The Official 2017 Australian Grand Prix Thread **Spoilers**

[daveborn]

friends i love grand prix very much and can wait for visit this sport event

[DanielSan]

suffolk009 said:

^^ I fear Tiff is living in the past. There's no way that F1 will go all Luddite.

Sadly it won't happen but he basic idea of F1 being about the driver and WEC being about the manufacturer is a good one, as he pointed out, it's the driver who wins the title in F1 but it's the manufacturer whose name everyone says when they've won at Le Mans....

[FourWheelDrift]

DanielSan said:

Sadly it won't happen but he basic idea of F1 being about the driver and WEC being about the manufacturer is a good one, as he pointed out, it's the driver who wins the title in F1 but it's the manufacturer whose name everyone says when they've won at Le Mans....

because it's easier than trying to remember all 3 drivers.

[suffolk009]

DanielSan said:

suffolk009 said:

^^ I fear Tiff is living in the past. There's no way that F1 will go all Luddite.

Sadly it won't happen but he basic idea of F1 being about the driver and WEC being about the manufacturer is a good one, as he pointed out, it's the driver who wins the title in F1 but it's the manufacturer whose name everyone says when they've won at Le Mans....

You're quite right. But I'd be happier with F1's media being a little more focused on the constructor than the driver.

[Dr Z]

entropy said:

Crafty_ said:

DrZ is right in that as teams gather data they'll start to push the limits of the tyres, they might even start gambling on different strategies.

After reading James Allen's analysis I'm inclined to feel pessimistic

https://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2017/03/the-game-ha...

In the last Bridgestone era the tyres were too hard and you could do a race on a set of tyres if you could.

Pre-1994 you pitted once at most and in the '80s - unless you had a tyre problem - you raced on a set of tyres.

So strategically it's going to be crap not helped by more downforce and more dirty air. Should have kept last year's car with wider tyres.

I disagree with some of the points James Allen made in that article. To pick on one comment:

JA said:

The first Grand Prix to new regulations and with wider, more robust tyres brought about a complete change of approach in race strategy. With stronger tyres Melbourne is a one-stop race and that was the case for most runners this season.

But strategy is still critical to race outcomes; at the front the race victory was decided by a strategy call from Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton, who wanted to make an early stop and as he came out behind two cars and not into a gap, he lost the race win to Sebastian Vettel.

Further back, track position proved to be the most valuable thing of all and overtaking proved hard, as Fernando Alonso managed to hold the Force India of Esteban Ocon behind him despite being 27km/h slower on the straights!

I strongly disagree that the race victory was decided by a strategy call from Mercedes. This is to be grossly ignorant of what happened in the first 15 laps, when Vettel was always within 2 seconds of Hamilton, pushing flat out, making Hamilton to drive ever faster than he'd like inorder to make an undercut-safe gap. As a result Hamilton felt he was sliding a lot, wearing out his tyres (in clear air, for goodness' sake!) well before their planned pit window.

So clearly, non-dirty air induced tyre degradation has played a significant role in the decision to pit, and this was precipitated by Vettel shadowing every move Hamilton made on track. The very fact that Vettel was able to do this whilst being in the full on dirty air suggests either that it was a superhuman effort from Vettel or that the Ferrari is very good in dirty air (probably a bit of both). Even in the previous regs, dirty air effect is said to be upto 2.5 seconds behind a car...yet Vettel was able to stay within 2 secs of Hamilton here at all times.

Really, it isn't fair to say that strategy decided the race, it was two teams fairly close on pure pace fighting each other and one driver who put in a great drive.

Further down the field, strategy played an important role, but drivers had the ability to push hard, so they could make a difference and not simply rely on a massive pace advantage that came with new tyres to get them ahead. There was some variation in strategy too, and not everyone was doing a 1-stop. But, a skillfully driven slower car could still keep a faster car/driver behind. I present to you, Alonso. This is from JA's analysis:



The Alonso-Hulk-Ocon train was seperated by around 3 seconds in the first stint. FI goes for an undercut before both McLaren and Renault, but after they all pit and come back out, Ocon was only able to undercut his way past Hulk. I mean, if the Force India peddled by Ocon was that much quicker than the McLaren, he really should have undercut his way past Alonso too. Hulk was always about 1.5s behind Alonso in the first stint, but Renault pit in the exact same lap as McLaren, and this allowed Ocon to undercut his way past Hulk, but the combination of pace/pit work wasn't good enough to go past Alonso.

After a bit of a stalemate for the next 15 laps, Renault decide to pit safely (no one for 23 secs behind them) and put ultra softs on Hulk to give him a tyre advantage over both Alonso and Ocon, provided he can make the pit stop worth of time to them and be ready to attack towards the end of the race...which, he does in the next 18 laps. All the while, Ocon never manages to overtake Alonso. But now Hulk on his tail, on a faster tyre, he really had to make a move and manages it, with that 3-wide move we saw (was there a bit of contact between Ocon and Alonso just before?), and holds up Hulk till the end of the race. This is how I saw it. There's nothing in here that suggests that a faster car couldn't overtake, or that different strategies couldn't be utilised to make on-track passes or that pure strategy based undercuts don't work. All of this depends on the particular driver to make it work. And I'm glad that having a faster car != guaranteed overtakes. I also like to see good defensive driving, which forces the attackers to be creative in overtaking.

If you have cars that are fairly close on pure pace, the racing takes care of itself. In this race, there was a big gap between Merc/Ferrari/RBR and the midfield teams. Stable regulations in the next few years would mean the midfield teams would close that gap and have the ability to get in the mix with influencing race outcomes of the top teams and may be get podiums too.

[rdjohn]

The Merc strategist has been talking to SKY and held his hand up that they got it wrong.

They wrongly anticipated when VET and VES would need to change tyres, which left HAM between a rock and a hard place.

They now realise that they should have advised HAM to drive slower like BOT as VET would have been unable to pass.

But hindsight is wonderful and it is not an error that they are likely to be repeat race after race.

[Derek Smith]

rdjohn said:

The Merc strategist has been talking to SKY and held his hand up that they got it wrong.

They wrongly anticipated when VET and VES would need to change tyres, which left HAM between a rock and a hard place.

They now realise that they should have advised HAM to drive slower like BOT as VET would have been unable to pass.

But hindsight is wonderful and it is not an error that they are likely to be repeat race after race.

They'll be thinking of this mistake in the next race and they will make another tactical mistake.

[red_slr]

Anyone know what was going on with the Renault BBW system, very odd that it was locking on in the exact same place...

[Europa1]

rdjohn said:

The Merc strategist has been talking to SKY and held his hand up that they got it wrong.

They wrongly anticipated when VET and VES would need to change tyres, which left HAM between a rock and a hard place.

They now realise that they should have advised HAM to drive slower like BOT as VET would have been unable to pass.

But hindsight is wonderful and it is not an error that they are likely to be repeat race after race.

Please, just stop it.

[entropy]

Dr Z said:

I strongly disagree that the race victory was decided by a strategy call from Mercedes. This is to be grossly ignorant of what happened in the first 15 laps, when Vettel was always within 2 seconds of Hamilton, pushing flat out, making Hamilton to drive ever faster than he'd like inorder to make an undercut-safe gap. As a result Hamilton felt he was sliding a lot, wearing out his tyres (in clear air, for goodness' sake!) well before their planned pit window.

So clearly, non-dirty air induced tyre degradation has played a significant role in the decision to pit, and this was precipitated by Vettel shadowing every move Hamilton made on track. The very fact that Vettel was able to do this whilst being in the full on dirty air suggests either that it was a superhuman effort from Vettel or that the Ferrari is very good in dirty air (probably a bit of both). Even in the previous regs, dirty air effect is said to be upto 2.5 seconds behind a car...yet Vettel was able to stay within 2 secs of Hamilton here at all times.

Really, it isn't fair to say that strategy decided the race, it was two teams fairly close on pure pace fighting each other and one driver who put in a great drive.

I would argue that Vettel was flat out nor was driving within himself in the first stint. He was doing enough to pressure Hamilton but close enough not to compromise his car in dirty air considering that Hamilton reckoned the wake has increased to about 1.5 - 2 seconds rather than about a second.

[carinaman]

Thanks for the analysis Dr Z.

[Dr Z]

entropy said:

I would argue that Vettel was flat out nor was driving within himself in the first stint. He was doing enough to pressure Hamilton but close enough not to compromise his car in dirty air considering that Hamilton reckoned the wake has increased to about 1.5 - 2 seconds rather than about a second.

Looking at the gaps here:

http://en.mclarenf-1.com/index.php?page=chart&...

There was only 4 of the first 16 laps Vettel was around 1.8s back, the rest of the time it was a great punch/counter punch going on between Hamilton and Vettel, all with 1.5s distance between them. It's hard to tell how much damage Vettel was doing to his tyres, but the clue is the laptime Hamilton did on his lap after the out-lap--he did a 27.5.

Following in realtime, I could tell Vettel was really pushing to 'overcut' Hamilton (IIRC, he did a purple final sector in the next lap), he kind of hit a ceiling but still was popping in low 28s. This suggests that he didn't have any more tyre left to extract a faster time, but the tyres were still holding up well enough to give a lap time that was reasonably competitive. Previously, this would've been about the time he'd have fell right off the cliff and lost the race. Then, it was about the Ferrari pitwall keeping it cool and wait for Hamilton to get involved with Verstappen--which he duly obliged after exhortations by the Merc pitwall. Hamilton had a look at Verstappen a couple of times, but you can see on lap 22 when he really gives it a go and loses a second compared to the previous lap. The gap to Vettel goes just over the 22 second pit stop threshold and that was the signal for Ferrari to pit. Vettel's in-lap was good but not spectacular, he had some traffic too in the final sector (Stroll, I believe), but his first two sectors weren't much faster than his PBs...which again, reinforces that his tyres were spent.

What I have learned from looking at some of the race data and testing is that these tyres do degrade, and this allows undercuts to work perfectly fine. The overcuts were more prevalent in the Bridgestone era. Tyres show a more predictable degradation than the previous era Pirellis, there appears to be a good balance between the grippy faster compounds vs degradation rate. The cliff is also there, but you don't fall off of it once you get there. You just can't go any faster. Tyre offsets can still be established by teams fighting against each other, but drivers have to work hard to pass even with a significant tyre offset. All perfectly fine by me, but I would say that, I'm a McLaren fan.

The DRS zones aren't long enough in this track to really see the effect but, China should give a good indication whether something drastically needs to be changed (like changing the activation from 1 second to 2 seconds, for example). May be these cars generate comparatively less drag with the rear wing that the DRS isn't really having a significant effect. Incidentally, I checked the GPS data on the F1 app with Alonso-Ocon. In clear air Alonso was hitting 285-290 km/h on the straight, and about ~294 km/h with a tow. Ocon was hitting around 302 km/h in clear air. When he got within 1 second of Alonso, his speeds weren't consistently 27 km/h faster than Alonso on the straight. With DRS open, his speeds varied anywhere from 307-314 km/h...could be engine modes. He only hit his fastest top speed a couple of times in the entire race. Force India played a great strategy to get Ocon into the points, as the Renault in the hands of Hulk was a much quicker car than FI or McLaren. And Perez, man, that was a gimme. Toro Rosso got mugged with that one!

carinaman said:

Thanks for the analysis Dr Z.

Pleasure.

Edited by Dr Z on Friday 31st March 13:37

[London424]

Good analysis that...I think that Merc will learn from this though.

I believe they only pitted a lap earlier than the pre-race target (it might have been Lewis saying this in an interview)...they just assumed everyone else would be having to do similar.

I also think that Lewis, as good as he is, still worries a bit when the grip starts to go. If he'd just ridden out the storm for a few extra laps then I think he would have won. I don't think the Ferrari was coming past on the track. (all guesswork on my part).

After the stops Merc turned down his engine pretty early on too, which is why Bottas closed up as they knew they wouldn't be able to win from there.

[Z3MCJez]

Dr Z said:

This is from JA's analysis:

This graph is fantastic analysis. I've never seen the race portrayed like this before. It kinda reminds me of Martin Brundle's first ever grid walk. The F1 world will never be the same again. I'd like to see this produced in real time during a race. It would be an amazing way of staying on top of what is going on ...

Thank you to JA for producing, and to Dr Z for linking it here.

Jez

[LaurasOtherHalf]

London424 said:

Good analysis that...I think that Merc will learn from this though...

I also think that Lewis, as good as he is, still worries a bit when the grip starts to go. If he'd just ridden out the storm for a few extra laps then I think he would have won. I don't think the Ferrari was coming past on the track. (all guesswork on my part).

I sometimes struggle to understand LH's thought process when the car gets like this. He's spent all pre season telling us the cars will struggle to overtake, he said the same thing during practice at the Australian GP.

He then finds grip starting to struggle during a track where it's notoriously difficult to overtake and he panics.