2012 Canadian GP - Gilles Villeneuve

[raymondu999]

That was Ben's point - He pushed rather than did a calm, controlled, "manage the tyres - let's bring it to the end"

[raymondu999]

Tricky, don't understand, it's the same thing isn't it?

Tricky is difficult. Don't understand means shooting blanks in the dark at a black cat that isn't there and hoping that you'll hit the cat.

The teams either understand the tyres or don't.

Life isn't black and white as such. You can still fall somewhere else along the spectrum between those two extremes.

To get 'caught out' would assume they didn't fully understand? They either knew what to expect and it didn't occur or they knew what to expect and did it anyway.

I think it's a case of understanding it, but missing the calculations. Eg., they calculated - (all arbitrary numbers) - 40 degrees track temp, 51 laps target, lap in 1:18.8. Maybe actually it should've been 1:19.1. What I'm getting from Alonso's statement is that they maybe miscalculated as such. Based on their target laptime, the track conditions, and track layout, that the tyre should've held on. But in fact, their estimates were too aggressive.
Or it could be that from the data they saw in FP, and from extrapolating that data to 51 laps - they saw it was possible. But problem came in when the track temp on Sunday was different, and so the tyre life and pace behaved differently.

My point is - Alonso and Ferrari both know that Canada is somewhere where you can overtake. Couple that with DRS and if a fresh-tyred car catches a worn-tyred car, an overtake is VERY possible. You need tyre life to defend against an attacking car - be you Senna or Alonso or Speedy Gonzales. Planning to go 1-stop wouldn't have been a stab in the dark. They would have had to believe with a reasonable level of confidence that they could make the 1-stopper work, to even think about gambling on a 1-stopper to maintain track position. If it was a total blind crapshoot, it would have been very much all or nothing - and in such a championship as F1, especially one as close as this year, all or nothing is a very big gamble. Ferrari and Alonso will know this.

This has nothing to do with what I think of the tyres, I'm just interested how they might have came to the decision to leave him out.

I do apologise - your use of extremes (eg. they either understand the tyres 100% or they don't) hints that this is an emotional response that's coming out rather than a rational one.

I think McLaren took a riskier strategy than it seems at first. Hamilton was pushing all the way, with the exception maybe of the first 10 laps... At a track where 70% of races involve the safety car, that means he must have been very heavy fueled compared to most.

I don't think so. In long straights circuits such as here and Monza, fuel effect is minimal - so you could afford to carry loads of fuel anyways. I'm not sure whether pushing as such would really be detrimental much to fuel contained too. Sure you're lapping quicker, but you'd have to do less of low-rev, low-gear acceleration, no? Given that you're pushing so much, energy from one straight is carried through to the next, no? Rather than starting from a slower corner speed (if you weren't pushing) and then having to put fuel into forward acceleration.

[myurr]

Given that he was about 10 car lengths clear by the start/finish line, yes I really do think he would have gained that much in the breaking zone with or without DRS.

Not by the end of the back straightaway. At least I don't think so. He got the jump on his out of the chicane but those 10 lengths came from his two lengths in the braking zone and then the jump from the two transitions in the very last chicane as well as the big one at the beginning of the straight. That's three initial acceleration zone advantages he had and even with the jump on the big chicane aero difference between the McLaren and the Ferrari aren't that big on the straights. I'm not saying that the McLaren didn't have a clear traction advantage but DRS gave him a huge jump well before the braking zone.

The DRS isn't about making situations like Hamilton vs Alonso at the end of the race easy when he has a 2+ second lap time advantage, it's about making overtaking possible when the cars are closer in pace. Whilst it made some overtakes look too easy you have to remember that in the first stint at least there was a huge train of cars unable to overtake each other even though they had DRS. De Resta was lapping about a second or so off the pace, as shown by the speed at which those cars started going after he pitted, and yet you had a whole train of cars all within the DRS zone of each other unable to make any progress.

So from that point of view they got the DRS zone just about right for this circuit. If you have the huge advantage in pace that Hamilton had over Alonso and Vettel then overtaking should be relatively easy. If you are only a small bit faster then overtaking should be possible but ruddy difficult.

[TheGkbrk]

Just wondering, did Ferrari and RBR had unnecessarily more downforce so their tyre degradation levels were higher than expected?

[raymondu999]

Just wondering, did Ferrari and RBR had unnecessarily more downforce so their tyre degradation levels were higher than expected?

Hard to say. Montreal is a very low degradation circuit, but high wear. If they were running higher downforce, it would have added some degradation into the mix, but less wear and graining.

McLaren actually probably had higher degradation - IIRC Paddy Lowe said that given the way their car was treating the tyres - a 2 stop was the only way, and 1 stop would never have seen them to the chequered.

[beelsebob]

I think McLaren took a riskier strategy than it seems at first. Hamilton was pushing all the way, with the exception maybe of the first 10 laps... At a track where 70% of races involve the safety car, that means he must have been very heavy fueled compared to most.

I don't think so. In long straights circuits such as here and Monza, fuel effect is minimal - so you could afford to carry loads of fuel anyways. I'm not sure whether pushing as such would really be detrimental much to fuel contained too. Sure you're lapping quicker, but you'd have to do less of low-rev, low-gear acceleration, no? Given that you're pushing so much, energy from one straight is carried through to the next, no? Rather than starting from a slower corner speed (if you weren't pushing) and then having to put fuel into forward acceleration.

Well no... because anyone sane, trying to conserve fuel would be doing exactly this too... To push for more of the race though he'll have been running in a high engine mode for most of the race, rather than scaling everything back and accepting being slower down the straights.

[myurr]

Well no... because anyone sane, trying to conserve fuel would be doing exactly this too... To push for more of the race though he'll have been running in a high engine mode for most of the race, rather than scaling everything back and accepting being slower down the straights.

Lest we forget that Rosberg was told to start saving fuel on lap 9!

[f1316]

The reasoning on here seems to be that Hamilton's relatively poor 2nd stop was a contributing factor for Ferrari going to a one stopper. I'm not disputing that they might have done this, but it seems strange logic to me. By pitting on the very next lap, Alonso would have gained time from the pit stop - all things being normal he could could possibly have made up over a second in pure pit stop - and whilst he would still have emerged behind Hamilton, the gap would have been reduced.

Then you've got one stint on the primes. If you use the first stint as your guide, which is surely the obvious comparison, Alonso was able to stick with Hamilton with a stronger performance towards the end of the stint. He was slower down the straights, so overtaking was by no means a given, but it was still a decent shot at victory whilst also covering off the possibility of "falling off the cliff". He still had one set of brand new primes, I believe, so it seems a no brainer.

His logic after the race is that 10 points is fine, given their expectations before the race. That's all very well, but you had, at worst, 3rd in the bag with a two stopper, so a team with low expectations would surely have erred on the side of caution and got the 15/18 points? I'm certain Alonso is doing the "win together, lose together" job, which is admirable in a way, but I don't think anyone is really buying his explanation.

[raymondu999]

Agreed. Bad pitstop or no - the time loss is the same as if Hamilton had a bad lap. There's nothing "special" in terms of time lost in the pits - time lost is time lost. I don't understand why Vettel in 3rd (with 4th some distance back) didn't dive after Hamilton though.

But the greatest mystery to me is - Hamilton's last pitstop came on lap 50, 20 laps form the end. He brought his first set of tyres 18 laps into the race, and now the fuel loads were much lighter. Why not have supersofts on for a splash and dash?

[beelsebob]

Agreed. Bad pitstop or no - the time loss is the same as if Hamilton had a bad lap. There's nothing "special" in terms of time lost in the pits - time lost is time lost. I don't understand why Vettel in 3rd (with 4th some distance back) didn't dive after Hamilton though.

But the greatest mystery to me is - Hamilton's last pitstop came on lap 50, 20 laps form the end. He brought his first set of tyres 18 laps into the race, and now the fuel loads were much lighter. Why not have supersofts on for a splash and dash?

Remember, the super softs were behaving somewhat unpredictably all race weekend, McLaren's mind set was probably just "play it safe and bring it home". I expect the reason Vettel couldn't launch an attack was somewhat similar – his tyres really couldn't do much more.

[Jef Patat]

But the greatest mystery to me is - Hamilton's last pitstop came on lap 50, 20 laps form the end. He brought his first set of tyres 18 laps into the race, and now the fuel loads were much lighter. Why not have supersofts on for a splash and dash?

I have been asking that question as well. Maybe the supersofts weren't that efficient in low fuel loads. I have the impression that the difference in speed between the compounds wasn't that big.

[myurr]

Agreed. Bad pitstop or no - the time loss is the same as if Hamilton had a bad lap. There's nothing "special" in terms of time lost in the pits - time lost is time lost. I don't understand why Vettel in 3rd (with 4th some distance back) didn't dive after Hamilton though.

But the greatest mystery to me is - Hamilton's last pitstop came on lap 50, 20 laps form the end. He brought his first set of tyres 18 laps into the race, and now the fuel loads were much lighter. Why not have supersofts on for a splash and dash?

To answer your second point, they had the data and presumably the soft was the safer tyre to be on. Hamilton was the fastest on that tyre by quite a margin so presumably had a favourable balance. They also had new soft tyres where as all the super softs were used.

I do think that Vettel and Alonso should have pitted around the same time as Hamilton. Even if Vettel had emerged behind Grosjean at least he would have been right on his tail with a fresh set of tyres and could have challenged. As it was they both dropped valuable points. Vettel especially as he had no chance of fighting Alonso for the win and must have known that Hamilton would easily have caught him - especially after the first couple of laps where he was gaining at well over a second a lap.

[raymondu999]

Yep. Red Bull has a bit of previous in that department. China 2011 anybody? Mind you they became very canny after China 2011 and played Mr. Reactive for all races after that though, never really dictating their own strategy (except for Suzuka where they were chewing tyres)

[Mandrake]

Did anybody else see the massive boner Hamilton had when getting out of the car? He looked down, hesitated for a second and then probably thought "I don't care" and ran towards his crew jumping into them like a horny dog

I think the key interesting thing for this race to me is that McLaren may have understood the tyres better than everyone now. Lotus & Sauber can make them work in the hot (race); Merc can make them work in the cool, RBR and Ferrari somewhere in between – McLaren managed to make them (just about) work at both extremes. I can see McLaren beginning to stretch their legs a bit if the other teams don't figure it out soon.

RBR had their tires working in Bahrain which was very hot, I think they have a very wide band of operation. This race the effect of hotter track temps was underestimated by both RBR and Ferrari, otherwise they wouldn't have tried to make the tire last to the end. I think that's the same effect which helped Hamilton and McLaren to win. In Qualy, Vettel was able to put down his time in the first lap, Hamilton had to do 2 attempts or had to stick with his slower time. Vettel had his tires up to temp quicker than anybody else. This in turn, didn't help for the race. It did help Hamilton though.

it was so refreshing to see a driver (this case Hamilton) be able to more or less be flat on it for the whole race and not worry about tyre deg. This is what i want to see. I think the only period Hamilton held back was maybe the first 10 laps? After that he must of got on average the fastest lap every 6-7 laps... Fantastic to see and fantastic to see it the old Hamilton (but controlled)

I didn't see any driver push the whole race. Vettel played it safe in the first stint, So did Hamilton in the second. I'm sure that even Grosjean and Perez didn't go at full pelt. Those tires just don't stand it.

[raymondu999]

Did anybody else see the massive boner Hamilton had when getting out of the car? He looked down, hesitated for a second and then probably thought "I don't care" and ran towards his crew jumping into them like a horny dog

I wasn't looking. You have eagle eyes!