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

[Dr Z]

It’s race week. The Mondays are just that bit brighter on a race week.

Date(s): Friday 07 July - Sunday 09 July 2017

UK Broadcast Timings (and local time)

All sessions are live on Sky F1, with the Channel 4 highlights indicated below.

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	1745	1300	1400

Red Bull Ring (née Österreichring)




2016 Grand Prix





Some snapshots from the weekend;

Exciting wet qualifying with JB and Hulk in their element.




Seb retired with a tyre blowout;


Nico and Lewis came together helping to avert a Mercedes 1-2


Lewis won the race.


Live timing for all sessions available here:

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

I’m not sure this official live timing is free anymore for non-subscribers?

Weather forecast:

http://www.myweather2.com/Motor-Racing/Austria/A1-...


Event timings, steward decisions, technical reports and laptimes for the weekend will appear here:

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

The tyre choices:


Some track/tyre info;

---

Lots of interest for this race.

Ferrari v Mercedes v Red Bull?
Hamilton v Vettel
Vettel v FIA
Alonso v Honda RA617H
Force India vs the rest of the midfield
Perez v Ocon
Max v DNF
Etc.

Keep it clean and here’s to some good banter!

Edited by Dr Z on Monday 3rd July 14:47

[Dr Z]

vournikas said:

Dr Z said:

Red Bull Ring (née Österreichring)

See, I'm always a bit but also a bit

I do miss the cars tackling the old Osterreichring (how does one get that umlaut above German vowels on here????), but still love the spectacle of F1 cars tearing through the Alpine countryside on a track that is now - effectively - an Austrian Strohe '80 shot of racing goodness.

There were some reports last year, of plans to revive the old layout. Not sure what came of it. I love the old layout, but I feel that it makes the circuit too 1-D with only fast and flowing bits. The newer T1 and T2/T3 sections make it an interesting technical challenge for the drivers & interms of car setup, IMO.

Doink said:

Interesting to watch Lewis through turn 3, not sure it's his favourite corner and from what I could see he's never mastered it, always locks up into it, wide on the apex and slow out

From what I've seen bits of, Hamilton's approach to this corner would be slow in, fast out. However, the uphill braking makes it tricky to judge the braking point as, you wouldn't want to give too much away in the braking zone to get the car set up for the exit--lot of time to be gained there as it's quite a heavy braking zone.

[Dr Z]

ZX10R NIN said:

This is a track that really suits the Mercedes & now we all know how much Mercedes can turn their engines up in qualifying expect a Mercedes 1-2 Seb 3rd with Max 4th in qualifying, same for the race (retirements/crashes excluded) with maybe Kimi taking 4th due to Ferrari's race pace.

I'll stick my neck out and put some predictions for the top 3 teams in a dry qualifying;

A Mercedes on pole, between 1:03.9xx - 1:04.1xx

Ferrari anywhere between 1.04.2xx - 1.04.5xx

RBR should be around 1:04.6xx - 1:04.9xx

Almost certain that the V10 era lap record will be broken this year, as fastest race lap of last year was only a tenth off.

glazbagun said:

ash73 said:

Honda have an engine upgrade for this race according to SkySports.

I can hardly wait.

Is this the point where Alonso said he wanted victories or he was going to walk? It better be an absolute monster three years in the making!

I believe it was after the summer break, by Spa? McLaren with the PU upgrade, best case scenario is 1.5s off pole here in Austria, if I've done my sums right!

I hope all teams (especially McLaren) beat the above numbers.

Hoping that McLaren make the jump to regular Q3 contenders and more importantly get a healthy increase in race pace.

[Dr Z]

FP1:



That's some crazy pace from Hamilton. He did that time on the Softs, I think?!

Still on course to do a 1:03.9 in Q3. Or may be more?

[Dr Z]

geeks said:

Whats the pace difference between the tyres here like?

It varies with different teams but generally it's a bigger step from Soft to Super Soft than Super Soft to Ultra Soft; I reckon S->SS is about 1-1.2s and SS->US about 0.5-0.8s in qualifying pace.

Edited by Dr Z on Friday 7th July 12:37

[Dr Z]

FP2:

[Dr Z]

Shame about the grid drop for Hamilton, still he'd want that pole for a better grid position. It's predicted to rain during the race tomorrow, so LH to win might get some nice odds?

Currently having a look at the long runs, will post it before Q.

[Dr Z]

l354uge said:

Bristol spark said:

Im probably having a bit of a moment here, but why are we saying if hamilton gets pole he will start 5th?

Surely pole (1) plus a 5 place penalty is 6?

Its added on to their position, not added to. so 1st > 5th, 10th > 15th etc.

Nope Bristol spark is right. If Hamilton gets pole, he'll start 6th.

Vettel had the same problem last year. Qualified 4th, started 9th.

[Dr Z]

Right. Some FP2 long runs on the Ultra Soft:



I think for the first time this year, I'm seeing Mercedes with a pace advantage in the long runs. As others have predicted, it won't be a surprise to see a Mercedes on pole and win the race. However, there appears to be some significant degradation from the Ultra Softs which needs to be managed in the 1st stint.

Ferrari put in a lot of work on the Super Softs and Softs but they had some difficulty switching it on quickly. They should have improved it over the weekend.

I'm seeing a 2-stop race here. There doesn't appear to be a huge difference between SS and Soft over a long run and I don't see a big gain in running the harder Soft tyre for a longer distance than two shorter SS stints, so it would come down preference and the strategy of the teams you're racing, I guess. It will be interesting to see how teams will be playing this.

The midfield as ever, looks tight. McLaren are showing signs of moving to the front of that. Alonso put in a shorter run which was quicker than Vandoorne, with only the Williams car quicker. I saw a modest improvement in top speed, and in the race runs. Let's see how they get on in Q and the race.

[Dr Z]

What an anticlimax!

Bottas on pole.

[Dr Z]

Interesting race in terms of team play/strategy, and exciting towards the end.

Really good pace from Bottas in the 1st stint. Pretty much won him the race, but very interesting to see Vettel come back at him on the Super Softs.

So the teams were going for a 1-stop. Was surprised how long the front runners ran the 1st stint, tbh.


Was following Stoff's race...shame about the penalty that put paid to his attack on Palmer. This new Honda is coming along nicely. Fairly evenly matched with the works Renault in race pace, which is not saying much, but nice to see him pushing all the way.

Speaking of Palmer --good pace.

The race overall is probably a highlights race.

Edited by Dr Z on Sunday 9th July 16:51

[Dr Z]

majordad said:

So the F1 standard for a false start is twice as slow as Athletics.
~In track and field sprints, the sport's governing body, the IAAF, has a rule that if the athlete moves within 0.1 seconds after the gun has fired the athlete has false-started.[2] This figure is based on tests that show the human brain cannot hear and process the information from the start sound in under 0.10 seconds.

Note this is based on a reactionn to an audio signal, I'd imagine a visual signal like F1 would entail a faster reaction.

An analysis of start times by sprinters at the 2008 Beijing Olympics demonstrated that male and female sprinters can achieve reaction times of 109 and 121 ms in one out of 1,000 starts

Actually, the opposite is true. Reaction times are faster for an auditory than visual stimulus.

[Dr Z]

Hungrymc said:

What is the general view on race pace after that one then?

Through the last 10 laps, Lewis's car was the quickest by a small margin from Seb and DR. Bottas consistently slower and I cant imagine he'd let Seb get that close if he had anything left up his sleeve.

I really think there is still very little in it. I'd still rather be in the Ferrari on race day, it seems less sensitive to dirty air and tyre condition (if its still very marginally down on outright pace in clean air).

I think race pace swung back and forth between teams in the different phases of the race yesterday.

Early in the race on heavy fuel, the Merc was the quicker car. Vettel simply couldn't live with the pace Bottas was going at, and Vettel only gradually eked out a gap to Ricciardo.

With lowering fuel loads in the latter parts of the race, the Ferrari had the edge. Hamilton was the only one of the front runners on ultras in the 2nd part of the race, and his fastest lap (now lap record) doesn't appear to have a big margin over a super soft shod Ferrari or even the Red Bull.

Seemed like a deja vu to Russia. The blistering on the tyres complicates reading race pace to be honest. Must be something funny with the way these compounds react with this tarmac/temps as last year there were some tyre graining issues on a few different cars.

[Dr Z]

Allyc85 said:

skeggysteve said:

WRT Bottas start Will Buxton tweeted this earler:

https://f1-start.glitch.me/

My best is 00.217

0.280 on my first go

My best of five was 0.230.


Now try this for auditory reaction test:

http://cognitivefun.net/test/16

I improved by a tenth of a second.

[Dr Z]

LandR said:

It actually took me about 10 jump starts before I realised you click when the red lights go out, not when the last one turns on

You are Valtteri Bottas, AICMFP!