MWcrazyhorse wrote:JMN wrote:f1universe wrote:Ferrari was painful to watch, Massa was invisible and Alonso had very bad luck, I saw wings with better damage staying 10 laps on the car without falling.
You can't be serious, the wing was hanging on half a pylon while scraping the road. Fernando drove brilliantly to defend his position, but staying out for a relatively minor gain by delaying the tire change will never stack up to the risks associated with running a dangling front wing. It doesn't matter whether it was Fernando or the team that made the call - it was a bad and risk prone decision all the same.
Well said captain hindsight.
On the other hand the track was wet while the racing line was much dryer. Hence overtaking much more difficult, if not impossible. Directly after the start if you can keep the field behind you and there are no gaps to close in, whilst you would end up last after switching tires and needing to change again 5 laps into the race onto slicks when the track dries more.
Good time to gamble. But you don't always win.
Fair enough, hindsight is the privilege of the armchair strategist. I'm not sure why that partout makes me the captain, as I'm sure you'll agree the vast majority of all fan discussion is based on hindsight. Be that as it may, should you gamble when loosing means loosing the ability to play? That was in essence the decision. If you have nothing to loose, i.e. Rounders and Matt Damon with his back against the wall after loosing his pot from the first round to KGB decides to put everything on a gut feeling about KGB's tell, then go ahead - you can't come out worse of. The Ferrari pit wall accepted a gamble on a situation, which (in hindsight) are clear-cut scenarios for risk avoidance or mitigation. From a management perspective, a weighted risk assessment (accepting a gamble) should never come into play if you run the risk of loosing the ability to play.
For the sake of argument and perspective, it's interesting (in hindsight) to compare to McLarens pit crew operations last year. The new nuts and operational changes offered a significant gain in terms of pit stop time. I believe the Sam Michael was quoted for saying the average in training was sub 2.5s. The problem was the outliers - outliers which in the grander perspective of a full race at times dropped their cars out of contention. The accepted a gamble at the the risk of loosing the ability to play. It took significant risk mitigation initiatives in the form of control mechanisms and routines for it to actually improve competitiveness.
TLDR: Don't gamble in operations if loosing means loosing the ability to play. That recommendation works prescriptively by the way, not just in hindsight.
Just for reference, here is Domenicali's evaluation
The team had hoped he could continue until it was time to pit for dry tyres.
"We took a risk that didn't pay off," admitted Domenicali.
"After the touch, the race was not over and I considered the situation where there was a transition from wet to dry.
"In normal conditions you would come in, but in this transition, if you believe the wing can survive, you try and bide your time. You may have the chance to pit to change to the dry tyres and be the hero of the weekend.
Source:
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/106346
beelsebob wrote:
This incident actually highlights something I've been wondering for a while. The black and orange flag exists precisely for when drivers have dangerous cars. Surely the FIA should be a bit more proactive in getting the flag out as soon as a car is in a dangerous state. In many situations it would make no difference, as the team would bring the car straight in anyway. Every so often, it might prevent a major accident.
Agree, going +250kph with a wing in tatters does seem overly hazardous. I imagine operationalizing it could be an issue in terms of eliminating the possibility of false positives. Vettel in Abu Dhabi 2012 comes to mind as a situation, which were under control but could have been deemed hazardous.
