What are the “front” or “rear limited” F1 circuits?
The Spa circuit, which Formula 1 is visiting this weekend, is a “front limited” circuit in the paddock engineers’ jargon. What do they mean by that?
There are slow or fast circuits, urban or natural tracks, historical or modern tracks. And then there’s another category, which engineers frequently use to classify circuits.
What do they mean when we say « front-limited » or « rear-limited » circuit (front/rear limited circuit)?
This difference concerns the physiognomy of the circuit, that is to say the places where the driver wins most of the time.
“REAR LIMITED”: REAR LIMITED
A circuit that has a lot of hairpins, tight corners and few fast corners is said to be “rear-limited”: to be fast there, you need a lot of grip on the rear axle when exiting corners.
Bahrain, Baku, Monaco, Canada, Spielberg, Singapore, Mexico City, Abu Dhabi are “rear limited circuits” : a car that does not have a very strong rear axle (not only stable but also capable of not overheating the tires) will not be comfortable there.
“FRONT LIMITED”: LIMITED BY THE FRONT
Conversely, a circuit with long, fairly fast, high-radius corners where there are not too many tight corners requiring good traction is a track where the potentially limiting factor is the front end.
In other words, on this type of circuit (like Melbourne, Imola, Le Castellet, the Hungaröring, Spa, Suzuka, Brazil or, curiously, Losail), you have to have a good front end, that is to say grip on corner entry to avoid overheating the front tyres.
Due to the loads carried on the front or rear tires, these will overheat and degrade, thus limiting the performance of the car. Silverstone and Barcelona are slightly front limited.
As for the layout of Monza, it does not fall into any category.
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