McLaren technical director Tim Goss says some corners will no longer be considered corners by the engineers, as drivers won't need to lift off the throttle in the 2017 cars, like they would have had to in previous seasons.
The new breed of cars will have greater mechanical grip from the wider Pirelli tyres, whilst a larger diffuser and larger wings will increase downforce to the extent that cars will be able to take some corners flat as if they were straight.
"One knock-on from that [the new regulations] is that we’ll no longer classify some corners as ‘corners’," said Goss.
"What we mean by that is that engineers define a corner as a point on the track where the driver has to lift and essentially drive and handle the car through it; if he’s going round a bend, and his foot is flat to the floor on the accelerator, we class that as a straight.
"As the new cars will be going faster, some of 2016’s ‘corners’ will be classified as ‘straights’. But because they’ll be going through them faster, they’ll be subjected to more g-forces – and that’s still tiring on the body."
Although there will be less corners for the drivers to navigate, their workload will still increase, particularly the strain on their body from the increased g-forces which are expected to push a driver to their absolute limit.
"These new cars will definitely look different, and that was always one of the objectives of the rule-changes. The aim was to make the cars look more aggressive; to make them faster, so that F1 was very much at the pinnacle of motorsport in terms of outright speed, and to make them more difficult to drive," explained Goss.
"By that, we don’t mean that they’re more of a handful for the drivers, but that they’re more physically demanding for them, so that they get out of the car having had to work hard – like they did in years past."
Discussion about this post