2024 Bahrain Grand Prix - Sakhir, Feb 29 - Mar 02

[Juzh]

hamilton fp2 lap 1.30.3

https://streamable.com/3bn3wv

[search]

here are all the longrun numbers:



Even Sargeant was quick, so that's still a lot of Mercedes powered cars in contention.

[zibby43]

https://x.com/tonisokolov1011/status/17 ... w2eCbwUjFA

Can’t get it to populate, but here is a race pace comparison chart.

[langedweil]

https://x.com/tonisokolov1011/status/17 ... w2eCbwUjFA

Can’t get it to populate, but here is a race pace comparison chart.

Use [ img ] instead of URL ..

[HungarianRacer]

here are all the longrun numbers:

https://i.imgur.com/elK66Qn.png

Even Sargeant was quick, so that's still a lot of Mercedes powered cars in contention.

Piastri is suspicious to me to be honest, starting out 0,5-0,8s faster than everyone... I don't know what use it would be to start a race simulation with a slightly underfueled car, and he did change tyres into his run to be fair (somewhat suggesting a deliberate strong push at the beginning), but still, being able to lap that fast right off the bat and not completely destroying your rubber 10 laps in looks a bit too good to be true, but extremely promising for McLaren if it was indeed a fully fuelled run.

[langedweil]

Must say McL looks a lot better than what I thought I saw (when only half watching).
But surely, none of the big players has shown anything close to real pace.

[Cassius]

here are all the longrun numbers:

https://i.imgur.com/elK66Qn.png

Even Sargeant was quick, so that's still a lot of Mercedes powered cars in contention.

Piastri is suspicious to me to be honest, starting out 0,5-0,8s faster than everyone... I don't know what use it would be to start a race simulation with a slightly underfueled car, and he did change tyres into his run to be fair (somewhat suggesting a deliberate strong push at the beginning), but still, being able to lap that fast right off the bat and not completely destroying your rubber 10 laps in looks a bit too good to be true, but extremely promising for McLaren if it was indeed a fully fuelled run.

From telemetry it looks underfueled or higher engine mode.

[Luscion]

2024 fp2 times vs 2023. Also seems everyone agrees RB and Ferrari are yet to turn up their engines but seems like Merc haven't turned there's up much either, or at least not fully

[vanburin]

Russell doesn't seem to understand where all this pace from the Merc is coming from, says Max is still ahead but the difference isn't huge, only transcript I could get so far

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/merc ... /10581362/

Motorsport has picked up on GR and LH's comments. Russell seems to think the race pace gap to Red Bull has closed, Lewis is less bullish. Both do seem genuinely surprised by their overall pace though.

[Cassius]

Sam Collins right at the end of FP2 showed a chart with the expected race pace!

Max was ahead by about 0,2 from Hamilton and then it was Pérez in 3rd! BUT…he said something quite interesting! Honda engineers have not allowed any of the drivers to use a high power mode! Thus explaining Red Bull’s loss of pace in the last sector which is basically one and a half straights…

Still strange that in no lap in testing, and so far none of the laps in fp they have been competitive in s3. Last 2 years we never had that discussion on straight performance.

[HungarianRacer]

2024 fp2 times vs 2023. Also seems everyone agrees RB and Ferrari are yet to turn up their engines but seems like Merc haven't turned there's up much either, or at least not fully

I wonder how much of this "Mercedes turned up their engines more" notion is stemming from that people are yet to fully internalize the fact that this year's Mercedes is much less draggy with seemingly much improved traction (and also perhaps the fact that the absoulte power ceiling is higher with the new cooling package to begin with), them being the pace-setters on the straights might just become the new norm for this season. F1-tempo will lend us a clearer picture.

[FittingMechanics]

Piastri is suspicious to me to be honest, starting out 0,5-0,8s faster than everyone... I don't know what use it would be to start a race simulation with a slightly underfueled car, and he did change tyres into his run to be fair (somewhat suggesting a deliberate strong push at the beginning), but still, being able to lap that fast right off the bat and not completely destroying your rubber 10 laps in looks a bit too good to be true, but extremely promising for McLaren if it was indeed a fully fuelled run.

Perez started with 35.9. Then 36.0.

I don't think Piastri started that fast - maybe he was instructed to do a shorter first stint and thus used his tyres more. Another aspect could be that he was trailing Verstappen and may have benefitted from the tow or he wanted to see if he can keep up with Verstappen.

[mendis]

Can’t get it to populate, but here is a race pace comparison chart.

Use [ img ] instead of URL ..

Here is a reference for last year's FP2. For most of last season, Red Bull didn't show their race pace in FP2. Just half a second for RB20 over RB19 in FP2, after 12 months of development.

[AR3-GP]

I had a theory that I posted a long time ago about the tires. I think there's an upper limit to what the tire wants to do regardless of how much downforce a car has. An actual laptime limit below which it will simply get too hot. So in theory performance convergence should occur when the leading team can no longer exploit additional downforce gains because of the tire. If said leading team would work on aerodynamic efficiency instead, then they could continue to gain laptime without hitting the tire performance wall.

[mkay]

https://x.com/tonisokolov1011/status/17 ... w2eCbwUjFA

Can’t get it to populate, but here is a race pace comparison chart.

Use [ img ] instead of URL ..

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GHhG_fLXQAE ... name=large

Here is a reference for last year's FP2. For most of last season, Red Bull didn't show their race pace in FP2. Just half a second for RB20 over RB19 in FP2, after 12 months of development.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FqTuyCsWAA0 ... name=large

I don't think last year's FP2 race sim support your thesis. If anything, it's ALO who was quite likely lighter on fuel, as the other gaps were quite representative.