In Part One of an extended feature assessing the many major stories from Qatar, Sky F1’s Karun Chandhok discusses the emergency tyre rules enacted, driving in extreme heat, and the Mercedes collision – plus Verstappen’s historic weekend and Piastri’s star quality
Wednesday 11 October 2023 00:15, UK
Last weekend's Qatar Grand Prix felt like one of the most hectic weekends I can remember being involved in for a long time.
It's funny how things develop in this sport as just a fortnight before that in Japan we were all talking about things being a bit flat in terms of dramatic and controversial stories.
This was going to be the weekend where Max Verstappen becoming a three-time world champion was going to be the main focus and through all the chaos, he duly delivered another superbly-executed weekend to score 33 points, and join the list of all-time greats in this sport.
It was great to sit down with Max and reflect on his record-breaking season on Saturday night. The paddock was quiet, he had finished his media pen and press conference interviews, got a bit of downtime with his team and family, showered off the sweat from the Sprint race and was in relaxed form when we chatted at about midnight.
The on-track action was dominated by the issues faced by the Pirelli tyres on the aggressive kerbs around the Losail circuit.
Clearly on safety grounds, the FIA couldn't ignore the issue. While a lot of minds were cast back to Indianapolis in 2005 when only six cars took part after Michelin had tyre issues in practice, this time around the governing body moved swiftly and decisively to find a solution so that the show could go on.
There was a compromise which meant that nobody was allowed to do more than 18 laps on a set of tyres. The fact this was only confirmed a few hours before the race was far from ideal as the drivers all had used their tyres to varying degrees and some like Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were compromised strategically.
Quite how or why we got to this situation is a whole other conversation that needs looking into.
Was the FIA warned by Pirelli about this issue earlier this year? Why wasn't a test event run on the new surface? We did of course have issues at Losail in 2021 with people suffering from front-left tyre failures.
They have spent a fortune on a new paddock and resurfacing the track since then. Ending up with kerbs which caused issues to the tyres and also didn't really deter people from going over the white lines and getting track limit violations is an odd scenario which seemed a bit of a lose-lose.
The collision between the Mercedes drivers was a real shame for them.
Fair play to Lewis Hamilton for putting his hands up and accepting 100 per cent of the blame. There really was nowhere for George Russell to go as he was the meat in the sandwich. Lewis really was the only one with more room to be flexible with.
The car was obviously very competitive this weekend as George showed with his recovery drive and I think we were denied a chance to see if he could challenge Max in the race and fight with the McLarens.
Speaking of McLaren, this was the weekend where Oscar Piastri properly established himself as one of the top drivers on the grid.
He has been impressive all season but there were still some weaknesses, such as his race pace in Suzuka. The win on Saturday was beautifully managed and his race pace on Sunday was certainly impressive.
He's such a level-headed person and I am really excited to see what he can achieve in the future.
McLaren obviously had to pay Daniel Ricciardo a fair chunk of change not to drive this season but having two drivers scoring points should get them ahead of Aston Martin and earn them an extra $10m dollars in prize money.
The heat was obviously a major issue for the drivers with several of them reporting to be feeling faint, while Logan Sargeant had to withdraw before the end of the race.
I've raced in hot places like Malaysia before and it really is pretty unpleasant. I think the whole paddock somewhat underestimated this situation before the event. In order to prepare for the hot races like Malaysia and Singapore, the drivers go out a few days in advance to let their bodies acclimatise to the conditions.
Perhaps because the last time the circus was in Qatar it was six weeks later in the year and the heat wasn't an issue, this didn't really register on people's radars in the midst of a very busy season.
In sportscar racing, for example, when the cars switched to closed cockpits, the teams all had to create some form of driver cooling systems to ensure that the cockpit is no more than seven degrees warmer than the ambient temperature.
I remember doing a very hot race at Le Mans in 2017 and did five stints at the start which was nearly four hours in the car. The level of dehydration is really unpleasant and I started to feel quite light-headed which really isn't something you should be feeling when driving at over 200mph.
The easiest solution of course is to try and pay more attention to the average temperatures when planning the calendar and with next year's race scheduled for December, it shouldn't be an issue.
Look out for Part Two of Karun's verdict on the Qatar GP weekend on skysports.com and the Sky Sports app on Wednesday as he unpacks in detail F1's big Andretti question - what has happened so far, who has said what, and what might happen next?
