Chapter 409: Race Weekend | Saturday | A Bad Move

"There is nothing rookie about that lap as Fatih Yıldırım moves to the top of the board. He is probably on low fuel, but it doesn’t diminish the level of driving required to get that time out of Monaco, and for someone driving the car for their third time ever..." As David Croft was excitedly commentating on the drive Fatih had delivered, the cause of all of this had a smile on his face as he started his cooldown lap, slowing down more than normal as he had been on very low fuel, set specifically by the team to allow him to experience the car at its lightest and not be caught off guard by the amount of pace and grip he would have in full qualifying trim.

On the other hand, while Fatih was delivering a jaw-dropping performance, someone else was currently sitting in the garage waiting for the car to be refueled and going through Fatih’s data, comparing it to his.

.......

{How can he carry this much speed into the corners?} Gasly asked as he looked at the telemetry data on the screens in front of him, showing their two telemetry traces overlaid on top of one another, revealing exactly where one driver outperformed the other.

On the data, Fatih was carrying an average of 3 to 8 km/h higher than he was while managing to control the car to get back on the throttle earlier and braking later, meaning Fatih was beating him in every metric that mattered, explaining the more than half-a-second gap between the fastest laps the two had set this weekend so far.

{The difference in setup is allowing him to do those things, but as you already know, it is on the knife-edge,} his race engineer, Pierre, answered a few seconds later, and before Gasly could say anything, the setup engineer spoke on the radio to explain it to him.

{Every place he is gaining, he is doing so due to the advantage of his setup; with the sensitive front end and the aggressive toe-out, the car turns instantaneously, removing the understeer that your setup carries...} Samuel went into detail about how Fatih was in some places gaining up to three-tenths just due to the difference in setup, despite being very sure that Gasly also knew all of this, having experienced driving against Verstappen.

But despite knowing that, the reason he was asking was to try and see if the rookie was doing something that he could also try to do and gain time, because he couldn’t believe that he was currently being beaten by the rookie he was expected to dominate on his first arrival in F1.

Unfortunately for him, everything he was hearing was telling him that the rookie was only capable of doing that because he could handle that type of setup. Although he was tempted to want to mirror it and the gains, if not beat him, his experience with trying to copy Verstappen’s setup and try to match him only for it to end in the humiliation of being demoted to AlphaTauri mid-season, even when the team had publicly said they were supporting him, made him unable to pull the trigger to ask for the setup to be mirrored.

He knew it was a nightmare setup to control, and if he failed, he was going to lose more time than his current setup was allowing him to get.

{We can get some of the gains he did without mirroring his setup, so find it,} he said, not wanting to accept the situation, and made his demand.

A few minutes later, he left the pits with brand-new softs, with twenty minutes still on the clock in FP3, but his mind was still on Fatih’s telemetry. Despite having experienced the negative effects of trying to copy Fatih’s driving, his mind couldn’t help but still be focused on the data as he tried to come up with a way of using it as a learning experience and gaining time.

Just like the first time, he believed he could gain something from it. After all, every driver believes they are the best and are only hampered by the car or strategy.

....

"AND GASLY LOCKS UP AND SLIDES SIDEWAYS GOING INTO NOUVELLE CHICANE AS HE TRIES TO COUNTERSTEER TO AVOID SPINNING!" Croft shouted when the feed changed to showing Gasly sliding sideways as he cut the Nouvelle Chicane with all four of his tires locking up.

"The rears just stopped rotating at high speed. Did he shift the brake bias to the rear accidentally?" Martin Brundle asked when the replay showed Gasly coming out of the tunnel at a very high speed and waiting until it was very late before he started braking.

With a short braking distance, he needed to use more force to shed more than 200 km/h in order to turn safely, but the rear didn’t even seem to want to negotiate, as they just locked up just as Gasly was starting to put in left-turn steering input, forcing it to try and oversteer before he caught it and started sliding sideways, cutting the corner.

"What can cause the rears to lock like that?" Croft asked.

"They can do that when the brake bias has been migrated more to the rear than the front. Otherwise, most of the time, it is the front tires that start to lock and slide first, not the rear. As for why some drivers might migrate more brake bias to the rear, that is to allow the front tires to retain grip before turning, since a braking tire is not quite cooperative with turning," Brundle gave a breakdown, and he was very correct, as Gasly had tried to imitate Fatih’s brake bias in this section to try and take the corner 6 km/h faster than he usually would have, only to fail spectacularly as his driving style was completely opposite to what he was used to, and he was caught off guard.

"That car now feels like he is driving on square wheels," Croft said with a chuckle as Gasly, who had returned to the track, started driving slowly, heading back to the pit lane since the tires were already toast.

As for the driver himself, Gasly was carrying the embarrassment of making such an obvious mistake and wasting a brand-new soft compound. He only answered the questions and didn’t say anything more as he returned to the pit.

.....

"...Verstappen improved on the middle sector, but he failed to beat his fastest time that is currently keeping him on... OOOOOOOH, THAT IS A BIG ONE AND A SECOND BIG CRASH FOR MICK SCHUMACHER HERE, AS HE HAS HAD BACK-TO-BACK SESSION-ENDING CRASHES AT THE CLOSING MINUTES OF BOTH FP2 AND NOW DOING THE SAME FOR FP3!" Croft shouted, emphasizing the situation as the camera that had been on Verstappen, who, along with Leclerc, was the main focus, had changed to showing Mick Schumacher once again in the middle of the road with the car’s left side heavily destroyed. Both the front-left suspension and tire, and the rear one as well, were facing a direction they were never designed to face as a result of the crash.

"I don’t think they are going to be able to repair it within two hours to be able to participate in the qualifying session," Martin Brundle said as the feed remained on the crashed car, showing Mick unbuckling his seatbelts to get out.

"Yeah, you are correct since they will have to rebuild both the front and rear suspension, but such damage on the rear side also comes with damage to the gearbox, radiators, and worse, the engine as well.

They will have to check all of those and make sure they are good to go before they can be allowed to let him participate in the session, so he is practically out," Paul di Resta chimed in as the replay finally started, showing Mick violently sliding the car and slamming it heavily into the left-hand barrier, causing massive damage.

"And as we expected, the session has been red-flagged with two minutes and ten seconds still on the clock. With the current standings of the drivers, it is set up for quite an interesting qualifying session.

At the forefront, it looks like this is going to be a battle between Verstappen and the two Ferraris, with Carlos Sainz being 47 hundredths of a second behind Verstappen on pole and Leclerc at two-tenths of a second, making up the top three before we finally get a glimpse of Mercedes.

Surprisingly, it is the other Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas at four and a half tenths behind the leader, followed by the session leader’s teammate, Perez, at half a second, who is accompanied by Norris on the same row. Six cars ahead of the current championship leader, Lewis Hamilton, who is behind by more than seven-tenths of a second to the number two in the championship.

If it is going to end like this in qualifying, it is going to make for quite an interesting weekend..." Croft started going through the positions each driver managed to achieve, with Fatih, due to him using used softs and despite track evolution, still only able to manage P11 as the session came to an end. Now, finally, came qualifying, which, for Monaco, where overtaking is nearly impossible, was more important than the race itself.