Germany Tech Corner: FRIC

FRIC dominated the headlines this weekend, with the system being declared illegal by Charlie Whiting after the last race in Silverstone, and most of the talk was how it would affect the teams up and down the grid – with Mercedes assumed to be hit the hardest by the lack of FRIC.

The current drivers’ and constructors’ championship leaders quelled the talk though, finishing 1st and 3rd, although Mercedes were said to have the most advanced system on the grid, so it may have been a surprised that they still had a huge pace advantage on the rest of the field. This implies that the team had enough pace in the bag to compensate for no FRIC.

The aim of the system is to help keep the ride height of a car as stable as possible during a corner. When going around a corner, downforce is lost due to the car pitching under braking and rolling as it turns, this changes the ride height significantly throughout the turn. This lost downforce can be reduced with a more stable ride height, this is where FRIC comes in. As the name suggests, the front and rear suspension of the car is linked using hydraulics, this helps to keep the ride height of each of the 4 corners constant.

Another team that were helped by the no FRIC ruling were McLaren, who publically have been known to have struggled to develop a good system over the last few years. This meant that removing it didn’t harm the pace of the McLaren, as they hadn’t built the car around it – unlike Mercedes or Lotus.

Speaking of Lotus, another disastrous weekend for the Enstone-based team, with Romain Grosjean retiring with an engine problem and Pastor Maldonado, on a high after signing a new contract till the end of 2015, was brought down to Earth after finishing a disappointing 12th. Lotus were the first team to start developing FRIC, and it’s been central to their success in the last few years, so removing it showed to be a big setback, with resulting mistakes in practice costing the team valuable time when preparing for the race.

Red Bull seemed to be affected the most by the loss of FRIC. Their initial long race pace was very good - rather than looking back at a resurgent Williams, they were looking ahead at the Mercedes duo. However they had a disappointing qualifying, with both cars on the third row of the grid, and this continued in the race where they were fighting with Alonso’s Ferrari and Button’s McLaren, and couldn’t even keep up with Bottas in the Williams. A poor weekend for Red Bull.

So after all the fuss about FRIC this weekend, the order wasn’t actually changed much at all, if anything it just bunched up the midfield even more, with Mercedes still out on their own in front.