept that I won’t get the Nobel prize for this statement but I haven’t figured out another way to start my column.

So, let’s start flat-out. We power down the start-finish straight, at about 185-190mph (unless, of course, your rear wing is bending the regulations), then you brake at about the 100m sign, shifting back to second gear, turning in at the obvious point and preparing for the bump when you come off the oval to the infield track. The exit of this section, T2, is a left-hander where you hit the kerb on the inside, or not if you have set your car up without compromise on the third spring. Then we come to T3, a corner that’s a little bit like a nasty highway exit in my home country, Austria. It just gets tighter and tighter – like most Austrians, in fact – so it’s quite difficult to find the right braking point. If you brake late, then the car has a lot of pitch (movement on rear ride-height), which shifts the aero to the front, resulting in oversteer and a loose back end. If you brake gently, you run the risk of just being too slow. If you make your car stiff in roll, it might be comfortable for this corner, especially on higher fuel, but this kills the mechanical grip everywhere else. So overall T3, which is taken in third, is a compromise where the driver can make a difference.

But let’s shift the pressure to the guys in the wind tunnel, because the aerodynamic characteristics of your car at Indy will dictate whether a driver’s life is easy or tough. How so? Well, let’s go to T4. It’s flat, accelerating through up to sixth, before braking into third for a very long apex left-hander. The exit of this left-hander is very close, followed by a right-hander where you have to lift off the throttle to get the front down and around the corner – you do this aggressively if your car hasn’t got enough front grip, or too much weight on the front or not enough camber, or wrong rear geometry, or whatever. Anyway, driver talent is what tells you how to lift – aggressively or smoothly – but certainly its important to get the car turning in correctly, as the mid-corner and exit depends totally on the turn-in phase.

So now we’ve made it to the back straight, arriving to what I call the Mickey Mouse section. You arrive in sixth on the straight for the 90-degree left-hander in second or third, and you’re always surprised at how little grip there is, which means you’re somehow sliding all four wheels. Then you slam the gas on the exit, regardless of where you are on the track, inside, middle or outside. But then it’s time to say goodbye to ‘greed’ when you arrive at the right-hand hairpin. You can only lose time here if you try to make up something. So we roll around the corner gently, massaging the throttle a bit on the exit to invite the car into the next turn, the left-hand hairpin, still in first.

Only at the exit of the Mickey-Mouse section do you come to the last real corner, a third gear right-hander, which in fact is quite tricky. I find that being gentle with the car is the quickest way around here and it’s really important how your car feels on turning in, so if you turn in and force the car too much into something it just doesn’t want to do, then your whole corner speed will suffer and as a result you’re simply losing time. You know, race cars are a little like girls, in this respect! You’re better off starting by building it up gently, than once everything moves in the direction you want, it gets pretty wild in the middle section and you can be sure the exit speed will be high for sure!

Where was I? Let’s assume we’ve managed that corner and we’re now back on the oval – going against the proper direction, of course. The last, banked corner is easy-flat in an F1 car. Of course we arrive much slower than the Indy cars do, so I don’t say “easy flat” to upset the Indy guys, it’s just that it’s not a corner for us. And then we’re back where we started!”