Why the two best drivers in F1 don’t do track walks

It’s conventional wisdom – and by “conventional wisdom” I mean what your team boss would absolutely have told you 10 years ago – if you want to drive a racetrack, you should take a short walk the day before. In Formula 1, it offers the opportunity to get up close and personal with the track surface and prevent the kind of amateur clutter the rest of us could get into if we are jolted by an extra steep curb or unexpected bump.

So it’s a little surprising to find that the two current top F1 drivers, Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen, both gave up running on the track eleven and four years ago, each about three years after starting their F1 careers . Hamilton said in 2016, ahead of the then-new Azerbaijan Grand Prix (then known as the European Grand Prix) that he hadn’t done a trackwalk since 2010, and Verstappen said today, ahead of the same race, that he didn’t have one haven’t bothered me since 2017.

Back in 2012, then-F1 driver for Toro Rosso (now multiple Formula E champion) Jean-Eric Vergne explained the importance of a trackwalk when he first arrived at the Chinese Grand Prix.

“It may seem a little strange and I think some people outside of Formula One are wondering what a driver can learn from walking around instead of driving, but it really helps to get your bearings,” Vergne said. “You learn the bumps, the camber, how the curbs are constructed, which ones you can attack and which ones you may have to leave alone.

“You recognize your skid marks and begin to look at possible lines. It’s an important part of the process. Sometimes you don’t even realize what you’re recording, but your brain picks up all of this information and it’s surprising how much comes back to you when you first hit the track.

Not for Hamilton and Verstappen, however. Ahead of this year’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Verstappen, who currently leads the drivers’ championship, said he “can’t kick his ass” with trackwalks.

“I still have a few minutes in bed and if I want to know the route, I take my out lap a little slower and look around,” he said at the press conference on Thursday. “I just brake a few meters earlier on the first lap.”

“Everyone has a different approach, of course. At one point I thought I just can’t walk to see it anymore. I know the path will lead to the left or right at some point Margen in FP1 or whatever, so try your laps and you will see where you have to go. “

It may sound strange, but he might be on to something as Hamilton takes a similarly light-hearted approach. Lewis Hamilton, the only F1 driver to ever break a century of pole positions and two of them with 98 wins, also gave up running the track relatively early in his career.

After this year’s Spanish Grand Prix he said: “When I was younger I ran on the track, but I found it was a pointless exercise for me.

“It’s very different when you approach at high speed. So I’ve found that it just wastes energy. My weekend is about keeping and maintaining energy so that I can get the job done. “

Hamilton and Verstappen’s justifications come from the fact that it doesn’t really matter if you’ve rammed your sneakers into every curb around the track if you don’t have the right headroom to put together the rest of the weekend. After all, a lot of slow drivers made a conscientious circuit but couldn’t find a way to bring the first practice session to the second, to the third and into qualifying and then to work all of that for them in the race.

Given that the two are the only ones really fighting for the title this year (McLaren’s Lando Norris is third in the Drivers ‘Championship, but mostly because Mercedes Bottas’ year is gently fumbling towards Schattenreich), this isn’t exactly advice for can or should accommodate the rest of us. To be honest, I don’t have to think often about how to put the perfect Grand Prix weekend together. But the fact that it’s a quirk shared by the two greatest of the current era is an interesting exception.

Do you have a good view of track walks? Email me at [email protected]