© Getty ImagesBulls’ Guide To: Track WalksEver wonder why some drivers walk the track before they drive it? Wonder no longer…
Formanyfans,FormulaOneissomethingthathappensonaSundayafternoon.ThemoreinvolvedfanswillwatchqualifyingonSaturdayaswell,andthetrulyhardcoremightfindtimetofollowthepracticesessionsonFridayalso.Fortheteam,that’salreadythehalf-waypointintheevent.They’vebeenrollingintothecircuitsincethepreviousweekend,doingallmanneroftasksfrompaintingthegaragefloortounpackingthefridge.
Among the last to arrive are drivers and their race engineering teams, usually turning up at the track on a Thursday morning (earlier if the schedule allows). While the cars aren’t on track, it’s a busy day: there are briefings, fittings, media sessions and, usually, track walks.
Busy Day Ahead For The Race Team© Getty Images
The track walk is a carryover from a previous era of racing, before simulators, and video replays and lidar scans. It is exactly what it sounds like; a reconnaissance of the circuit, allowing the team to study the profile of the circuit, take note of its eccentricities, trample the kerbs, mark the sight lines and marshal posts, understand the bumps and hollows, the runoffs, ditches, culverts, and generally fix an image of the track in mind before a wheel is turned. For some drivers it’s useful, others see it more as a ritual and do it because it’s what they do in that time slot. Some view it as an anachronism and simply don’t bother.
In terms of entourage, every team tends to organise their track walks in a different manner. For some, the driver might head out with just a race engineer and a performance engineer for company; other teams send the full chorus line, with controls engineers, PU support, trainer, chief engineer, plus perhaps a photographer and a press officer. Some teams have both drivers go out together, others let them do their own thing, working in the activity around their other commitments – subject, of course, to the time the track is open for foot traffic – not that everyone still walks their track walk; in recent years bikes, scooters, e-scooters and the odd golf buggy have made an appearance.
Scoping The Track On The Bikes© Getty Images
It might appear that whizzing around on a scooter (or rather, a fleet of scooters) renders the activity redundant – but really it’s just cutting out the boring bits. On a nicely rolled permanent circuit, the straights tend to be of little interest during the track walk, the professional curiosity resides in the corners, where everyone wants to study braking points, camber, kerbstones and perhaps fix an idea about line.
For those that still go old-school and walk the walk, the straights tend to be a little more convivial. There’s still work that can do done – controls and performance engineers might discuss with a driver which button sequences they’re going to want him to use on a straight, with the driver generally pointing out that he may be a little busy to adjust every rotary and switch position in the time available – but often it’s a fairly relaxed few minutes.
Engineers often consider the true value of the track walk to be the chance to have the driver to themselves for an hour without any chance of interruption, using the time to discuss the weekend in a wider context than simply stopping to sniff the asphalt.
The things that tend to draw the attention are, of course, the bits that are new, particularly those that either don’t feature or aren’t particularly representative in the simulator. Fresh tarmac is always interesting because it usually has a different level of grip to the adjoining sections. The joins themselves are studied. They rarely appear significant to the naked eye, but travelling at 300kph, in a car with precious-little suspension travel they can be jarring – so perhaps not the place at which you wish to be adjusting brake balance or differential settings.
New kerbs are studied – particularly sausage kerbs. These are the bright orange or yellow temporary kerbs bolted in for an F1 race behind the main kerb. They’re generally present to act as a deterrent to drivers pushing the track limits and thus tend to be in locations where the drivers want to place the cars.
Sticking Close To The Corner© Getty Images
With the more common-or-garden kerbstones, physically standing on the corner sometimes helps the driver and race engineer to have the conversation about line and suspension set-up: ‘If you want to run this kerb, we’ll need that roll-bar,’ and so forth. Being out there on the track discussing it can be useful for the rest of the weekend: the team are all visualising the same thing with a common language – and sometimes it’s useful for the drivers when the subject comes up later, in briefings with the race director.
At some circuits the track walk can also deliver useful environmental data. While the simulator can be programmed to mimic a stiff breeze, it doesn’t provide the sort of insight that feeling it on the face does. Consciously or otherwise the drivers can gain a sense of which parts of the track are protected from the wind, and where they suddenly become exposed. This is particularly useful somewhere like Sochi where the giant Olympic stadia act as windbreaks along the shore, with the gaps between them having a serious destabilising effect on the cars.
Not every circuit gets a track walk. You won’t, for instance, see drivers and their engineers doing a track walk in Monaco, for the simply reason they’d lose five or six hours signing autographs and posing for selfies. It’s also a working thoroughfare and so however much you might want to take a look at a new bump in the braking zone for the Nouvelle Chicane, it’s not a place to linger – though it’s not unknown for the drivers to borrow a moped and do a few laps (and for the smarter drivers to borrow a nondescript helmet that doesn’t have their name on the side).
Taking In The Sights© Getty Images
For other circuits, it very much depends on familiarity. The race director’s notes going into Monza remarked that the track had not been changed since the 2020 race. This tends to deter all but the serial walkers. On the other hand, Max, who very rarely walks the track, did so at Zandvoort because it had seen substantial changes since he last drove it. This week, Sochi may tempt out the casuals, because there’s been some substantial resurfacing at the apex of turn two – which tends to be the all-action part of the circuit.
On the wider issue of those who do and don’t do a track walk, the less-experienced drivers tend to do it, the old hands are more divided. At the more venerable end of the scale, Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel almost certainly will, Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Räikkönen almost certainly won’t.
So, what’s the advantage of not doing a track walk? In a sport that fetishises marginal gains, surely a driver should take every advantage they can? Max jokes that he’d rather have a few more minutes in bed and drive his first out-lap a bit slower, but the reality is that it’s an hour out of the day that can be used for other things. That might be more time with the engineers, or it might be, as Max says, a little more rest.
Bulls’ Guide To: Track Walks© Getty Images
David Coulthard – a man who contested more grands prix than most argued that learning a track ‘live’ added a little more spice to FP1. “I don’t usually do a track walk,” confessed DC towards the end of his career. “When you’ve been here for 14 years you really don’t need it. And at the new circuits I like a little excitement on a Friday morning. I don’t really understand what you can take away from walking the track, because it doesn’t bear any relationship to driving – I don’t understand why people do it, but then I’ve not won any World Championship, so who knows…!”
Not doing the track walk can, of course, backfire. Räikkönen found himself staring at a locked gate at Interlagos, after going off in the rain and attempting to use a short-cut across the old track to get back on. Afterwards he confessed to having used the same route years earlier “when the gate was open.”
More recently, Daniel Ricciardo hit a hidden culvert on the start line at his home race and tore the front wing of his Renault. He’d had done an Albert Park track walk – but had walked out of the pit exit and hopped back over the pit wall to his garage, never having examined that stretch of straight in between those two points.
More often, however, it’s not the big-ticket items that the track walk discovers. Somewhere like Sochi, which is rarely used for racing, it’s going to see which parts of the track are clean and which are dirty; how the new tarmac at turn two – and further patches around the last few corners – feel compared to the older material around it and details like this. It may not be worth much, and nothing at all after the first few laps of FP1 – but with time so very tight this year, even a couple of extra minutes on the pace may be useful.
