…or two ways to set a good lap time at least. Paul Ricard, in non-chicane format, is a real split-personality circuit. It has twisty first and particularly final sectors, but a middle sector that includes the very, very long Mistral straight. Despite this unusual characteristic, close scrutiny of the timing screens shows that it is the corners that are key to a quick lap here. The car with the fastest middle sector never featured at the top of the timing screens.
A pre-qualifying quote from TDS Racing’s Nick Catsburg (BMW Z4) sums the quandry up quite well: “Our laptimes aren’t too bad and in qualifying it’s okay, but the struggle will be in the race because of the long straight. We are on the limiter for 50 percent of the straight, so even if I qualify in the top 10, I’ll be passed like I’m standing still. We’ll be strong on tyre wear as always, especially when it’s so hot. It’s a compromise for us here, but we shouldn’t complain, we just need to keep cool. You can’t lose your temper at not being able to stop someone passing you on the straight and then trying to get them back at the next corner.”
In the first of the three qualifying sessions, Christopher Mies set an early time which included fastest first and final sectors (35.192 and 52.496 respectively) but his middle sector (the final corner before the Mistral straight and three-quarters of the straight itself) was nothing special. It was still good enough to be the best time of the entire session, until he beat it again right at the end.
It was soon a full six tenths slower than Rizzoli’s #90 Ferrari, which set a 30.191 to remain the best middle sector in the whole session. Mies then did that book-ending of the session by closing with a 1:58.322 laptime, bettering his final sector again with a 52.081, but again he only recorded a 30.7 in the middle sector that lap. It doesn’t tell the full story though, because he did record a 30.3-second middle sector earlier in the session.
In Q2, the best middle sector tumbled to a 29.895 – that time set by the #50 Ferrari of Simon Knap, but in Q3 it fell again to a 1:29.688 on Katsumasa Chiyo’s first flying lap in his Nissan GT-R. On that lap, although the first sector was a 35.271, Chiyo lost three-quarters of a second in the final, longest sector compared with the best.
Dusseldorp briefly snatched the best final sector with a 52.017, but then Parente set to work and claimed the best final sector (51.742) and then the best opening sector on his next lap (35.043). His middle sector on both was a 29.9, so whilst the Nissan is clearly quicker in a straight line, the McLaren (not to take too much away from Parente’s sterling efforts) seems to have the best attributes to perform through an entire lap, with a 1:57.198.
But as Catsburg said, being towards the front will be useless if you then get swamped the first time the cars hit the Mistral. Interestingly, Catsburg did get his BMW into the 30.2s in the middle sector, which just goes to show how the tiny margins in racing have such major ramifications. Doubtless there will be some more set-up tweaks to be carried out for many teams before the race begins.
PS
