Sauber’s Marcus Ericsson is predicting “more interesting” race starts following a recent technical directive which now bans an engineer from assisting a driver with their race starts.
Although driver aids have been tightened over the past few years, including at the start of a race, teams found a way round this by opening up the clutch bite-point, meaning a driver could quite easily find the ‘sweet-spot’ without having to hold the clutch in an exact position.
However that practice has now been banned, along with any markings on the clutch to give the driver a guide of where to hold it, meaning they must now manually find the ‘sweet-spot’ themselves within a much narrower window.
All the drivers have been practising their starts regularly during testing and Ericsson believes it will increase the chances of a driver making a mistake and getting a poor start.
“It’s been a bit more difficult, especially at the beginning of last week when we first started with it, is was quite difficult to get the hang of it because it is quite difficult and the team cannot help us at all,” he told Motorsport Week.
“So basically it’s you and the car trying to get away as good as possible, so it’s easier to make mistakes at the start – you get a lot of wheel-spin or slip too much on the clutch – so I’ve found it more difficult to be consistent.
“This week though I’ve made some good steps myself to get more of a good feel with it, the experience, we’re trying to do as many starts as possible, so it’s definitely getting better.
“It will definitely make the starts more interesting because there’s a bigger chance to make a mistake at the start than in previous years.”
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