2015 cars are hard to drive, insists Martin Brundle after Force India outing

Far from being too easy, the 2015 F1 cars are harder to drive than their recent predecessors, Sky F1’s Martin Brundle has concluded after 37 taxing laps behind the wheel of this year’s Force India.

In a specially-recorded set of features for Sky Sports F1, the first of which was broadcast in the build-up to the Spanish GP, Brundle drove Force India’s 2015 challenger for 37 laps around the National Circuit at Silverstone to gain a unique insight into the workings of a modern-day F1 car.

And, contradicting the widespread view that the current era of pampered F1 drivers have it too easy, the motor-racing veteran's conclusion may surprise you.

“It’s wrong to say that the 2015 cars are too easy to drive," declared Brundle as he reflected on his Silverstone outing in the VJM08. "They aren’t easy – they are different."

The fact that today's F1 cars are up to three seconds a lap adrift of their 2004 predecessors is frequently presented as compelling evidence that the pinnacle of motorsport has become too slow and too easy.

But according to Brundle, who has driven an F1 car every year since 1983 in addition to participating in 165 grands prix during his racing career, the reduction in speed – and the physical demands placed on drivers – has been superseded by a more complicated challenge.

"The key thing for me for why these cars are not easier to drive is that there is a surplus of power and torque over grip. You have to creep up to the limit, and that means you have to leave grip and speed on the table, you have to work out how much power and grip there is, you can’t just floor it and let the torque do its job – and I think that is harder to do."

While critics continues to decry that F1’s highest tier should chase optimum speed, the pursuit of greener technology and greater road relevancy arguably makes it the most advanced sport on the planet. For the drivers themselves, the game itself has been transformed over the last decade. Gone are the days when the name of the game was to put your foot to the floor as quickly, and as often, as possible. Now the challenge varies between a balancing act of energy recovery, kinetic harvesting and tyre conservation, while simultaneously trying to stay ahead of the car behind and overtaking the man in front. F1 has become a high-speed juggling act that punishes the slightest miscalculation.

"Two years ago when we did ‘Decades at McLaren’ for Sky F1 I drove Lewis Hamilton’s 2008 championship-winning car and that is the best car I’ve every driven because it just stuck to the surface,” mused Brundle. "Every racing driver primarily just wants the car to go faster, in all those hours of testing and debriefs you are just looking for ways to go faster, and when you have a car like the McLaren 2008 which just sticks it feels brilliant.

"I can understand why drivers like that era of cars and they were much more physical to drive. But I can see why there is a difference between the drivers and team-mates now because there is so much potential speed you can leave behind because you aren’t close enough to the limit. It’s a question of feeling of ‘how much power can I give that before it is too much?’

"And having driven the Force India I think in terms of a mental challenge it is harder because there is so much going on in the cockpit.”

In a telling embodiment of F1’s evolution, the steering wheel has literally been reinvented. Once nothing much more than a prosaic circular tube, a modern-day F1 steering wheel now wouldn’t look out of place in a NASA laboratory.

“I am sure you get used to these things quite quickly, but for me there was certainly a ‘cockpit overload’ to understand all those systems," Brundle recalled.

“Force India gave me a lot – not all, but a lot - of the toys on the dashboard and the other thing that absolutely shone out for me is how sensitive they were. Every twist or mode setting was very powerful and very impressive."

Even a few choice warnings weren't sufficient to forearm Brundle against the difficulty of driving a modern-day F1 car. Before climbing into the VJM08, Brundle sought advice from the likes of former world champion Jenson Button and Williams’ Valtteri Bottas, but was still given an immediate surprise when he settled into the cockpit of the Force India.

“I was in quite a lot trepidation because every driver l spoke to had warned me to be careful with the throttle because they have extended the throttle movement now. Back in the days of traction control, a car might have had around twenty-five millimetres of throttle travel because you floored it as quickly as you could and then let the electronics do the work. These cars have 60 to 70 mill of throttle to add some progressivity and right away the distance the throttle has to travel tells you about the driveability issues which are going on.”

Sunday's feature will be the first of several broadcast from Martin's outing at Silverstone and future edits will take a detailed look at the cockpits of the modern-day F1 cars, from harvesting energy, deployment of DRS, and the feel of brake-by-wire, and the driver's role in completing a sub-three-second pit-stop.