How does the transverse "wobbling" affect rear tires? Can that have any significant impact on wear?
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Lewis Hamilton has won the inaugural Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, but it wasn't a straightforward affair as Max Verstappen pulled off some questionable manoeuvres during the eventful race. Valtteri Bottas finished third by passing Ocon on the finish line.
I think so as well actually. Even the main straight is pretty narrow and I can see plenty of overtakes getting snuffed out by cars moving around to defend. The stewards might be busy up and down the grid on Sunday.mkay wrote: ↑03 Dec 2021, 20:19I don't think there will be much overtaking on this track. Track position will be key. And the longer you can go the better; I suspect the overcut will be way to go.
The wobble is the result of the oversteer slide, it won't do that if they're cornering normally.
Just for further context, in Qatar, it said Mercedes were only 7 hundredths of a second ahead and it ended up being 4 tenths in Q3, a nice 3 or 4 tenths in Q2 as well. So by all indications, Mercedes are looking good for a nice haul of points this weekend, which would effectively seal the WCC. And with Hamilton in P1 with the exception of any miracles (as if!) or mistakes, looks like Abu Dhabi will be a cut-throat race of whoever wins the race wins the Driver's championship - Hamilton is just on a different level at this point. Your machine doesn't get 6 poles in 7 races if your car is the 2nd best on the grid, especially when it is comfortably 2, 3 tenths ahead of your main rival in these terms.politburo wrote: ↑04 Dec 2021, 01:36From Lawrence Barretto of formula1.com
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AMuS had the race pace delta between RBR and Merc at nearly 1s.
How come Red Bull are ahead in qualification simulation pace?zibby43 wrote: ↑04 Dec 2021, 06:43AMuS had the race pace delta between RBR and Merc at nearly 1s.
FOM (which is NOT AWS) has it around 5-6 tenths.
That’s a pretty eye-opening margin, considering HAM was using an old practice engine. Merc need to maybe sacrifice a bit of that race pace and make sure they lock out the front row.
.Hamilton said he had enjoyed his first experience of the circuit, which has several sequences of high-speed ess-bends with hairpins at either end, and a slow chicane to start the lap.
"Rapid," he said. "Unbelievably quick. It really is incredibly fast and a lot of grip. If you get the rhythm it's a beautiful track.
"The medium and the hard tyre were faster than the soft. The soft is probably a little bit too soft for the high-speed sections. It seems like the tyre is giving up a bit.
"I'm generally happy. I made some changes between the sessions. I'm not sure which one I want to stay with. We will study it tonight and try to make sure we have the right set-up for tomorrow.
"We are not rapid on a single lap I would say compared to the others, but the long-run pace seemed like it was not too bad.
"Over a single lap they [Red Bull] are quite quick so we have a bit of work to do."
Red Bull appeared a long way behind Mercedes when the teams simulated race-distance high-fuel running later in the session.
On average lap time over their runs, Verstappen was more than a second slower than Hamilton using the same tyre.
On both short and long runs, the Mercedes was gaining on the straights and in the slow first chicane, while the Red Bull gained back time in the quick left-right at Turns Seven and Eight.
Verstappen said: "We struggled to get heat into the tyres in FP2, which we will, of course, look into.
"Then we made a few changes from FP1 to FP2 which didn't quite work but hopefully we can find the right balance come qualifying.
"There are a lot of things to work on and improve so we'll see what we can do to get more pace out of the car overnight."
In the second session, Hamilton was 0.172secs quicker than Verstappen on the medium tyres when they did their first runs.
Neither Hamilton nor Bottas could improve on the soft tyres on their qualifying simulation runs. Verstappen also struggled to do so - but did in the end shave 0.077secs off his fastest time to edge closer to the Mercedes
