Formula 1: This is how Vettel tries to cope with the experiment in Imola

Stand: 5:33 p.m. | Reading time: 4 minutes

Imola is new territory. For the vast majority of drivers in the Formula 1 camp, anyway. An experiment that the organizers dare. After a break of 14 years. It has not been a long time since the series has been driven at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari. Because many other hosts had to cancel their races due to the corona pandemic, Imola gets a new chance.

The format is unusual: the drivers have to forego the three training hours on Friday completely and after just a 90-minute practice session on Saturday they have to go straight to the qualification. With the exception of the Finn Kimi Räikkönen, none of the drivers have ever started in a Formula 1 car in Imola, and the track has also been rebuilt since the last Grand Prix here.

As could be seen, this led to scenes that seemed strange. On Friday, for example, Sebastian Vettel could be seen sitting on the track with a view of a curve, four members of the Ferrari crew behind and in front of him as well as to the right and left of him simulating the tires of the SF1000 car and one even lengthwise lay in front of him. He mimed the front wing. Unknown track terrain should be explored as practically as possible – in the absence of a car, then with mechanics.

Vettel lives from the visualization of the route

Vettel wanted to get a feel for the driver’s view of a curve from the car. He took his seated position roughly like in a car to check what he could see as markings on the route. Which curb is visible and how, what distance signs to the curve (200m, 100m, 50m etc.) are there?

He had all of this in mind in the simulator this week, but the 33-year-old is a pilot who lives very much from visualization for the race and always looks at everything again in reality. Despite the simulator, he is one of the few drivers who always walk around the track the day before training. It’s a tradition with him.

Either way: For pilots and engineers, the short guest performance turns into a journey into the unknown – almost without experience and with hardly any time to tune the sensitive cars.

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Red Bull driver Max Verstappen criticized the unusual format as “stupid” and “wrong”. Other drivers also referred to the enormous challenge of having to collect a lot of data in a short time on a full route. “We are assuming a busy training session in which the teams will drive as much as possible,” said Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff, who was already at the 13th of the 17 races of the season on Sunday (1:10 pm, in the sports ticker of the WELT) can become constructors’ world champions for the seventh time in a row.

The shadow of the racing tragedy is great

In view of the warning events of 1994, however, it is quite astonishing that Formula 1 is daring an experiment with a shortened racing weekend.

Because Imola and Formula 1 will probably never shed the shadow of one of the greatest racing tragedies. This weekend the painful memory of the deep black weekend with the deaths of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger is awakened again. The short visit to Emilia-Romagna should be particularly emotional for World Cup leader Lewis Hamilton, for whom the icon Senna was a childhood hero and inspiration. “Either Superman or Ayrton – I wanted to be one of them,” said the world champion recently.

On the Piazza Ayrton Senna da Silva the pilots will roll into the paddock, in the park near the race track a Senna statue has become a flower-adorned place of pilgrimage over the years. The shock of May 1, 1994, when the Brazilian lost his life in the Tamburello full-throttle curve in the Williams racing car, can still be felt in Imola. The route museum feeds the myth with regular Senna exhibitions. For the first time since 2006, Formula 1 is now facing these memories at the scene of the action.

Nevertheless: Formula 1 has learned a lot from the past, the horror of Imola in 1994 acted as a catalyst for many changes. Ratzenberger’s death after a broken neck paved the way for the development of the head and neck rest (“Hans”). Senna’s horror accident, which spanned over 200 kilometers per hour, gave impetus to efforts to make cars and racetracks safer. Crash tests were tightened, the technology slowed down, and most recently the long-controversial “Halo” cockpit protection was added. Run-off zones on the slopes have been expanded, and safety fences and barriers have been modernized.

Even the former Imola risky course has now been significantly defused with harassment, but still elicits respect from the pilots. “It’s a great track. But I don’t know why they removed the last chicane, ”said Vettel before his last Ferrari home game in Italy. In 2006 the Hessian was still there as a Sauber replacement.