Valtteri Bottas has offered theories behind his off-colour Azerbaijan Grand Prix performance, suggesting that damper degradation was giving his Cadillac increasingly poor ride characteristics through the race.
The Finn endured a struggle through the weekend at Baku, largely cemented to the bottom of the timesheets. This was magnified by team-mate Sergio Perez enjoying a characteristically strong weekend around the Azerbaijani capital, a circuit at which the Mexican has historically shone.
Bottas’ race ended on the final lap with a crash into the barrier at Turn 15, in which the car’s power unit failed to offer the correct level of engine braking on the rear axle while superclipping.
Reflecting on the Azerbaijan GP, Bottas admitted that it was a “pretty poor” weekend and explained some of the key problems that led to his muted showing.
“I understand it looked pretty bad from the outside; I felt pretty bad in the car as well. There was just no way to keep up with the pack,” Bottas reckoned.
“Tried everything during the race. Got lots of feedback on where I am losing the time. A lot of it was on the straights. But also a big chunk was just all around the lap in the corners. That’s why I just kept pushing until the end. And that’s why I had the lock-up on the last lap in Turn 1.
“The main thing was we saw already in practice that I was lacking pace. I couldn’t carry the same speed through the corners as Checo. So we changed a lot for the qualifying, including some dampers, the floor. And it actually felt a lot better.
“But then the ride again during the race degraded quite a lot. I think it’s something to do with dampers, [degrading] with heat.
“The floor [too], we are still lacking a bit of pressure tappings here and there. So we don’t [yet] have the full information on aero parts that I’m used to from the past where you could immediately see if you’re down or up.
“But now there are some bits of the floor where we are blind. But for me, feeling-wise, it was more the ride, and that’s in combination with power steering that was [degrading] throughout the weekend, and I was really then also struggling to feel the car throughout the race. So, those things combined.”
Bottas explained the performance deficit to Perez, where he was consistently 6-7km/h slower on the straights, was down to the impact of his team-mate’s new Ferrari powertrain; Perez had Ferrari’s “ADUO 2” engine, while Bottas had the old-spec power unit.
Valtteri Bottas, Cadillac Racing
Photo by: Guido De Bortoli / LAT Images via Getty Images
Speaking about Cadillac’s wider deficit to the other teams, Bottas reckoned that the American squad’s infrastructure was pretty strong and continuing to improve, but explained that the “rush” to get its first F1 car designed and built had led to its ultimate performance being compromised.
This tallies with comments from new team principal Marcin Budkowski, who noted that the team had needed to make shortcuts to meet its production deadlines.
“When it comes to settings, like differential maps, brake maps and stuff, we’re in a good place,” Bottas explained. “I feel like I’ve got everything that I need. Also the support from Ferrari when it comes to the engine braking maps and stuff. The main limitation we have is still mechanically.
“Obviously it was a bit of a rush to design the car. We have some good tools, but not as advanced as we would hope. And there’s going to be, for sure, a change to the suspension on next year’s car. So that will open more opportunities for set-up changes. But that’s where we’re lacking, the mechanical side.”
Perez: “I made the difference in Baku”
Speaking about his own Baku weekend, Perez reckoned that “I was making a massive difference” behind the wheel, in a race where the ex-Red Bull driver – briefly – looked like an outside bet for a surprise point.
Perez was on the cusp of the top 10 after the restart, but ended up falling back as he was unable to stay in touch with the cars ahead. Even with Ferrari’s new engine, he stated that the overtake mode was not enough to counter the Cadillac MAC-26’s drag output.
He suggested that it would be business as usual for the team at this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix at Malaysia’s Sepang circuit, without his affinity for Baku to fall back on.
Sergio Perez, Cadillac Racing
Photo by: Alex Pantling – Formula 1
“I think at the moment it’s basically the lack of load, we have a massive lack of load in the car, and not a lot of drag,” he said. “You know, in Baku, when I basically stayed on the overtake mode for the entire race and therefore I was able to stay with the others, but when I overtook them, I was just a passenger because I had no straightline speed.
“So we have two big issues: no load and a lot of drag – but we always knew this first year was going to be tricky.
“A lot can happen but, I guess given where the pace of the car is at the moment, we are just too far off and it’s a place that you can overtake easily.
“I’m not too excited about the prospects for this weekend. I think Baku was a one-off; I was making a massive difference there, and here it will be just back to our reality in terms of where the car is at the moment.”
How does damper ‘degradation’ hurt the suspension?
In short, the damper helps to control the energy moving through the torsion bars when the wheel jacks up over a kerb or a bump, or when the car sustains any kind of axial motion.
Through the course of a race, the compression of the fluid within the damper creates heat. With continued compression, the heat changes the properties of the fluid and the viscosity reduces, meaning that the damper produces less resistance.
As such, the suspension package overall can’t absorb as much energy from bumps and kerb strikes, meaning that the forces are thus redirected through the chassis.
For a bumpy circuit like Baku, it can start to impact the handling of the car. There is also a small shift in floor performance, as this can produce a small impact on the ride height of the car.
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