The Official 2016 Russian Grand Prix Thread **Spoilers**

[Dr Z]

Date(s): Friday 29 April - Sunday 01 May 2016

UK Broadcast Timings (and local time)

All sessions are live on Sky F1, with a highlights show of Qualifying and Race broadcast on Channel 4.

Session	Day	Sky F1	Channel 4	Session Start	Local Time
Practice 1	Fri	0745	-	0800	1000
Practice 2	Fri	1145	-	1200	1400
Practice 3	Sat	0945	-	1000	1200
Qualifying	Sat	1200	1730	1300	1500
Race	Sun	1030	1800	1300	1500

Sochi Autodrom

Number of laps	53
Length of a lap	5.848 km
Race distance	309.745 km
Race lap record	1:40.071 (L51; S. Vettel, 2015; Avg speed: 210.379 km/h)

2015 Grand Prix Results

P1	L. Hamilton	Mercedes	1:37:11.024
P2	S. Vettel	Ferrari	+5.953
P3	S. Perez	Force India-Mercedes	+28.918
P4	F. Massa	Williams-Mercedes	+38.831
P5	D. Kvyat	Red Bull Racing-Renault	+47.566
P6	F. Nasr	Sauber-Ferrari	+56.508
P7	P. Maldonado	Lotus-Mercedes	+61.088
P8	K. Räikkönen	Ferrari	+72.358
P9	J. Button	McLaren-Honda	+79.467
P10	M. Verstappen	Torro Rosso-Renault	+88.424

Pole time: 1:37.113 (N. Rosberg, Mercedes; Avg Speed: 216.787 km/h)

Fastest Race Lap: 1:40.071 (L51; S. Vettel, Ferrari; Avg Speed: 210.379 km/h)

Live timing for all sessions available here:

http://www.formula1.com/content/fom-website/en/f1-...

Weather forecast:


http://www.accuweather.com/en/ru/sochi/293687/dail...

Day	Comment	High/Low
Fri	Rather cloudy, a little rain	16/12
Sat	Clouds and sunshine	16/12
Sun	Clouds giving way to some sun	17/13

The tyre choices requested by the teams:

---

On to the next one, for a street feeling track. Looking at the tyre choices, the medium is a bit of a waste, or atleast that's what the teams are all thinking. Would have been better for the Ultra Softs to be introduced here, but obviously the venue of Monaco trumps this one. Even with the Soft/Super Soft combination, last year almost all cars did a 1-stop race; and adding to the processional feel was the less overtaking opportunities presented in this circuit. Lots of low speed 90-degree corners, so good traction is key. Should be a (traditional) Williams forte then.

It will be interesting to see how the competitive order pans out, as even Button managed to grab a few points last year in the terminally slow MP4-30. I expect the field to be bunched up even more, if it's possible! Due to the low degradation of the tyres, some flat out stints should be possible too. Last year's race was memorable for Räikkönen's uncharacteristic do-or-die move on his compatriot, leading to Perez snatching back the P3 for Force India after another one of his marathon 41 laps on a set of Softs. Actually, more insane was Alonso doing 40 laps on a set of Super Softs with little or no drop off on lap times.

Hopefully due to the midfield being so close, will give us some good racing and not a procession. Watch out for a new lap record too.

[Dr Z]

Rugbyman said:

NM62 said:

Vaud said:

Dr_Z.. Hats off, you have this opening post for GPs nailed!

+1 Please keep it up Dr_Z.

Can we keep him as the 'Official next GP OP' ........ ?

Thank you.

---

Interesting the point about Red Bull being so biased towards the Super Soft. They were doing quite well during last year's race on them, so I suspect their struggles on the Super Soft at China were circuit specific. With no worries with tyre degradation, what you get is what you've got in terms of race pace.

Full throttle is only at 57% of a lap but due to lots of acceleration from low speed, fuel consumption tends towards the higher end (~1.9kg/lap).

[Dr Z]

I went back to the race pace data from last year. Mercedes won their WCC at this race, and Hamilton's first stint on the super soft was on average ~1s per lap quicker than Vettel, who in turn was another second a lap quicker than Kvyat. The race was pretty much won from there.

[Dr Z]

Adam Ansel said:

This is 4/21.
If Lewis does not outscore Rosberg here surely he will begin to think that it is not to be?

Whilst a racer never truly gives up this early, the next few races are all happy hunting grounds for Rosberg. He's very strong in Barcelona and won very convincingly last year. The race after that is Monaco, which he was gifted last year but he's a 3-time winner now. At the Sochi race last year, he comfortably out-qualified Hamilton and was leading the race when his throttle pedal got stuck and retired after the safety car. He's coming in on a high this year. I think it will take a pretty special performance from Hamilton to turn it around. If Rosberg can win this one and the next two, then he'll put himself in a very strong position.

All depends on how much of a challenge Ferrari are in these races. Ferrari are talking about bringing forward a PU upgrade for this race, as they'd really like to get their championship challenge off the ground. It will be an interesting one this race.

[Dr Z]

FourWheelDrift said:

Red Bull are going to run their aero-screen canopy protection in FP1 - http://www.crash.net/f1/news/229830/1/red-bull-to-...

Looking forward to seeing how it looks on track.

ETA: Pic

Edited by Dr Z on Thursday 28th April 16:29

[Dr Z]

London424 said:

Pretty cool vid of the testing of it

https://twitter.com/redbullracing/status/725950735...

I also like this one, where they fired a wheel at it:

https://twitter.com/redbullracing/status/725944717...

I'm wondering if they've varied the angle at which they fire the wheel at the screen.


When fired straight at it, it coped very well.

[Dr Z]

Having a cursory look at the long run data, I'm liking what I saw of McLaren. Button's run on the Soft was matching well with Ricciardo's run. Red Bull were quicker than McLaren in the Super Softs, who still can't get a handle on working the Super Softs. Mind you, Red Bull too are having some difficulty with it but are able to extract more pace out of it. Torro Rosso also were looking quick, if not quicker.

Not sure if the final stint Raikkonen put in was on Super Softs? If so, I'd say Hamilton's stint was about half a second quicker per lap. I hope Ferrari are sand bagging. However, Bottas' run on the Super Softs was comparable to Hamilton, maybe a bit quicker. Qualifying should give us some more answers. It's shaping up nicely.

[Dr Z]

Lap time is already in the low 37s...anyone want to guess what the pole time will be? Low 36s?

Now Vettel is doing some long runs, his lap times are looking good in comparison to Hamilton's simulation yesterday. But I realised Bottas did a quicker stint on the Softs than Hamilton in the super softs. Presumably it's a final stint simulation... Otherwise Bottas is winning the race!

ETA: These are the fastest laps ever at this circuit now. My initial impression of Vettel's super soft stint was a bit closer to Hamilton's stint yesterday, but having looked at the data, I'd have to say Mercedes have the quicker car here. Hamilton was staying in the 41s for most of the stint whereas Vettel was doing low 42s and drifting to high 42/low 43s. Ferrari are having difficulty switching on the super soft, but Mercedes/Williams are doing OK on that front.

Edited by Dr Z on Saturday 30th April 12:17

[Dr Z]

God, a 35.3. How much faster can they go?! It's not even Q3 yet!

[Dr Z]

ClockworkCupcake said:

Love that slo-mo of Rosbergs's car and the vortices coming off the rear wing.

Yeah that was good.

Rosberg will be on pole. Tough luck for Hamilton. It will be a tough drive tomorrow.

[Dr Z]

Jasandjules said:

I doubt Nico will be in the lead by turn 3.....

This is what I'm hoping for tomorrow. I'm going for Bottas leading the race by turn 3. It's the best chance of an interesting race I think, as his race sims have been the closest to Mercedes in the practice sessions.

[Dr Z]

deadslow said:

VolvoT5 said:

The Ferrari engine upgrade hasn't done much good has it? Still a long way behind Merc.

I get the feeling the Mercs haven't yet really run flat out, so are able to be turned up to cope with others' improvements.

Don't forget that Merc spent two tokens bringing a performance upgrade for this race that didn't need them to bring another PU into rotation. Their customers also enjoyed this 'bolt on' at this race.

Clearly, Merc felt the need to respond to Ferrari's developments. If the FP runs are to go by, Ferrari have closed the gap by about half a second per lap on race pace from last year. The thing is, they were only the 3rd best car at this race last year. Williams were the 2nd best car in race trim.

I think at most Merc could have done a 35 dead today, and we know that Merc have a potent quali mode, so all is not lost tomorrow. Bottas just needs to get his Bahrain start. Maybe Paddy/Toto can allow Williams to use their quali mode to help the bad luck they've brought up on Hamilton.

[Dr Z]

If we're entertaining a conspiracy, I'd say some of Rosberg's problems last season were a lot more 'obvious' in that regard. Contamination of the steering column fluid? Throttle pedal sticking at the decisive must-win GP? Silly stuff like that is more suspicious.

I don't have any reason to believe that or indeed Hamilton's problems this time are a result of favoritism by Mercedes. I just don't see why Paddy/Toto come out bending over backwards to apologise publicly for Hamilton's problems. They've given him two Championships for crying out loud. It is him who needs to support the team and keep the mood up at this time. Are Ferrari apologising to Vettel? If anything I get the feeling that Merc really do go beyond the call of duty to keep Hamilton happy.

I wonder how the likes of Jim Clark got on when his car was breaking down if he's not winning!

[Dr Z]

Vaud said:

RichB said:

Not likely at all given that they ran 4 or 5 laps under the safety car so he would have had enough fuel to run the remainder of the race at full chat.

How do you know that? Do you work for Merc?

I think it was mentioned somewhere during the race or was it in Ted's notebook that Merc were the only cars to not have to do any fuel saving this race.

[Dr Z]

Otispunkmeyer said:

glazbagun said:

love that gif, proper WTF moment.

Mesmerising.

---

I thought it was an excellent race, given the nature of the circuit. I plotted a few driver’s lap times of interest, and here are some thoughts.



Bloody Kvyat! He really did torpedo a few people's races today, including his team mate's this time. Is he channeling the '12 Grosjean?! Both the Red Bull's races were compounded by the strategy error by the team to put them on Mediums. What on earth were they thinking, they had shown strong pace on the Softs during friday practice. These first lap crashes are making all these races very entertaining.

At the front, while Hamilton was catching Rosberg and may have put him under pressure, I really don’t think he had the pace to win as he likes to point out. Rosberg was tracking Hamilton in the first part of the final stint. You can see Rosberg having some difficulty clearing traffic from lap 30-36 perhaps managing the PU problem that Toto mentioned when Hamilton cuts the gap considerably. However, when Rosberg does pick up the pace in lap 37 he’s ~0.6s faster than Hamilton from the previous lap. He then backs off after having been told of Hamilton’s problems.

After the effort Hamilton’s mechanics put in to give him the chance of a podium, he really could have been a bit more cheery at the podium. I wonder if the water pressure message was to call off the battle, with Mercedes choosing to bring both cars home. This situation illustrates why I don’t believe Mercedes’ proclamations about how they let their drivers race. I’m sorry, if another team had a sniff there, that’s exactly when they’ll be piling on the pressure, as evidenced by Raikkonen picking up the pace suddenly after lap 38--the gap was too big between him and Hamilton to put the Mercedes 1-2 in danger. I have seen Mercedes shut down the race all too often when they see things even slightly escalating to believe that they truly let their drivers race in the proper meaning of the term, post-Spa ‘14.

Bottas’ pace was interesting in that I think the Williams car was the only one actually have tyre degradation problems in a circuit not known for that. It’s not just the Super Softs, Bottas is having degradation on the Softs too. So strange. Most other drivers’ stints look like from the Bridgestone days. But, good to see the team having some fun with putting Massa on the Super Softs towards the end.

Raikkonen had an OK race, given the Ferrari struggling to bring the Super Softs up to temperature in the first lap after the restart. Watching people like him or Button can be very frustrating as you just feel like they’re just sitting there waiting for things to happen. You do begin to wonder if Vettel was in that position, would he have put the Mercs under more pressure? He certainly was showing better pace than Raikkonen in the long runs during practice. But it is nice to see Ferrari pushing Mercedes to explore the limits of their PU, manifesting in problems during the race, when just looking at the pre-season testing you’d have predicted a bullet proof Mercedes PU that is going to sweep everything.

KMag had a good race, didn’t he? Helped by some good fortune in the first lap no doubt, but he had pace to hold off better cars, so good on him. First points for the Renault team will give them a much needed morale boost.

Coming to McLaren, I loved what Alonso did at the end there. Such a clear demonstration of the latent pace in the McLaren yet. If you extrapolate from those three fast laps, you could say an uncorked MP4-31 could be at Ferrari pace. Definitely put a smile on my face. After being out qualified by Button, I wondered if the mojo has left him especially as it appeared JB was doing all the homework during the practice sessions. But he did well in the race and had some fun too. I bet he did those laps to motivate himself. It was frustrating to watch Button follow Sainz around for 20-odd laps. I think he could have joined the Perez/Grosjean fight and made something happen there.

4/4 for Rosberg. Barcelona is a Rosberg track. He’ll be tough to beat there.

[Dr Z]

Mr_Thyroid said:

Dr Z said:

I really don’t think he had the pace to win as he likes to point out.

Surely this is meaningless in the context of yesterday's race. We've seen time and again that the Mercedes who leads the first lap is the Mercedes that wins. Yesterday, despite doing a good first lap, Hamilton got another shabby start. So the relevant question to me is less to do with overall pace but does Hamilton have the ability to pull away well enough to win?

Post Spa 2014, I think Mercedes laid down strict rules of engagement designed to minimise on track tussles, especially at the later stages of a race when often the only real competition for race wins have been between the Mercedes cars. Whilst this nets the team a good number of points, it prevents a fight back from the driver who've been put on the back foot at the start. There have been a few exceptions to this, but I don't remember Rosberg ever forcing a mistake from Hamilton by pressuring him in the later stage of the race?

I think Hamilton's start this race wasn't too bad, and he gained 5 places by the end of the first lap and having an undamaged car, mostly by taking the escape route at Turn 3. Him coming out at the end and saying he had the pace to win is not substantiated by the data. We know that he was pushing hard to catch Rosberg, as he was released in clear air from lap 19 on, but his pace wasn't ballistic.

In fact, Rosberg was setting a conservative pace at the front, lap 37 and the lap record set at lap 52 are really good markers of the pace Rosberg had in hand to respond to a potential challenge, I think. Even assuming Rosberg was only capable of doing around 1m41s from lap 35 to the end, it would have taken another 10-12 laps for Hamilton to come on to the back of Rosberg with the pace he was setting. It would have been thrilling but by then I doubt he'd have the tyres to actually challenge for the lead.

I don't have a reason to believe that Hamilton's water pressure issue was a code to hold station, but I also think that because Rosberg was possibly managing an issue during lap 30-36 Mercedes took the safe option here.

Edited by Dr Z on Monday 2nd May 17:48

[Dr Z]

hairyben said:

To be fair Hamilton had halved the gap to 7 secs at a rate that would have seen him right up rosbergs gearbox with 20 laps still to go; Rosberg *might* have resisted the challenge, he *might* have upped his pace and maintained the gap or he *might* have succumbed, or a whole load of other *mights*. A number of people seem to be declaring it as proven fact that he had the pace and hamilton couldn't have won but we'll never know. It's as flawed as me stating it as a fact that as hamilton appeared to have time and speed to catch rosberg he'd have definitely won.

It's fun to speculate, so let's take the best laps by Hamilton as a reference point in the early part of the stint when he had fresher tyres. For Rosberg, let's take the fast laps he put in after he cleared the traffic, not forgetting that he had 4 lap fresher tyres than Hamilton for the final stint. This is what we get:




Not a chance. All Rosberg needed to do is match Hamilton in the early part of the stint to not give him a sniff and this is exactly what he was doing until he hit trouble. Even so, he recovered and started pushing. The gradient of Hamilton's final stint was not enough to realistically challenge Rosberg. IMO.

[Dr Z]

Clevers said:

Really like your analysis and use of data here.

What we now know from Mercedes open letter to fans is that both cars had problems during the race that influenced the way both drivers handled the last third of the race.

Apparently, Nico had a really bad problem with his MGU-H unit after his pit stop. It was so bad, that he went onto break the lap record on the penultimate lap of the race in the engine's safety setting. Meanwhile, Lewis's kettle limped home with fk all water pressure - zero.

We need to see these same graphs produced again when Lewis gets equal equipment to Rosberg.

Based on what we have seen, who could say with any confidence that Lewis's car isn't down on power throughout the races if it isn't harvesting energy correctly.

To be clear, i am not saying that Mercedes are favouring Rosberg with better equipment, merely that his is working at the moment and Hamilton's has gremlins.

Whichever way you play it, Hamilton's problem manifested later in the 2nd stint than Rosberg. I take the fact that Rosberg went on to break the lap record as more of a testament to the kind of pace he had, given that there is no reason Mercedes are favouring Rosberg. I wouldn't take the fact that Rosberg was only able to match Hamilton in the early part of the 2nd stint as an indication of him not having the pace--he didn't need to go faster.

I will post some stuff up in the Spanish GP thread relating to this in the weekend--you might find it of interest.

I find it curious that no alarms were reported from both Hamilton and Rosberg's cars. With this whole regulations about driver autonomy, if something is that critical, the driver is immediately made aware of it by a cockpit alarm. So how come neither Hamilton or Rosberg didn't seem aware of their problems?