Q&A with Nick Chester (Lotus) - Spa, a stunning track

Fresh from the enforced summer shutdown, Technical Director Nick Chester profiles the Spa-Francorchamps circuit ahead of the Belgium Grand Prix.

Spa is one of the legendary tracks in the calendar, does it rate among one of your favourites?

Absolutely, it’s a stunning track. It’s a great mixture of high-speed corners that are challenging for the drivers, as well as slower corners, elevation and some good straights as well. It’s a vast track and the unpredictable weather that comes with it often makes it a brilliant race.

What are the performance considerations for a circuit like Spa?

There’s a significant variance between the first and third sectors - where it’s not beneficial to run high downforce thanks to the long straights - and the middle sector, which is a mix of high and medium speed corners where more downforce is needed. It’s a real balancing act between taking wing off to ensure we are quick on the straights and managing the car through the corners where it could easily feel too light due to a lack of downforce. It can make it a little bit difficult to get the best out of the car there but that’s the challenge for Spa and it always makes it interesting from a set-up point of view.

How do you determine how much wing to use?

We tend to do a lot of pre-event studies in simulation to work that out and give ourselves as much of a head-start as possible. We try out varying wing levels and see which are likely to give us the best lap times.

It sounds like it presents a nice challenge from an engineer’s point of view?

It does, it’s a circuit that has to be approached differently to other tracks, which is great. Aside from achieving the best compromise between downforce and straight-line speed, there are a few other aspects of the circuit that present a nice challenge. The famous Eau Rouge, for example, requires respect when setting ride heights for the car. You don’t want to get it wrong through there. It all keeps our engineers nicely busy.

Does the track’s greater length than other circuits have an impact on set-up, strategy and how you approach sessions and the race?

It’s not a factor when setting up the car. It can have an effect on strategy; although the greater factor there tends to be the type of tyres we have for the Grand Prix. You do have to approach the sessions differently however, as the circuit’s 7.004km means you tend to run fewer laps so it makes it a bit more difficult to get setup work done. It’s the same for everyone though and we manage our programme carefully as always to ensure we can achieve as much as possible in the time that we have.

Does the Mercedes grunt and the E23’s low drag and speed trap prowess give us cause for optimism?

I think so, it’s a strong power track and we have a strong power unit. We have fairly low drag on the E23 so I believe we should be in a reasonable position.

Can you talk us through what happens before, during and after a ‘summer shutdown’.

We’re usually all flat out trying to get everything done before the shutdown begins. During, we can’t do anything technical - there is factory maintenance that can take place but nothing can happen on the technical side. And then afterwards, it’s the mad rush trying to get ready for Spa in just a few days. The ‘during’ part of the shutdown is very good though!

How do you dissect and analyse the performance considerations of a race like the Hungarian Grand Prix?

Looking back, we were pretty happy with our race pace. We had a very mixed up race and could have come further up but in the end we had two undamaged cars and six points. Given how busy this race was, it could have been a lot worse! In terms of analysis, we look at all our lap times in qualifying and in the race and we pull apart how we were performing. We do that at every race, and this one is no different. Sometimes there are a lot of laps which can’t be used for analysis because you were in traffic – you just have to pick the clean laps and look at what you’re doing.

Anything which can be said about our drivers’ performances?

They were both reasonably quick at different stages of the race. Pastor could have had a good finishing position if he hadn’t had the penalties. Romain did have a pretty good finishing position. His pit lane penalty was possibly a little bit harsh but he had a solid result nonetheless.