An in-depth analysis of the F1® Japanese GP 2022

A chaotic and rain-soaked Japanese GP saw Max Verstappen claim the F1® Championship title in highly dramatic fashion for the second successive year. October is the wettest period of the Japanese year, and Mother Nature did not disappoint. The race was plagued with danger, issues and controversy and reduced to just 29 laps, just over half the intended distance, due to the heavy rain and treacherous conditions. Tragic memories of Bianchi’s terrible accident at Suzuka in 2014 were invoked when Pierre Gasly had a near incident with a recovery vehicle that had prematurely entered the track. The FIA will be undertaking a full and frank review of the Japanese 2022 GP, and there will be much to discuss.

However, despite such issues overshadowing the race, the day belonged to Verstappen and his Red Bull team. It was a culmination of Max’s sublime skill and Red Bull’s engineering dominance to put this year’s achievement beyond any doubt; he has simply been by far the best driver in the best car. Securing the title with four races remaining in the F1® calendar is a monumental achievement, and Verstappen showed his pedigree at the Suzuka track with another outstanding performance to win a 28-lap race by over 20 seconds in dire conditions.

After an initial start on intermediate tyres, which led to several retirements and a two-hour delay, the race was eventually restarted with a rolling start on full wets. All the drivers successfully negotiated the switch from full wet weather tyres to intermediates as the track started to dry, and the early adopters soon reaped the benefits as a dry line emerged.

Max pitted for intermediate tyres on Lap 7 and set his personal best on Lap 10, and maintained great pace throughout the race to increase the gap to 21 seconds between himself and Leclerc by the end of the race. Meanwhile, Charles Leclerc was having a hard time as Sergio Perez was using the inside line on slow corners and the Red Bull’s pace to throttle back at the corner exit to close on the Ferrari. On Lap 28 Leclerc, under pressure, pushed Perez off the track, in doing so went off track himself and was given a 5-second time penalty which ultimately cost Leclerc 2nd place.

When recalling a list of the greatest world champions, one of the key attributes that they all had was the ability to perform, no matter the weather. Senna, Prost, Hamilton, Schumacher, and now Verstappen all seem to be on a different plane to other drivers when performing in the wet. A young Verstappen had already served notice of his freakish wet-weather ability in the 2016 Brazil GP, where he rampaged through the Interlagos field to pick up 11 places and finish an outstanding 3^rd.

Wet weather differentiates the good F1® drivers from the great F1® drivers as it equalises car performance, resulting in a level playing field for the drivers. Any mechanical advantage due to superior hardware is massively diminished when grip is reduced, allowing skilful drivers to excel.

There are many factors as to why F1® driving is so challenging, but perhaps the number one reason is adapting to the ever-changing conditions of a wet track. Driving an F1® car for a sustained period at speeds exceeding 320km/h and G-forces of 6G whilst racing other drivers, managing an incredibly complex piece of engineering, communicating with the team and managing race strategy and tyres is incredibly difficult at the best of times and requires courage and ability beyond mere mortals.

F1® drivers are very good at adapting and compartmentalising issues but what they really want is consistency so they can trust their environment and machinery. The drivers can be confident about grip and the predictability of the car and establish a rhythm. They work out the best line, the best grip and establish braking points throughout practice, qualifying and the race. Usually, only relatively small tweaks are required throughout the race as the tyres degrade and the car gets lighter due to fuel use.

However, in wet conditions visibility is seriously reduced due to spray, grip changes from corner to corner, braking points can change by tens of metres per lap, there are treacherous wet patches, rivulets and puddles, and potentially other more serious hazards. The racing line where rubber has been laid during practice and qualifying becomes increasingly greasy, as wet rubber is slippery, yet the racing line also dries quicker as the grooved wet weather tyres can clear up to 60 litres of water per second at full speed. Drivers often find alternate lines with tighter exit angles to find drier track, or they use different braking points.

Overtaking becomes much harder as the driver must deviate from the optimal racing line, onto a wetter, less predictable line with less grip. This makes it very difficult to out-brake a competitor who has significantly more grip – leading to slides, lockups and understeering into the corner. In Singapore, Verstappen was able to overtake by obstructing the other drivers by using the power of the Red Bull to beat them to the apex of the corner despite the lower grip, and then manage the car through the corner. Although he had to take a wider line, he was already ahead on the track making it tricky for his opponent to pass on a wet track under acceleration.

Feel, smoothness, and mastery of braking is critical to wet weather driving. Reduced grip means the front tyres cannot be as heavily loaded and the limited grip must be shared between cornering and braking. Braking is the strongest force that an F1® driver has available to them – up to 6G - which according to Hamilton is enough to pull tears from the tear ducts in your eyes (causing him further visibility problems as they had splashed on the inside of his visor!). A careful balance must be found between braking (fore-aft load) and cornering (lateral load) - the drivers brake earlier using threshold braking to maximise the fore-aft grip and reduce straight line speed before trail braking into the corner and being off the brakes at apex completely to maximise cornering grip. Once the apex has been negotiated, the throttle must be judiciously applied on corner exit to avoid wheelspin and oversteer.

Drivers need to be hyper-aware of their environment and surroundings as to how they will affect the car, especially as these conditions can vary significantly from one lap to the next. This unpredictability reduces mental capacity and induces mental fatigue, which is why more mistakes are usually made towards the end of the race. Drivers with less abrasive, more fluid driving styles, like Jenson Button or Alain Prost usually performed well in the wet, but World Champion drivers excel in the wet usually owing to their wonderful feel for car grip.

The effect of wet weather conditions is illustrated below in comparing Verstappen’s fastest lap of the race and a relatively slow lap during the dry Free Practice 3 session. They reveal the stark contrasts between driving in dry and wet conditions, even when the driver is not pushing the car to its absolute limits in the dry. The difference between the two lap times obviously stands out immediately, with Verstappen posting a time of 1:37.860 on the soft compound tyres in FP3, whilst only setting a time of 1:44.911 on the intermediate tyre compounds – a delta of over seven seconds. Even beyond the lap times, analysis of the telemetry reveals an array of differences between the two racing conditions.

Firstly, Verstappen spends most of the lap one gear lower in the wet conditions then he does in the dry; this is to improve traction and mitigate the risk of making the rear kick out under acceleration. Verstappen’s speed is reduced drastically throughout the course of a lap, however the difference in speed is much greater in high-speed corners such as The Esses section of turns 3 – 7 and Spoon Curve at turns 13 and 14, meanwhile Verstappen’s speed does not drop nearly as much in the wet at the low-speed corners of turn 11 and the chicane at turns 16 and 17.

The most interesting difference between the two situations lie in turn 15, famously known as 130R. In today’s era of high downforce F1® cars this corner can be taken at full throttle in the dry allowing drivers to carry higher speeds down the back straight. However, as can be seen by the area annotated on the telemetry plot, the reduced grip due to the slippery track forced Verstappen, along with the rest of the field, to apply the brakes heading into 130R, this saw the throttle drop to around 35-45% and the average speeds in this section of the track drop by around 20km/h.

Despite the horrific conditions and the ensuing chaos and uncertainty, the Japanese GP 2022 will be remembered for Verstappen’s clean victory and clinching of the F1® World Championship title in the most challenging of circumstances.