Hey,
sorry I wasn't around for FP3, I'm in the west coast US so FP1/FP3 in european GPs are out of my capacity in normal circumstances. But here's quali!
- 0.3s is a lot closer than in FP2 and even how Q2 was shaping up, RBR improved their S3 a lot in the last run.
- RBR has the biggest top speed advantage they had since Imola at 7-8kph. That's some real difference, could lead to easier passes in the race or harder to pass. Where this comes from is a lower DF wing that they didn't use in Austria and Ferrari has the same wing of the last 3 races. RBR could show up with better tire deg tomorrow although how FP2 went nothing representative was really seen between Ferrari and RBR, but it wouldn't be the first race that RBR can run lower DF and keep the tires well.
- RBR will have an obvious advantage if the race is close by having 2 cars up there vs Ferrari having one coming from the back. However I wouldn't be surprised if Ferrari added some DF to the car to avoid graining tomorrow knowing they were going to use SAI as tow, could be 4D chess here.
- I know LEC had SAI's tow, hard to not know that since the director decided to follow SAI setting the tow up rather than LEC on the lap, but the tow maybe generated 0.1-0.15s advantage, so the pole was going to be there anyway.
- T1 (500m) and T10,11,12 (4000-4600m) are where LEC built his win. T1 in that Ferrari was so dominant that LEC was 8kph faster than Max out of it. T10 LEC was 10kph faster than Max, very significant results.
- But LEC did receive a tow, the best way I can show it is via comparison to SAI best lap in Q2, which by the way was good enough for 2nd place.
- First of all this SAI lap was really great, just barely slower than LEC's best in Q3 through S2, and then he gave the tow which can be seen at the end of the straight to T10 (3600-4100m).
- SAI was really on point today, easily the fastest driver on track, wonder what time he would have pulled out.
- Ham described his lap to F1TV as a beautiful lap
- His S1 was really close, however already on the straight to T8 (1800-2600m) Mercs pay a bit of top speed, either they added some wing, or more likely this is the slightly higher drag from the car (RPMs of the engine are higher).
- In T8 Lewis lost a lot already, 0.2s but then the real big loss comes in S3, in T10 Lewis is 16 (!!) kph slower than Charles and that Merc loses 0.6s in S3. That's just another planet.
Good job from Lando to be where he is, his lap is very close to HAM but we'll compare it to RUS instead:
- NOR really slightly edging out RUS through S1 and S2, almost identical
- RUS, more than HAM, really struggling in T10-11-12-13 where RUS loses 0.2s to Lando.
Overall Ferrari pulled good team work but wasn't necessary, and overall today will matter up to a point, if Ferrari doesn't have a good start it will be tough, if tires don't last it will be tough and most importantly, if engine explodes it won't matter.
Hoping for a good race tomorrow, quali was fun.
