THE INAUGURAL Indian Grand Prix is GO! Today (Friday) is the first day of the Indian GP weekend and I must say that the excitement in the Delhi region is overflowing. I spent much of my day yesterday at one of the hotels next to the track and the lobby was buzzing with Formula1 drivers, both current and former. The entire F1 fraternity is extremely content with the facilities that are being offered by the Buddh International Circuit and are keen to go racing.
By the time you read this, the Formula1 teams and drivers would have already completed their Friday Free Practice sessions, which means that finally, Formula1 cars would have gone racing in India! However, in this column, I would like to share with you how Formula1 teams have gone about preparing for the first-ever Indian Grand Prix.
Formula1 teams are operations heavy and they should be so. After all they transport tons of equipment around the globe for each race. Right from race cars, spares, engines, gearboxes, KERS systems, communications systems and much more, teams also have around 60-80 staff traveling for each race. Engineers, mechanics and the marketing staff are the ones that make things happen every weekend at the races.
Since their travel needs are special, their bookings are handled by special agencies that specialize in Formula1 related travel. I was at the Radisson Blu hotel in Greater Noida yesterday and the hotel is full of F1 team personnel. A quick chat with the hotel management revealed that most teams have already confirmed their bookings with the hotel for the 2012 Indian Grand Prix! In fact, the Sahara Force India team booked their hotels for this Indian GP as early as January this year.
Travel also means flight and visas for the entire staff. Since most team personnel are at a new GP venue every other week, they usually possess two passports that can help them apply for visas while away at the races. While many in the fraternity had issues or delays in procuring their Indian visas, the Sahara Force India team personnel applied and secured their visas as early as August.
The last, but the most connecting factor for everyone is flight tickets. With an average of 70 team personnel flying to every GP venue, more than 850 team personnel travel overall and this doesn’t include the FOM (Formula One Management) and the FIA personnel. So you see, travel is a big part of Formula1 and even here pre-planning is done. For the Indian GP, most teams blocked their flight tickets once the FIA announced the provisional F1 calendar last year. There Sahara Force India team blocked their flight tickets to Delhi seven months ago.
With the travel operations out of our way, the bigger challenges that the teams face are their race operations. Their attempt is to always ensure that irrespective of the venues or countries they race at, the functions and services available are always the same. For race operations, work starts as early as a week prior to the race. The teams arrive in batches and start setting up their pitlane and workshop areas and of course the team’s motor-home.
Thursday is when the on-track activities start with the traditional track walk that the driver embark upon with their engineers making mental notes of the corners, kerbs and even the bumps. This activity is important as testing is very limited and drivers get little time to learn a new track.
Friday is probably the most important day of the weekend with the two Free Practice sessions. This is where the drivers and engineers toil the most to achieve the best setup on their cars to clock the fastest laptime. The teams and drivers would have spent a few days in the simulator, trying to simulate conditions of the Indian GP. It is only on Friday do they get a chance to validate their simulated data with real-life data. An interesting challenge I would say! The Sahara Force India had completed around 1,500km of simulator testing in the months leading up to the Indian GP. All data collected on the Friday goes a long way in preparing race strategies for Sunday.
Saturday’s free practice session is used to do race simulations. This is where drivers would try both compounds of tyres and carry more fuel in their cars. Again, data collection is the key in the build-up to the race and most drivers would do more practice laps than usual. This would also mean that most teams and drive would use a new engine for the Indian GP.
Sunday, the Race Day, would mean using all the data collected over the weekend to go racing! So are you attending the inaugural Indian Grand Prix?
