Cornering Copse

By Andrew Benson
Motorsport editor at Silverstone

The cars suddenly appear and then hurtle out of Copse Corner

It takes a little while to adjust your senses - at first, the brain is not prepared to believe what the eyes are seeing.

The Formula One car appears out of the heat haze, bright colours shimmering, and grows larger at an alarming rate as it heads towards you at more than 180mph.

Then it turns 90 degrees right at a speed so astonishing that you think it surely must lead to disaster. Instead, the car spears through the corner and off out of sight.

This is Copse, Silverstone's first corner, and now one of F1's most spectacular tests.

Copse has always been fast, difficult and impressive, but it had also been in the shadow of other corners at Silverstone, mainly the stunning swerves at Becketts, as well as around the world.

No longer. The increase in cornering speeds in F1 this season has moved Copse on to a whole new dimension, to the point that it is now, as Williams driver Mark Webber says, "one of the best four or five corners in F1".

This year, the best cars and bravest drivers will take it flat out in seventh gear in qualifying, turning in at more than 180mph, and sustaining 177mph through the middle of the corner.

Copse Corner - 360 degree view from the circuit

Even for the drivers, this is difficult to believe - "amazing", as Webber puts it while Fernando Alonso calls Copse, "the bravest and fastest corner".

For them, the challenge is multi-faceted. The speeds, and the brutal lateral forces of 5.2G, are one thing. But there is also the small matter of not being able to see where the driver wants the car to go at the moment he has to commit to the corner.

Webber says, with a hefty dollop of typically Australian matter-of-fact understatement: "In a funny sort of way it's a little bit blind, which is of interest, because the apex is a little difficult to pick up.

"For a split second, you can't see where you're pointing the car. So the turn-in point is not that straightforward at that sort of speed.

When the corners are faster we have to be a little bit more accurate, there is a bit more commitment involved Mark Webber

"It's that close to being flat. Before it was sometimes even a brake and a shift-down, but now it's not shifting down and not even a brake probably, so it's become a real cliff-hanger."

It is emphatically not, as Webber and several other drivers have pointed out, a place to have an accident. The run-off is not particularly large, and towards the exit of the corner the barrier angles back in towards the track.

"It's a little bit marginal," Webber says. "You want to stay on the track. Whoa, yeah, [going off] wouldn't be good."

Copse has become such a focus of the drivers' attention this year because a combination of softer tyres and, paradoxically, smaller engines have increased cornering speeds.

The softer tyres give more grip. The smaller engines mean the cars arrive at the corners at a lower speed, so they have to slow down less.

That means the car does not pitch forward as much on entry to the corner, so the crucial aerodynamics are not as severely disrupted, work more effectively, and thus increase grip further.

At Copse that means an increase of 12mph in the middle of the corner - a significant amount when the laws of physics dictate that the energy of an impact is a square of the velocity at which it happens.

"Of course," Webber says, "when the corners are faster we have to be a little bit more accurate, there is a bit more commitment involved.

Drivers are more than capable of picturing what might happen to them if their car left the track at a place like Copse

"Generally the run-off is marginal, especially in the first corner, but normally when you put your helmet on you feel like you're bullet-proof anyway."

To some, the fact that racing drivers embrace this sort of danger - even if they would also like to see safety improved - is a failure of imagination.

But, as Webber implies, they are more than capable of picturing what might happen to them if their car left the track at a place like Copse.

Better to see it as a triumph of the spirit of adventure, as stepping into the unknown, pushing oneself beyond one's known limits and coming out the other side.

The drivers are doing it, but those watching can live it vicariously and share in some of the thrill.

It is at times like this, standing in the warm summer sunshine watching the world's greatest drivers take themselves and their incredible cars to the edge, that it is possible to see F1 in its most attractive light.

The politics, the gamesmanship, and the sheer, appalling waste of resources fade into the distance, and one is left with the marvel of the sport's awesome spectacle in its rawest form.