Racing Bulls came up with a fun way to decide which of their drivers would get the chance to use their upgraded parts at this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix. The team, which has impressed so far this year, is hoping to boost its performance further still with a swathe of new parts for the Spa-Francorchamps event.
But there is a catch: there was only time to fabricate parts for one of their cars. And with no clear designated number one driver at Racing Bulls, they needed to figure out which of their drivers would get the chance to use what the team hopes will be a quicker aerodynamic design.
Though Liam Lawson is the more experienced of their two races, Arvid Lindblad is the one who has been given the nod to run with the new parts. That was decided, team principal Alan Permane has revealed, by a bet agreed to by both drivers at Silverstone two weeks ago.
“Honestly, we don’t like bringing updates for just one car,” Permane told reporters in Belgium. “It was impossible for us to do it to two cars. It’s a chassis modification – we had to shrink the roll hoop and we just couldn’t do that in time between Silverstone and here on both cars.
“What I did is I sat down with both drivers in Austria on Saturday evening. We’d had a very good qualifying and I thought while everyone is in a good mood, I’ll give some bad news – we’ve got a good update coming but we can only do one car for Spa, and the next car will be done for the race after in Budapest.
“I first suggested the very simple option, which is fair – we upgrade no cars for Spa, and then both of them for Budapest. Of course, they looked at me like I was crazy, and I wouldn’t have ever done that. We didn’t really seriously consider that. The next thing I said is we can flip a coin, or make it a little bit of fun and say whoever qualifies in front in Silverstone gets the upgrade, and they both signed up for that and that’s what we did.”
Both drivers made it into Q3 in qualifying at Silverstone, but it was Lindblad who came out on top by securing ninth on the grid, just one place ahead of Lawson. That earned him the new parts at Spa this weekend, and Permane plans to even things up for Lawson later in the year when Racing Bulls brings the other large new package they have in the pipeline.
He added: “I think what we’ll do if it happens again later in the season, and it may happen – we’ve got another big thing coming at some point – it’ll go to Liam, so we won’t do that again. He’ll automatically get it next time. We tried to put a bit of fun into it rather than just allocating it to someone.”