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

[Dr Z]

Date(s): Friday 29 July - Sunday 31 July 2016

UK Broadcast Timings (and local time)

All sessions are live on Sky F1, with highlights of qualifying and race shown at Channel 4.

Session	Day	Sky F1	Channel 4	Session Start	Local Time
Practice 1	Fri	0845	-	0900	1000
Practice 2	Fri	1245	-	1300	1400
Practice 3	Sat	0945	-	1000	1100
Qualifying	Sat	1200	1730	1300	1400
Race	Sun	1130	1800	1300	1400

Hockenheimring, Baden-Württemberg



Live timing for all sessions available here:

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

Info such as lap times, PU use, technical reports, stewards decisions etc for the weekend will appear here:

http://www.fia.com/events/fia-formula-one-world-ch...

Weather forecast:

http://www.myweather2.com/Motor-Racing/Germany/Hoc...

Session	Comment	Air Temp (°C)	Cloud Cover	Rainfall (mm)
Practice 1	Partly Cloudy	23-25	56%	0.0
Practice 2	Partly Cloudy	26-27	53%	0.1
Practice 3	Cloudy	24-25	74%	0.0
Qualifying	Light Rain Shower	25-26	88%	0.2
Race	Thundery shower possible	25-27	83%	0.1

The tyre choices requested by the teams:



Pirelli nominated tyres are Medium and Soft for the race.

Some extra info from Pirelli:



2014 Qualifying

Pos.	Driver	Constructor	Q1	Q2	Q3
1	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:17.631	1:17.109	1:16.540
2	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Mercedes	1:18.215	1:17.353	1:16.759
3	Felipe Massa	Williams-Mercedes	1:18.381	1:17.370	1:17.078
4	Kevin Magnussen	McLaren-Mercedes	1:18.260	1:17.788	1:17.214
5	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull Racing-Renault	1:18.117	1:17.855	1:17.273
6	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull Racing-Renault	1:18.194	1:17.646	1:17.577
7	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1:18.389	1:17.866	1:17.649
8	Daniil Kvyat	Toro Rosso-Renault	1:18.530	1:18.103	1:17.965
9	Nico Hülkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	1:18.927	1:18.017	1:18.014
10	Sergio Pérez	Force India-Mercedes	1:18.916	1:18.161	1:18.035
11	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1:18.425	1:18.193	-
12	Kimi Räikkönen	Ferrari	1:18.534	1:18.273	-
13	Jean-Éric Vergne	Toro Rosso-Renault	1:18.496	1:18.285	-
14	Esteban Gutiérrez	Sauber-Ferrari	1:18.739	1:18.787	-
15	Romain Grosjean	Lotus-Renault	1:18.894	1:18.983	-
16	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:18.683	no time	-
17	Adrian Sutil	Sauber-Ferrari	1:19.142	-	-
18	Jules Bianchi	Marussia-Ferrari	1:19.676	-	-
19	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus-Renault	1:20.195	-	-
20	Kamui Kobayashi	Caterham-Renault	1:20.408	-	-
21	Max Chilton	Marussia-Ferrari	1:20.489	-	-
NC	Marcus Ericsson	Caterham-Renault	no time	-	-

2014 Race

Pos.	Driver	Constructor	Laps	Time/Retired	Grid
1	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	67	1:33:42.914	1
2	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Mercedes	67	+20.789	2
3	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	67	+22.530	20
4	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull Racing-Renault	67	+44.014	6
5	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	67	+52.467	7
6	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull Racing-Renault	67	+52.549	5
7	Nico Hülkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	67	+1:04.178	9
8	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	67	+1:24.711	11
9	Kevin Magnussen	McLaren-Mercedes	66	+1 Lap	4
10	Sergio Pérez	Force India-Mercedes	66	+1 Lap	10
11	Kimi Räikkönen	Ferrari	66	+1 Lap	12
12	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus-Renault	66	+1 Lap	18
13	Jean-Éric Vergne	Toro Rosso-Renault	66	+1 Lap	13
14	Esteban Gutiérrez	Sauber-Ferrari	66	+1 Lap	16
15	Jules Bianchi	Marussia-Ferrari	66	+1 Lap	17
16	Kamui Kobayashi	Caterham-Renault	65	+2 Laps	19
17	Max Chilton	Marussia-Ferrari	65	+2 Laps	21
18	Marcus Ericsson	Caterham-Renault	65	+2 Laps	PL
Ret	Adrian Sutil	Sauber-Ferrari	47	Spun off	15
Ret	Daniil Kvyat	Toro Rosso-Renault	44	Oil leak	8
Ret	Romain Grosjean	Lotus-Renault	26	Water leak	14
Ret	Felipe Massa	Williams-Mercedes	0	Collision	3

Fastest Race Lap: 1:19.908 (L53, L. Hamilton; Mercedes)

---

The German Grand Prix returns after a gap year. What can we expect? More of Hungary, except a more competitive Williams, perhaps?

Pirelli have gone conservative at this race compared to other races this year where they brought a softer compound to previous years--they brought the Soft and Super Soft for the 2014 race. So, the pace improvements seen this weekend will be mostly due to car developments. I’m predicting pole in the low 1:14s. Tyres wise, only Force India have ordered extra mediums to run in the practice session. Will be interesting to see if they can work that tyre into their strategy plans.

A good all rounder is necessary to go fast at this track, i.e. you need a Mercedes. The track rewards good stability under braking, with some fairly heavy braking events through the lap and the one big braking zone into T6. The Verstappens of the world rejoice! More time to defend vigorously.

The track also has good power sensitivity due to the amount of acceleration from low speed, with good traction and low-medium speed cornering performance also helping a great deal. The downforce requirements is said to be at the medium level for this track. I’m waiting to see the size of the barn door Red Bull will run regardless. Joking aside, there’s a lot of time to be gained in S1 and S3, so probably a good compromise is necessary.

Looking at the sector times from 2014, Williams had the quickest car in S2 whilst Red Bull had the second best car in both S1 and S3, and not far off the Mercedes. I’m hoping that Red Bull can take the fight to Mercedes this weekend. I suspect this year’s race will reveal how far Williams have fallen since the heady heights of 2014. Back then, McLaren also had a decent car in Sector 3; it will be interesting to see how far they have improved or regressed, with Sector 2 also being a good indicator of aero efficiency/low speed grip/traction.

Cool conditions are expected, with some rain around in Friday and Saturday.

Edited by Dr Z on Wednesday 27th July 12:36

[Dr Z]

FurballS2000 said:

Fantastic thread opener as always :P

Looking forward to this one, going over to Germany to see it!

First Grand Prix

Thanks, hope you have a good one, but I'm not too optimistic for the race!

tertius said:

I'm sure this is obvious, but what is the point of nominating a single set of the Medium tyre? I don't see what you could possibly do with a single set.

Is it simply that they have to nominate three different tyres, and they actually don't expect to ever use the Medium, so bring 1 set and "lose" the minimum number of sets on that nomination?

You got it. Plus, it's a back up in case something goes very wrong during the race due to unforeseen tyre degradation etc. However, there is one thing not clear from the info out there:

EnglishTony said:

I read it that they have to use 1 set of medium fir the race in addition to a set of soft.

Why you'd only want one set of the medium and thus not have a set for for testing long runs with I don't know.

Perhaps they feel that they have enough data on the mediums

The link below seems to suggest that teams will have to use one set of Medium and Soft in the race, but I have never seen this info repeated anywhere else. Pirelli have never nominated two compounds to be run in the race like this during this year, so I'm confused. Even though the Super Soft and Medium are low working range tyres, it is very strange for 10 out of 11 teams to be so confident of racing the Medium tyre without even having a look in the practice sessions. Something doesn't quite add up.

http://www.pirelli.com/corporate/en/press/2016/05/...

[Dr Z]

slipstream 1985 said:

Force india cleary thinking on a 1 stopper.

Did a quick analysis of the tyre strategies employed in the 2014 race:

Super Soft	1st	2nd	3rd	4th
No. of drivers	18	4	5	9
Minimum laps	1	2	8	6
25th Percentile	12.75	5	9.5	12.5
Median	14	15.5	11	14
75th Percentile	15.25	19.25	16.5	17.5
Maximum laps	20	20	21	24
Soft	1st	2nd	3rd	4th
No. of drivers	3	17	15	4
Minimum laps	20	15	12	16
25th Percentile	20	16.5	16	16.25
Median	24	21	22	19
75th Percentile	26	25	27	21.75
Maximum laps	26	28	30	22

From this data, the quickest for a top 10 car looks to me, a 2-stopper: 15 laps on the Super Soft followed by two stints on the Soft tyre 24 and 28 laps long. To do a viable 1-stopper, you are asking more than 40 laps on the mediums and that's assuming you're starting on the Softs to do a reasonably aggressive 1st stint. The strategy is worthless if you start on the Super Soft, having to baby them for 25-odd laps to make the 1-stopper work, IMO.

Looking at the tyre life teams got out of the Softs at the 2014 race, I'd say 20% more race distance out of them in the 3rd stint compared to the 2nd stint. So, a 1-stopper on the Medium tyres is essentially asking 1.5 times the race distance of the Soft in the 3rd stint. It's should be do-able dependent on the pace advantage of the Soft vs Medium at this track, can be anywhere from 0.5-0.8s/lap. Pit stop time is around 18 seconds here, a bit touch and go-I feel between a 1-stopper vs 2-stopper. Depends how long the 2-stopper can lean on the Soft tyres to make up that time lost in the pits, especially this being a rear-limited circuit due to the traction demands.

[Dr Z]

Z3MCJez said:

Maybe they updated the link, but it now says:

These are the tyres that Pirelli has said must be used at some point in the race:
One set of P Zero White medium
One set of P Zero Yellow soft.
Each driver must have both these sets available for the race, and must use at least one of them.

So everyone is going to ignore the mediums, apart from, maybe, FI.

It's not very well worded, but then Pirelli mandated the use of only one compound (the hardest of the three) at one race. Only once, so far.

Jen

May be they changed it, may be I didn't pay attention to the 'must use at least one of them' part.

In this case, the race strategy will be favouring a 2-stopper like this: SS/S/S. But I would think if the delta between the Soft and Medium is not too big for the 2nd race stint, a 2-stopper with SS/M/SS may work well too. In the 2014 race, the Red Bulls did a 3-stopper going with SS/S/SS/S. Some interesting variations. The practice sessions should give us some answers.

[Dr Z]

cheddar said:

Dr Z said:

Thanks, hope you have a good one, but I'm not too optimistic for the race!

Why not?

And thanks for another quality thread opener

I was coming from the angle that unless you're a Mercedes fan you're unlikely to see another team battling for the win this race. When Mercedes have the rest of the field under control they put on a well managed show..not what a neutral like me would like to see.

Early days but, Mercedes look mighty in S2 and S3 so far. However if we have a rainy qualifying as there's some weather around tomorrow we might have more potential for an interesting race if the grid is more mixed up as a result.

Interestingly McLaren looking good in S2 and not so good in S3. It will be good to see the long runs.

[Dr Z]

Before the start of FP2, thought I'll post up the best sector times (in seconds) from FP1

Car	Tyre	S1	S2	S3
Mercedes	Super Soft	16.5	35.4	23.6
Ferrari	Super Soft	16.8	35.8	24
Red Bull	Super Soft	16.8	36	24
McLaren	Super Soft	16.8	35.9	24.4
Torro Rosso	Super Soft	17	36.4	24.3
Sauber	Super Soft	17.3	36.2	24.7
Manor	Super Soft	17.7	36.5	24.9
Williams	Soft	17.2	36.1	24.7
Haas	Soft	17.2	36.5	24.8
Renault	Soft	17.4	36.7	24.7
Force India	Medium	17.7	36.5	24.9

Ferrari are showing well, roughly in the ball park...normally a bit more scratching heads on a Friday. Interesting to see where the delta between the different tyres is, in ultimate performance. Williams should be in the RB/McLaren times...good performance in S2 again. Good stuff. Looking forward to the long runs.

Funny that McLaren seem to lose a lot of time in S3 compared to the Top 3 cars. Complete opposite of the MP4/29.

[Dr Z]

I just looked at the long runs, and Rosberg's were actually quicker than Hamilton averaging about the same as the gap between them on a single lap as in the FP2 time sheet on both the Soft and Super Soft. Following the sector times Rosberg seemed to be quicker in S1 compared to his team mate. An interesting race brewing at the front? Depends if everything gets sorted out by tomorrow. Also it's possible that Hamilton was in a lower performing mode in his PU for these runs. If Rosberg gets pole tomorrow, it will be game on.

Red Bull look to be a match for the Mercedes on the Soft tyre. However, the Mercedes seems to be able to look after the Super Softs better and be quite a bit quicker than both the Ferrari and the Red Bull. I'd still say it's Mercedes' race to lose. Ferrari look OK on the Super Softs but look slower than Red Bull on the Softs. More head scratching before qualifying.

[Dr Z]

Derek Smith said:

Dr Z said:

If Rosberg gets pole tomorrow, it will be game on.

That's what I thought last week.

Well, I don't remember Rosberg having better race pace in the long runs last week. And it was circumstance more than sheer pace that he got pole too. In a straight fight, if Rosberg manages to get pole tomorrow, it would confirm his better long run pace compared to Hamilton today. And it means we could get a proper fight through the race, rather than a meek surrender after the 1st corner. I'm assuming Mercedes don't interfere and manage a boring 1-2.

[Dr Z]

Jasandjules said:

Dr Z said:

I'm assuming Mercedes don't interfere and manage a boring 1-2.

Do you honestly think Lewis will sit behind meekly if ordered to hold station?......

Well, we know LH doesn't do that sort of stuff so it will be a good challenge if NR gets ahead. I would like to see how the Merc pitwall manage that. I'm clutching at straws here, trying to see if we could have an interesting race at the front. Qualifying should give some answers.

[Dr Z]

Flooble said:

I'm confused, if Rosberg has better race pace and gets pole, what can Hamilton do?

Hamilton gets pole and has better race pace...he controls it at the front. Rosberg gets pole and has better race pace...there's a chance that the Merc drivers will be able to fight properly.

The race pace difference I saw with Rosberg yesterday was a similar margin Hamilton was showing in Silverstone to team mate. This Championship needs a strong Rosberg to make it interesting.

[Dr Z]

Just saw the C4 highlights of qualifying, it was a good lap to get pole. Well deserved. Sets up a good race for tomorrow. Really good laps from both the Red Bull drivers, hope they can jump the Mercs at the start for an even better race!

[Dr Z]

Available tyres for the race. Ferrari don't have any brand new super softs, and RB only have one set of Softs for tomorrow. Looks like the strategy options are a bit restricted for some of these teams.

[Dr Z]

So...poor start and stop watch failure.

Mercedes definitely didn't want a German driver to win at the German GP then.

[Dr Z]

Superbad said:

Dr Z said:

So...poor start and stop watch failure.

Mercedes definitely didn't want a German driver to win at the German GP then.

The funny thing is that a lot of people on here believed they did, all because Lewis was upset at not getting pole so decided to chat s***, which is not uncommon for him when things don't go his way.

Some of the tin foil hatters in here really do crack me up. Imagine if it had happened to Lewis and Nico had won today. This place would have exploded with rage.

[Dr Z]

It was a decent race, better than I expected as the Red Bulls were creating a lot of the interest for me. It would have been a very boring one if the Mercs were leading 1-2 at the start.

At least Ricciardo was pushing Hamilton a bit at the end. Great pass by Verstappen of his team mate at the start, albeit he went off track to pass, so a bit on the fence on that. I never believed Ricciardo would have the tyres to close down the gap to Hamilton at the end and pass for the lead, but it certainly made the race more interesting towards the end. Is it me or young Max had the loudest cheer of the lot on the podium?

As for Rosberg, I'd have to say he did exactly the same thing he did to Hamilton in Austria. He ought to learn the art of running a car off track. The worser thing for me was, Rosberg was looking very feisty in the 1st stint and Mercedes pit wall calmed him down and told him to not fight too hard, lest his tyre strategy doesn't work. I'm afraid with that instruction, Hamilton essentially had the race won.

Good work by McLaren, gained a few points to Torro Rosso. A bad result for Williams and FI have closed down more.

It's looking more and more like Hamilton's year, again.

[Dr Z]

Hungrymc said:

Certainly interesting to see the RedBulls in the mix. Amazed that Nico didn't get closer in the final laps (did he have an issue?)

<snip>

Now, what was the benefit of calming him down in the first stint? If they were going to pull him in to look for an undercut anyway, they may as well have let him press the RedBulls, I assumed they were going to preserve tyres and do something clever by stretching the stint.

The strategy calls were, shall we say 'interesting'. I'll have to look at the lap time data later on, it's worth analysing what was going on with the strategy from Red Bull and Merc.

[Dr Z]

Having looked at the lap times, I think the race strategy at the front was constrained by the number of tyres the teams had left for the race from their allocation:



Tyre strategy:

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2016/07/31/2016-german-...

Gap chart:

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2016/07/31/2016-german-...


As they were lining up on the grid, I noticed Ricciardo was starting on 8 lap old Super Softs. I fully expected him to go backwards quickly in the 1st stint, but to his credit he was able to keep pace well with the other front runners, who all started with 3 lap old Super Softs. It was just as well Verstappen got by him on the first lap, as otherwise he could have got stuck behind Ricciardo on the older tyres and the team wouldn't have been able to request to change positions so early on in the race.

Both Ricciardo and Verstappen had 1 set of new Softs, 1 set of new Super Softs left and some used Super Softs also. The strategy options available to Red Bull must have been pretty clear to Merc/Ferrari. Unlike Merc and Ferrari who all had 2 sets of Softs, a safe 2-stopper with SS/S/S or even a safe 3-stopper like Red Bull did in 2014 (SS/S/SS/S) was not possible.

Red Bull had to use the Super Softs because of the lack of Softs, and it's always going to be a sub optimal strategy. Of the two possibilities, the one that made the most sense is SS/S/SS/SS. What I find really interesting is that Red Bull decide to sacrifice Verstappen's race to cover off Rosberg and give Ricciardo the job of chasing down Hamilton for the race win. Following in real time and even now, I cannot understand why this decision was made. If anything, I would have thought Verstappen had the better chance of chasing down Hamilton, as he had the fresher tyres for the 1st stint, so could copy the stint length of the leading Merc during the 1st stint and unleash the pace with the double Super Soft stint like Ricciardo at the end.

The Super Softs were not a good race tyre for the heavy fuel loads in the first half of the race, and may be they relied on Verstappen's abilty with the tyres to make that stint work, giving him the only set of new Super Softs he had. But he can't work miracles, barely matching the pace of Hamilton on new Softs. Perhaps, there was a fear in the RB pit wall that Rosberg would have easily undercut past Ricciardo and caught Verstappen with the Super Softs...sometimes teams go against instincts and in this case, what they know.

Dare I say, it looked like RB were protecting Ricciardo with their decision making for the 2nd stint. In doing this, IMO they let the possibility of taking the fight to the leading Mercedes for the win, slip away. In taking one for the team, I was fully expecting Verstappen to throw a fit, as he often did at Torro Rosso. The boy has matured, but I'm waiting till he's fighting for the WDC against his team mate for the full disclosure. It could be as early as next year, but I digress...

It is hard to gauge how vulnerable Ricciardo was to an attack from Rosberg in the 1st stint. I think Mercedes missed a trick in not allowing Rosberg to pass on track. Surely, if I as a fan knew Ricciardo was on significantly older Super Softs, why did Merc instruct him to take it easy? I certainly think a pass was on. I also believe he was held up so much behind Ricciardo that, he couldn't bring himself into contention later on in the race to harass Hamilton. Both Hamilton and Rosberg ran their final stints on used Softs.

All of this put together, made Hamilton's job much easier as he always had a comfortable buffer. At the end when the fuel loads were lighter, whilst the delta between Soft and Super Soft was bigger, Hamilton could lean on his Softs a lot harder because he had a relatively short stint to do on them. Whereas, Ricciardo could attack and expect the Super Softs to last for the 20 lap 4th stint, he surely couldn't maintain a big enough delta for the full duration of the stint, which is what you would need in order to chase down and overtake.

Lap time chart:



It looks like the cars were leaning on the tyres during the 2nd, 4th and the latter parts of the 1st and 3rd stints, which is nice to see. As Ricciardo's race engineer said, 'good deg, good deg mate'. It also looks like the Mercedes had quite a bit in reserve during the 1st stint. This has been a problem all through the year. It seems, the car characteristics required to challenge the Mercedes is in two different teams. The Red Bull seems quite hard on it's tyres compared to the Merc/Ferrari, especially with heavy fuel loads. This was also evident in China this year and it is one area where they haven't improved at all.

As a side note, I was following the first lap sectors between the front runners and I'd say there was barely a couple of tenths difference between Hamilton and Verstappen in S2 and S3 put together. However, the gap to Verstappen at the end of the first lap was 1.3 seconds. So the Merc was able to gap 1.1 seconds in a couple of corners at the start to the Red Bull. That's one hell of a boost at the start.

The Ferrari looks better than the RB in terms of tyre wear, and the race pace was good in the 2nd, 3rd and even the 4th stint where they backed off quite a bit, but the 1st stint lets them down in terms of pure pace. In Ferrari's case, I believe it is a natural consequence of not qualifying very well which is another problem. Raikkonen was quick, I'd say quicker than Vettel in the 2nd stint and 3rd stints. Vettel runs the team now, he is his own strategist, so makes sure he's ahead at the end.

Now, off to read Mark Hughes' report in Motorsport Magazine to see what he says.

Edited by Dr Z on Monday 1st August 14:04

[Dr Z]

Flooble said:

Mark Hughes? pfft, I prefer these DrZ race reports!

Ha! Mark reckons the tyres Ric started on were only couple of laps older than the others. May be the F1 app reported wrongly.

Gary C said:

Graph above really shows how Hamilton can pull consistent fast laps prior to pitting when everyone else's lap times are slowing badly. Clean air effect ?

Actually I don't think there was a big clean air effect for the 1st stint as almost all drivers take it easy. Amongst the front runners, I'd say Verstappen was pushing the hardest, keeping pace with Hamilton. Rosberg was taking it easy only around 1.5s behind Ricciardo and his overall deg rate in the 1st stint was only slightly higher than Hamilton in clear air.

It also looks like Hamilton was told on lap 6 that Merc are going to pit the 2nd car first to be put on the faster tyre, as his pace picks up exactly 5 laps prior to Rosberg pitting. All standard protocol for Merc to notify the lead driver in good time so he can build a bit of gap, so he doesn't suddenly find himself racing his team mate (see the Spanish GP thread).

The hardest Hamilton pushed was on his 3rd and 4th stints, thanks to Ricciardo but even then he was pushing only about half as hard as Ricciardo in the 3rd stint, but still was matching the RB driver's times. Ricciardo was on used super softs and Hamilton on new super softs though. Overall, I'd say Hamilton was controlling the gap and this buffer allowed him to not take as much out of his tyres and this further extends the tyre life. It's a gift that keeps on giving.

Vaud said:

M3ax said:

I've come to the conclusion that Dr. Z's brain has far more performance than mine

It does, but it isn't running to the rules of:

1) starting a Nico vs Lewis that sounds like two 12 years olds in a school playground
2) making false comparisons with the 1960s and 1970s
3) incoherent comparisons of two drivers, "Fangio vs Vettel in the 2016 Merc - who would be faster?"

And so a complaint has been made to the stewards and his brain is likely to be docked it's frontal lobe and 50 points...

Ah, I didn't get this memo. This will be corrected soon.

[Dr Z]

cgt2 said:

VladD said:

I'm a Hamilton supporter, but I still like Nico. You can't blame him for being a bit arsey. He's team mate to a twilight Schumacher and beats him easily, but isn't in a good enough car. Then he gets a good enough car and gets Hamilton as a team mate.

If he'd had the good car when he was team mate to Schumacher, he could be a multiple WDC.

I know it's all ifs and buts, but it just goes to show the fine margins that can make a huge difference to your career.

If anyone really studied the comparative performance of Rosberg and Schumacher in 2012, MS was actually performing better for most of the year. The points table did also reflect this until mid season.

MS had a lot of unreliability and made a couple of mistakes of his own but I remember watching the split times and more often than not that year MS was in front, Rosberg was ahead in 2010 and 2011 though.

As I recall, Schumacher had got to grips with the Pirelli tyres by 2012, but it was still a bit of a weird season to draw any conclusions on the head-to-head...doesn't stop me from having a look.

Over the three years, Rosberg outqualified Schumacher 40/18 but they were certainly closer in 2012. You couldn't say Schumacher was significantly better in the races, but certainly on par. The car was also the least reliable in the 2010-2012 period, as there were less races that both cars finished in 2012 than 2010 or 2011.

Qualifying	2010	2011	2012
Rosberg	7.3 (+/- 2.9)	7.5 (+/- 4.1)	9.5 (+/- 4.8)
Schumacher	9.4 (+/- 2.7)	10.3 (+/- 4.0)	9.1 (+/- 5.2)
Race	2010	2011	2012
Rosberg	6.9 (+/- 3.8)	7.3 (+/- 2.3)	10.6 (+/- 3.6)
Schumacher	8.8 (+/- 3.2)	8.5 (+/- 4.0)	9.5 (+/- 5.6)

The numbers are average qualifying/race classified positions (+/- standard deviation). For the race data, I only included races when both drivers finished.

To do the same thing for Rosberg vs Hamilton, we get this:

Qualifying	2013	2014	2015	2016
Rosberg	4.4 (+/- 3.4)	1.8 (+/- 1.0)	2.1 (+/-1.3)	1.7 (+/- 0.5)
Hamilton	3.2 (+/- 2.6)	2.2 (+/- 2.1)	1.6 (+/- 1.0)	2.3 (+/- 2.8)
Race	2013	2014	2015	2016
Rosberg	5.9 (+/- 4.4)	1.9 (+/- 0.8)	2.1 (+/- 1.7)	2.7 (+/- 2.1)
Hamilton	5.3 (+/- 2.8)	1.5 (+/- 0.8)	1.8 (+/- 1.3)	2.3 (+/- 2.0)

NB: For 2016, I excluded qualifying results where there was an obvious problem (China and Russia). Hamilton leads the qualifying head-to-head 6-4 this year, but Rosberg is the more consistent one. Conclusion is that, whilst Rosberg can match and beat Hamilton in qualifying, he has not outraced him from 2013-Present. Based on this, the WDC for this year will be most likely Hamilton.

[Dr Z]

Flooble said:

Just out of interest, has anyone got an analysis for why Rosberg couldn't close up on Verstappen following his penalty? He had about a 0.5 second per lap advantage in the practice sessions, so even an 8 second penalty should have been disposed of within 16 laps.

I'm wondering if the Mercedes doesn't have the advantage so much anymore. Hamilton's "oh I turned my engine down" could be a bit of sandbagging ...

I don't think Rosberg had that much of an advantage. The Red Bull was a match for the Mercedes on the Soft tyre on similar fuel loads. From what I've seen in this race, I'd say the Mercedes superiority is pretty much on heavier fuel loads where they can look after the tyres much better and go faster. The closest to Mercedes in heavy fuel loads was actually the Ferrari.

I posted the laptime chart earlier, but a bit of work on the 3rd and 4th race stints can reveal how much the drivers were pushing. A quick linear regression of that data reveals this:



Color coding: Red (HAM); Blue (ROS); Green (VES); Purple (RIC); Orange (VET); Black (RAI).

Because the Pirellis degrade if you lean on them, the slope of the stint corresponds to the degradation rate and this tells you how much was taken out of the tyres. The steeper the slope, the harder you are pushing on the tyres through the stint. If the slope was a flat line, it indicates that the stint was driven well off the limit of the tyres. An aside: if you look at the Bridgestone tyre stints circa 2010, you tend to get negative slopes when leaning on the tyres (primarily due to fuel loads coming down), whereas with the Pirellis it's a positive slope i.e. laptimes get slower the more you push on them, overcoming the fuel effect.

So what can we deduce from this? I'd say Rosberg was pushing hard on his tyres (Used Soft) in the final stint, as was Verstappen (Used Super Soft). But the lower fuel loads meant that the performance difference between the Soft and Super Soft was at the expected levels and so, Verstappen could control the gap relying on the bigger tyre performance delta.

It also looks like Rosberg was pushing twice as hard as Hamilton but, Hamilton was doing a shorter final stint than Rosberg and had new Softs vs Rosberg on used ones. Even so, there wasn't a marked difference between the two Mercedes cars. It makes it clear where Ferrari are, interestingly enough, as both Ferrari cars were on Softs for the final stint. About 0.3-0.4s/lap on pure pace in the 4th stint.

Interesting also was the 3rd stint, when Hamilton was on brand new Super Softs vs Rosberg on new Softs. They were driving at similar degradation rates and the Super Soft vs Soft delta was 0.3s/lap. The super softs can be driven much harder. The magic number for the Pirellis seems to be 0.1. If a stint was driven at that deg rate, you are at the absolute limit of the tyres. FWIW, these were the degradation rates (slope) for the different stints for the top six cars in this race:

Driver	1st stint	2nd stint	3rd stint	4th stint
Hamilton	-0.053 ± 0.018	0.019 ± 0.012	0.034 ± 0.031	0.028 ± 0.029
Rosberg	-0.05 ± 0.05	0.054 ± 0.031	0.028 ± 0.021	0.064 ± 0.014
Ricciardo	0.0014 ± 0.021	0.055 ± 0.0072	0.1 ± 0.04	0.11 ± 0.017
Verstappen	0.028 ± 0.025	0.063 ± 0.013	-0.00069 ± 0.022	0.1 ± 0.021
Vettel	-0.025 ± 0.02	0.11 ± 0.013	-0.0058 ± 0.019	0.075 ± 0.012
Raikkonen	0.0015 ± 0.017	0.087 ± 0.0075	0.075 ± 0.02	0.043 ± 0.013

Edited by Dr Z on Wednesday 3rd August 13:12