2023 Spanish Grand Prix - Catalunya, June 02 - 04

[Just_a_fan]

When it comes to qualifying I just like to watch pure fast cars with least amount of gimmicks factored in I know majority likes more unpredictability.

Yeah, I´m just like you. I don´t like wet QLFs, much prefer to see full performance on the dry surface. Races are better when wet though.

BTW, Ferrari needs to brake on T3, Campsa and the last corner :

I wonder if the braking is more for rotation, or even some recharge? Sainz still has the throttle engaged when he does it so he's not actually trying to slow down.

I remember hearing an engineer say that the cars have a fail safe such that if the throttle and brake are pressed together, the throttle is overridden and the brakes "win". Maybe there is a threshold for that to allow for some use of the brake against throttle mid corner.

[chrisc90]

There will be.

You can do it in your road car (if it’s a electronic pedal). After a second the brake wins over the throttle.

Very easy to setup in ecu mapping

[AR3-GP]

T9 causes you to scrub some speed in qualy, so I wonder if you could actually extract or pre-empt this energy loss by way of harvesting.

[maxxer]

Should take the point away for fastest lap as he was shown black and white flag after leaving the track more then 3 times penalize that behaviour harder and harder

[Wouter]

Should take the point away for fastest lap as he was shown black and white flag 3 times penalize that behaviour harder and harder

.
HUH? "... he was shown black and white flag 3 times ..." What race did you watch?

In the race, you get three chances to go outside of the track. After your three violations, you receive a black and white flag = a warning.

After this, the stewards will award a driver a five-second time penalty.

[organic]

Confirms Max's thoughts on the hard: it was just a rubbish medium. The soft-medium-soft was the optimal strategy on Sunday. Hats off to Merc strategy

[Just_a_fan]

Confirms Max's thoughts on the hard: it was just a rubbish medium. The soft-medium-soft was the optimal strategy on Sunday. Hats off to Merc strategy

The outlier at the right hand end of that does skew the best fit line somewhat - they would have been closer without that. What we really needed to see was George and Lewis on different tyre strategies. That would have given a much better view of the actual difference between the strategies. They were the two closest drivers in a given team and so would be the best comparison.

The surprise of the weekend was probably that the "soft" held on so well. That does suggest that the hard wouldn't be so good, of course, but a direct comparison on the same car would have been nice data - if only the teams thought about this side of the "fan experience" .

[Zynerji]

DRS should be Unlimited.

Make that Eliminated


Then again, a button on the wheel and totally in driver control ( no auto activate/deactivate) with say 2 min total time for race would be interesting.

It would show who has the biggest balls of them all...

[Sieper]

Confirms Max's thoughts on the hard: it was just a rubbish medium. The soft-medium-soft was the optimal strategy on Sunday. Hats off to Merc strategy

When Charles had to ditch his hard tires after just 17 laps and Max having started on the 1 remaining set of yellows, I feared him on hards would be a drama and a Mercedes win was in the cards. Luckily Max was able to extract enough performance (thanks to the RB19) to keep and later expand the gap.

[AMG.Tzan]

Confirms Max's thoughts on the hard: it was just a rubbish medium. The soft-medium-soft was the optimal strategy on Sunday. Hats off to Merc strategy

When Charles had to ditch his hard tires after just 17 laps and Max having started on the 1 remaining set of yellows, I feared him on hards would be a drama and a Mercedes win was in the cards. Luckily Max was able to extract enough performance (thanks to the RB19) to keep and later expand the gap.

Did you really fear a Mercedes win?
I mean RB could do the same or even better lap times even with harder tires…

I thought Red Bull tried to do a 1-stop race by putting on the hards cause it seemed there was no point in putting hards on lap 26 from mediums! They could have gone a bit longer on the mediums to around lap 30 and then put on the hards to the end really…

Still I’m impressed why they didn’t go longer on the mediums and then just go to two sets of softs like Mercedes! I though Hamilton would use the hards too since he didn’t have new softs and they tend to only use their new sets of tires in the race! But the hards were a bad race tire probably…

Leclerc stopping on Lap 17 with hards looked so silly…but apparently his tires were already going away!

[Sieper]

Confirms Max's thoughts on the hard: it was just a rubbish medium. The soft-medium-soft was the optimal strategy on Sunday. Hats off to Merc strategy

When Charles had to ditch his hard tires after just 17 laps and Max having started on the 1 remaining set of yellows, I feared him on hards would be a drama and a Mercedes win was in the cards. Luckily Max was able to extract enough performance (thanks to the RB19) to keep and later expand the gap.

Did you really fear a Mercedes win?
I mean RB could do the same or even better lap times even with harder tires…

I thought Red Bull tried to do a 1-stop race by putting on the hards cause it seemed there was no point in putting hards on lap 26 from mediums! They could have gone a bit longer on the mediums to around lap 30 and then put on the hards to the end really…

Still I’m impressed why they didn’t go longer on the mediums and then just go to two sets of softs like Mercedes! I though Hamilton would use the hards too since he didn’t have new softs and they tend to only use their new sets of tires in the race! But the hards were a bad race tire probably…

Leclerc stopping on Lap 17 with hards looked so silly…but apparently his tires were already going away!

As a fan I have much confidence, but you (well, I then) are also always looking at potential threads. I almost always worry. I too thought they would do a one stopper, thought wear was high here, and then Lec’s whites just crumbled away under him, so maybe Max was stuck. But luckily not. I also feared rain would flip everything around potentially, but it never came.

RBR was quite conservative and it worked out in the end. Merc had the right strategy imho.

[AR3-GP]

Confirms Max's thoughts on the hard: it was just a rubbish medium. The soft-medium-soft was the optimal strategy on Sunday. Hats off to Merc strategy

I'm a bit confused. Who are the cars and drivers who are being used to populate this chart? Is it an average across all cars?

[AMG.Tzan]

When Charles had to ditch his hard tires after just 17 laps and Max having started on the 1 remaining set of yellows, I feared him on hards would be a drama and a Mercedes win was in the cards. Luckily Max was able to extract enough performance (thanks to the RB19) to keep and later expand the gap.

Did you really fear a Mercedes win?
I mean RB could do the same or even better lap times even with harder tires…

I thought Red Bull tried to do a 1-stop race by putting on the hards cause it seemed there was no point in putting hards on lap 26 from mediums! They could have gone a bit longer on the mediums to around lap 30 and then put on the hards to the end really…

Still I’m impressed why they didn’t go longer on the mediums and then just go to two sets of softs like Mercedes! I though Hamilton would use the hards too since he didn’t have new softs and they tend to only use their new sets of tires in the race! But the hards were a bad race tire probably…

Leclerc stopping on Lap 17 with hards looked so silly…but apparently his tires were already going away!

As a fan I have much confidence, but you (well, I then) are also always looking at potential threads. I almost always worry. I too thought they would do a one stopper, thought wear was high here, and then Lec’s whites just crumbled away under him, so maybe Max was stuck. But luckily not. I also feared rain would flip everything around potentially, but it never came.

RBR was quite conservative and it worked out in the end. Merc had the right strategy imho.

Rain in the last 15-20 laps would have been epic from an entertainment point of view but I too didn’t want it as it could have changed things dramatically…and you never know if you’re going to benefit or not from it!

Mercedes's strategy truly was great but they had good tire degradation! Otherwise it wouldn’t have been possible to go to lap 25 on the softs and then do the same at the end!

So either temperatures played to Mercedes's hands or the updates really helped with tire conservation (probably the former)! Canada will show us what it really was though!

[dans79]

I remember hearing an engineer say that the cars have a fail safe such that if the throttle and brake are pressed together, the throttle is overridden and the brakes "win". Maybe there is a threshold for that to allow for some use of the brake against throttle mid corner.

probably related to this in some way.

[Sieper]

Did you really fear a Mercedes win?
I mean RB could do the same or even better lap times even with harder tires…

I thought Red Bull tried to do a 1-stop race by putting on the hards cause it seemed there was no point in putting hards on lap 26 from mediums! They could have gone a bit longer on the mediums to around lap 30 and then put on the hards to the end really…

Still I’m impressed why they didn’t go longer on the mediums and then just go to two sets of softs like Mercedes! I though Hamilton would use the hards too since he didn’t have new softs and they tend to only use their new sets of tires in the race! But the hards were a bad race tire probably…

Leclerc stopping on Lap 17 with hards looked so silly…but apparently his tires were already going away!

As a fan I have much confidence, but you (well, I then) are also always looking at potential threads. I almost always worry. I too thought they would do a one stopper, thought wear was high here, and then Lec’s whites just crumbled away under him, so maybe Max was stuck. But luckily not. I also feared rain would flip everything around potentially, but it never came.

RBR was quite conservative and it worked out in the end. Merc had the right strategy imho.

Rain in the last 15-20 laps would have been epic from an entertainment point of view but I too didn’t want it as it could have changed things dramatically…and you never know if you’re going to benefit or not from it!

Mercedes's strategy truly was great but they had good tire degradation! Otherwise it wouldn’t have been possible to go to lap 25 on the softs and then do the same at the end!

So either temperatures played to Mercedes's hands or the updates really helped with tire conservation (probably the former)! Canada will show us what it really was though!

Low temperatures indeed. Then the Mercedes works better, like in Australia indeed. In any case, Mercedes in this race was the clear second team, let’s see what happens in Montreal.