If you watched qualifying for IndyCar’s GMR Grand Prix of Indy to kick off the month of May you’ll have seen the fourth-closest Firestone Fast Six in history, with under 0.3s covering the entire six, and the gap between pole and second coming in at below 0.003s.
Granted, it wasn’t a clean session, but the margin between pole and second in Formula 1’s Miami Grand Prix a week before was logged at 0.361s, and the top six was spread out to the tune of nearly a second.
But Monaco delivered a thrilling fight for pole position, and F1 has actually seen the two closest field spreads in the history of its current qualifying format this year, with Q1 in Bahrain the tightest at 1.188s from P1 to P20, just pipping Miami’s 1.214s.
Yet as we all know, there’s no way Logan Sargeant can hope to make up that deficit from last to first just through setup and driver skill, such are the differences between F1 machinery. It’s one of the most fascinating and impressive factors of the category, with the regular upgrades — such as the ones set to be introduced in Barcelona this weekend — having such an influence on car development and performance.
But it also means there’s only so much a driver can do. They might be performing at the top of their game but the equipment will always be the main limit to their results.
Take Valtteri Bottas for example. In 2021 there were regular poles, podiums and a dominant win in Turkey thanks to the Mercedes he had at his disposal. A year later, he’s restricted to a solitary top-five and 10th in the championship, but many would say his first season at Alfa Romeo saw him driving as well if not better than before.
“It’s hard, and it’s definitely not always fair,” Bottas tells RACER. “There’s so many variables in this sport, like the car, the condition of the car, the setup, all these kind of things. So it’s not easy to accept sometimes if this guy is probably driving worse than me but he’s a few places ahead, and vice versa.
“Sometimes somebody might win a race that probably didn’t drive the best on the grid that day. That’s the nature of the sport — it’s always been like that. So it’s not always fair and you need to learn how to deal with it and accept those factors.
“I think in the end the main thing becomes focusing on your own work, making sure that you’re making the most out of it. Because that’s the driver’s job — to squeeze everything out of the car, and then after, give the best feedback you can.”
That feedback can only fully start once the car hits the track for pre-season testing, and its limitations or weaknesses can be felt in full. But drivers are well informed long before that point about the new chassis they’re going to be receiving, and where the team expects it to stack up.
“You normally get a pretty good prediction on aero numbers compared to last year, so then you can kind of guesstimate something,” Bottas says. “Let’s take an example of Aston Martin — you don’t know for a team like that if they’re gonna make a big jump over the winter or not.
“If you’re on a similar level than the previous year when you start a new season, then you know you’re screwed! So you need to be quite a bit up. And also, over the winter, normally in the wind tunnel how they find the performance, there’s like a graph. And if there’s been like a steady state, or if it’s been like that (sharply up), then you kind of get an idea that, OK, it’s been a good winter or a bad winter.
“Other things as well, such as new mechanical things — regarding the suspension, balance tools, stuff like that — you kind of know what’s coming, and then you can try and guesstimate where you’ll be.”
And despite what teams and drivers say, their whole mood is impacted by how competitive the car looks from the outset. Lap times are always analyzed and understood, and that can mean a pretty clear picture of where a team is likely to be fighting during the year, which in turn can be tough to handle knowing what the next 12 months are likely to hold.
“Of course it makes a difference,” Bottas agrees. “Let’s say, from all the conclusions from winter testing, if you see that you’re dead last, you know it’s going to be a tough season. But if you’re top three, you know that, ‘OK, there’s a great chance.’ So yeah, for sure that makes the mood, but the key thing is never let the mood kind of drag you down, or drag the team down.
“You always need to stay motivated in this sport and always need to keep pushing people and asking for more, because that’s how the sport works. But yeah, of course, in Formula 1 everything is more fun when the car is good, that’s just how it goes!”
Perhaps the toughest time is for a rookie, when the step is made from winning regularly in junior categories that are spec series, offering a much more level playing field. To go from that being the norm to a car that might not allow you to compete with most of the other drivers on the grid can be tough, though Bottas admits his own career path smoothed that transition.
“I was quite OK with it. Obviously, first year, everything is exciting anyway. The car wasn’t great, but that didn’t really put me down because I was focusing on trying to prove myself, that I belong in Formula 1. And then I finally had a couple of highlights in the first season which then secured me the drive.
“Then the next year already we actually then had a big jump — the 2014 Williams, I think six podiums, which was pretty cool. So, I’ve had good and bad cars and you just learn how to deal with it.”
Competitiveness is the focus rather than simply being quick. Pace is relative, and for someone like Bottas the priority is always lap time over changes and developments that suit his driving style or make the car more to his liking.
“I take lap time whatever. If I have to drive the car sideways, if the lap time is good, it’s all about performance,” he says. “It doesn’t matter — even when it was the porpoising issues and stuff, for me, if there was porpoising I would always take a setup that is faster, no matter what.”
But another popular myth is that drivers are most proud of a drive where they’ve maximized the result over the end result itself. There is some truth to that, but Bottas admits everyone performing to their maximum is still no substitute to a better return, even if not everything clicked at 100%.
“You feel good and proud — if I feel like I’ve done the most I could and if I feel like I’ve performed at my best level. But still, the result is so important that there’s this underlying feeling of disappointment if you don’t get the result you wanted.
“So it’s tricky. And also the mood in the team, if you have a sort of target of a result, no matter how well you drove, if you didn’t get there, nobody is cheering.”
A results-driven business where your driving sometimes can’t have an overriding influence on the result. Tough gig.