Congrats to Max for what was a really good quali lap ultimately. Lots of interesting bits to read in this telemetry:
* Top speed has a very slight advantage for RBR of 2-3kph roughly, really small and probably not where RBR makes up the gains.
* S1 from RBR is good because VER really manages to be quick out of T1, on average VER is 6kph faster through that corner, even while braking earlier.
* Ferrari really managing to brake later in almost every corner and has an obvious advantage in high speed corners (>200kph), particularly in T6, T7 and T9, in T7 actually a small error from LEC causes him to lose minimum speed, but he still managed go through the corner faster than the RedBull.
* Leclerc also makes another error in T10 where he has a bit of oversteer before entering the corner that forces him to go full throttle much later than Verstappen. Maybe his tires were gone with the temperature cycle they had already been through before Russell went out.
Because Verstappen S1 and S2 times in his best lap weren't up to the previous attempt I went back to check his previous lap against Leclerc:
My advice to you is to open this graph and the previous graph in 2 tabs right next to one another and flip across them quickly. Here's what you'll see:
* VER lost a tiny bit of top speed
* Went through T1 much much faster, also he gained a lot more time in the straights against LEC despite being slower in T1, it's possible then they dialed up his front downforce a bit too between attempts, maybe also in response to Checo's complaints of understeer and tires not switching on. I think he was complaining about the same stuff through quali and the last lap just nailed the front setup.
* Every braking point in his following lap was just a bit better overall, for sure helped by higher front DF, Max really looked for the most he could get and even improved T10 slightly in the process.
* Just a good refinement job without mistakes.
Contrary to Leclerc's lap, these 2 are almost identical, maybe SAI is running slightly less downforce in the front compared to Leclerc, he prefers an under steery car after all, but SAI top speed is slightly higher than LEC and, by comparison, the cornering performance from SAI is slightly worse, but kind of the same as VER, where however again SAI loses the chance for pole is in T10, Verstappen really carried that corner solidly.
Now both Mercs went off and I was curious to see why:
I chose LEC to compare with HAM because LEC had the fastest speed in the corners where HAM went off. First comment is there's a slight top speed deficit, 3kph to Ferrari, so this is a 6kph speed deficit to RBR. 6kph starts to be somewhat noticeable since it eats into what you get from tow and DRS, so it's going to be hard for Merc to pass RBR on track, but maybe they can thanks to braking performance which seems on par with Ferrari's.
The crash happened in T7 and boy Ham took too much risk that corner this time, he was going too fast through it and the car simply couldn't handle it. This matches with what Toto Wolff said to the Austrian TV, wind probably didn't help but for reference to his previous Q2 lap:
HAM was going 11kph faster through T6 and was bordering on 20kph faster through T7. No matter the wind gusts, that's a lot to ask of the tyres. I suppose he noticed Mercs were losing most of their time in T6 and T7 and after he saw that he could do 11kph faster through T6 he tried if he could do better through T7 and lost it. He tried and there's no shame in that.
Let's see George:
So George has a bit more top speed penalty and the speed that RUS uses to go through T6 and T7, much slower than LEC, also shows how much beyond the limit HAM went to get the time out of the car. George's error is a bit more subtle, but he's trying to put down the pedal too fast in T10, you can see that it's even earlier than Charles, his speed trace starts to pick up speed before Charles was anywhere near the apex. In an attempt to anticipate the apex of the corner basically George had some bouncing due to kerb and the car wasn't stable enough for the throttle and putting the pedal down made it spin.
At the end of the day, both Merc drivers went out because they asked too much of the car.
No one knows race sim yet and tyre deg, we'll see tomorrow but FP2 is at 4am for me so I'll just enjoy the sprint race.
Cheers.