Inside The Dramatic Race Start In Zandvoort | Jolyon Palmer’s F1 TV Analysis | Workday

so the start of the race promised to be quite crucial in zamv it's not the easiest circuit to overtake as it was it wasn't crucial at all Lon Norris got a poor start the sixth time he started from P1 in Formula 1 and once again he didn't manage to convert it to a race lead but this time McLaren had a huge amount of pace and Lando produced a brilliant rest of the race to to come back through but let's have a look in more detail at Lando start and the rest of the starts because this did transform how the race unfolded so firstly let's look at Norris on pole but also Oscar piastri in third because both McLarens get a very shoddy start as the uh as the lights go out so five lights on and both of them just sit there with wheel spin so it takes no time at all barely meters for vapen to launch straight into the race lead and Max gets a very good start in this one you can actually see also Sergio Perez getting a great launch from fifth but he gets boxed in as we play this through there's nowhere for him to go pastry move to the middle of the road Perez then stuck behind piastri and Russell and with his decent launch can't really go anywhere Russell covers him off and it allows charl lir to to sneak around the outside as well so important for lir to make the move on Perez early on important in theory for Vapin to take the lead that could have transformed the race but as it was the Red Bull Pace just wasn't good enough to hold on but a crucial move as well was George Russell passing Oscar piastri at the start and both McLaren got away away sluggishly Oscar couldn't hold on around the outside of George dropped away from that lead battle and never recovered to a top three position but let's focus in on on Norris's start to begin with here pre-art revs about n and a half thousand revs it seems for for McLaren you see that on the dash he's got all those five lights lit up so procedurally Lando with the lights coming on is doing everything right he's got the clutch to the bite point he's holding his foot steady on the throttle he's doing what he needs to do but as the lights go out he immediately comes into loads of wheel you can hear the chattering of the rear tires trying to put the power down and Max just launches through into the race lead fortunately for Lando Oscar also got a bad start further back so both McLarens were in the same boat and there's a few reasons for this I think firstly there's a a very low grip starting grid in Zam for it was quite wet through the weekend the conditions weren't good it was windy and um it was difficult to get the power down not a lot of rubber down on the grid not a huge amount of support series either no Formula 2 no Formula 3 in in the Netherlands and even if we go on board with Max you can see as the the lights go out he's also just having to play with the steering because he's on the edge of of a bit of wheel spin himself but nowhere near the the amount of wheel spin that that Lando had he has a look to his left and says thank you very much takes the race lead at home but even the Red Bull there who had the best start in the field is still on the edge of wheel spin so if McLaren expecting a bit more grip from conventionally the clean side of the grid P1 P3 they uh they probably got the calculation slightly wrong with this and piastri has a similar thing here starting with a slightly higher revs than than his teammate also just goes nowhere with wheel spin in the first phase the staffen is through and Russell just sticking a nose in and Oscar doesn't hold it around the outside and this was critical for pastri race didn't hold it there and as we play it through desperate try and get back through the Mercedes who didn't really have any good Pace on Sunday but this low line is so tempting to use you've got loads of space the conventional line is what all those guys are doing out there running wide even two wheels up on the painted stuff outside using the banking getting a nice exit when piastri drops down here becomes very difficult to get the exit so we're halfway along the inside of Russell but just wheel spinning all the way as you come over the crest you can't get the power down and so Oscar now cemented in fourth place and that is a buffer from him to the top two which he would never recover from and in fact we'll we'll have a look later on but charlot Clair made the most of this as well getting onto the podium I think just a pretty disappointing weekend to be honest I think um qualifying was not as strong as I needed it to be and um and neither was the race really so obviously the start was was pretty poor for both of us so something to review there I think as a team start stats so here's your top six in the pace order that they get to 100 kph so that's your your not to 100 kph not to 60 milph and it's very quick for a Formula 1 car but it's a big difference between the McLaren both on the top end of it piastri actually with a worse start than than Norris as well manages to find a bit more to 200 kph but the damage is all done in that first phase of the getaway especially on such a short run as as zvol is and you can see actually for Perez he has such a bad run to 200 because he's actually got to get out of the throttle he's had too good a start compared to piastri and compared to Russell both of which are in the latter half of the uh the six Runners here reaction times are all pretty much the same so we have a question here which is uh since Lando and Max had identical reaction times at the start how did Max get a much better launch so we look back at this the reaction times pretty much identical for these two 0.283 0.281 pretty much identical for all of these guys in the top six not much to separate them in terms of reaction times they're all Formula 1 drivers in the peak of their concentration their reactions they will do a good job it's all about the clutch drop and the power application so we can have a look at a bit of data here and what we're interested in is right at the start of this Telemetry and it's the throttle application if we have a look here you can see the red line the green line and the blue line which is actually just still slightly low and off the chart but the red line and the green line both as soon as the cars launched start to to come on the throttle and now red line here is Norris who goes quite aggressively onto the throttle at uh at this part he's really trying to put on the uh put on the Power take advantage he got a nice clear track in front of him but that leads to the wheel spin piastri similar is much smoother with this throttle application it helps him out in the later phase but once again he just wheel spinning whereas Max actually is much more patient in the Red Bull he waits for for a lot longer and then finally starts bringing in the throttle in theory here is that is by far the latest to try and get on the throttle but the McLarens are both just hitting it through wheel spin they've not managed to uh to get the car under control on that launch and a Formula 1 car launches at quite some rate on the initial bite both McLarens onto the onto the gas looks to me like they've both miscalculated it from the cockpit because the clutch settings maybe are are okay but the wheel spin is coming from the driver's right foot both of them compared to theen bit impatient for stappen great launch and as I said the best in the field the McLarens both of them the worst in the field to 100 kmers an hour so certainly a big area of weakness for uh for for Norris particularly who's flying at the moment it was a terrific race from him but on another day and we've seen it this year that would have cost him the race yeah I'm not sure honestly what happened at the start again something different to what we've had uh and both Oscar and myself didn't have a great start so I I don't know if we misjudge something or I'm not sure but we'll look into it we'll review it and and do it better for next time unfortunately for Norris also the questions are going to continue about his start so it is certainly a big area that him and McLaren need to work on this time pastri joined him in having not such a good one but I do think verando as soon as he gets one good launch from po position it'll help to steady things and uh and stop the questions being asked as well so that's got to be a big Focus for uh for him