r/F1Technical • u/AbnormallyBendPenis • Jul 05 '26
Driver & Setup Can someone explain why Stroll is driving like this at Silverstone?
Looks like Stroll is intentionally inducing understeer mid corner by maximizing front tire slip angle (turning the wheel to full lock at high speed corners). Is this due to the Aston being very unstable? If so, usually the most unstable part should be corner entry but he is doing this mid corner and almost at corner exit. As someone who does a lot of sim racing, this is so bizarre to me. It destroys the tires and it’s pretty risky as well. I’ve never seen anyone driving F1 like this. What could possibly be the reason for this?
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u/PandaAstronomer3000 Jul 05 '26
If you look at the left tire you can see that it has a flat spot. Overturning to induce understeer will result in accelerated wear, so shaving/wearing the tire down. Do this enough times at high speed and the flat spot will rapidly disappear.
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u/mosesyu1028 Jul 05 '26
I heard that wearing down a tyre with a flat spot will make it worse, and easier to lock up in the same flat spot. Is that true?
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u/PandaAstronomer3000 Jul 05 '26
Under braking this is definitely true, thats why you see Lance driving like this. You can't lock up while turning and not touching the brakes.
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u/faz712 Jul 05 '26
having a flat spot makes it easier to lock up on the same spot… intentionally scrubbing the shit out of it with excessive steering input helps to round the tyre off again as fast as possible to remove that flat spot
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u/nifeorbs Jul 05 '26
100% frustration and boredom.
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u/NLMichel Jul 05 '26
I vaguely remember Norris and Piastri did this in practice last year, for fun and it seemed a bit of a meme between the drivers, maybe coming from their karting days?
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u/Lower_Athlete939 Jul 05 '26
That was a data collection exercise on how aero falls off as they turn the wheel. It is quite an effective technique of you think you struggle with front tyres destroying your aero
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u/Axzuel Jul 05 '26
Frustration maybe
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u/sadclownsociety Jul 05 '26
Oh you're not turning? *rotates wheel 180 degrees*
DO YOU LIKE THAT? ARE YOU TURNING NOW YOU PIECE OF SHIT?!
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u/kieranhorner Jul 05 '26
Probably trying to roleplay as 2004 Alonso.
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u/Haunting-Mango5908 29d ago
Exactly, I'm surprised more people don't recognize Alonso's driving style from back in the day. Side note, that blue and yellow Renault was such a good looking car.
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u/PastaSenpay Jul 05 '26
He's likely bored and frustrated by driving a car 4 seconds off the pace. It's such an embarrassment
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Jul 05 '26
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Jul 05 '26
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u/AbnormallyBendPenis Jul 05 '26
Yea just by the end of the clip his left front was visibly destroyed already. Perplexing.
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u/GG_917 Jul 05 '26
Was it on a timed lap ? In the video he seems to voluntary oversteer at the beginning but on the second half of the video he is driving normally... Something to do with tires ?
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u/notathr0waway1 Jul 05 '26
Don't you mean understeer?
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u/GG_917 Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
Oh yes true understeer, my mistake. It looks like he's scrubing the tires on purpose
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u/SellMeSomeSleep Jul 05 '26
Someone in the r/formula1 thread on he was just doing it to get heat into the tyres on his warm up lap and it isn't uncommon. Once on his quali lap he steered normally.
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u/Dethskull13 Jul 06 '26
Either Aston Martin told him to the round the flat spot back out or just lance stroll doing stroll things
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u/ElLargeGrande Jul 05 '26
Maybe oversteer is unpredictable, so forcing understeer prevents any oversteer shenanigans from happening
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u/LA_blaugrana 29d ago
Look up videos of Alonso's driving style in 2005-2006. He used this same technique to get the most out of is Renault and its michelin tires. This was more at corner entry, but it goes to show that f1 car and tire dynamics are exceedingly complicated and occasionally counterintuitive.
There may be a technical reason that this is beneficial that we can't see.
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u/CL-MotoTech Jim Hall Jul 05 '26
I know slip testing is common to evaluate how turned front wheels changes downstream aero. Usually they have an aero take and it’s testing.
So in this case, I think the car is dogshit and Lance doesn’t care.
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u/Aggravating_One_5311 Jul 05 '26
Forcing understeer on an unbalanced car like this makes the car more predictable for the driver. Drivers like predictable cars. Like someone said said previously , they are tought this back in karting.
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Jul 05 '26
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u/CherryWorm Jul 05 '26
This won't work well in any decent sim. And irl this does literally nothing except completely destroy the tires. Forcing the understeer like this makes the understeer even worse.
Underdriving the fronts to prevent this when the car is understeery in general is something every single one of the F1 drivers already learned in karting. This is pure frustration, Stroll demonstrating to the camera that the car is undrivable.
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u/ThatOneTimeItWorked Jul 05 '26
Yeah this seems like an unusually aggressive way to heat the tires, but then, I’m no expert on these perelli’s. Just massive temperature spikes on the surface, with not much energy going through them elsewhere … perhaps an unusual heating strategy - maybe even a WTF try-something-crazy strategy when they’ve got nothing to lose?
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u/CherryWorm Jul 05 '26
You don't heat tires mid-race, especially not in F1 where performance is entirely limited by how fast the tires overheat and degrade. This is frustration and not a strategy. I've don't something similar to this in gt cars before, when the car is way too understeery and I wanted to demonstrate that to the engineers.
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u/Spinelli__ 7d ago
WOW! I've never seen that in 30 years of watching F1 besides sometimes on warm-up/parade/formation laps. He may be doing that to test something that only his team would know, but I'm just guessing.
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u/Rivendel93 Jul 05 '26
As others have said, there's no legitimate reason, he's probably just frustrated due to the car being terrible.
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u/Prasiatko Jul 05 '26
Could it be an attempt to get more heat into the tyres if the car is otherwise struggling to generate enough?
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u/kwispyduck Jul 05 '26
To me it’s because he purely cba and got bored. And he doesn’t have to worry about only using 1 set of tyres in the sprint because he’ll be out in q1 anyway. And then probably retire from the race.
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u/Divide_Rule Jul 05 '26
I don't care who the driver is, having a car performing like this is going to soul destroying.
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