2014 Italian GP - Monza, September 5-7

[iotar__]

Perez was driver of the day. Ricciardo - not even close, bad qualifying, bad start and no on to compete with except for his struggling team-mate (competitive no-man's land). Perez made a difference with a mediocre car, finished two places behind DR, gained positions and kept it thanks to driving not huge car advantage, beating faster McLarens and Ferrari (faster including both Q and race).

[djos]

Doing a great job living up to your reputation as this forums grumpy old contrarian.

;D

[Hail22]

Doing a great job living up to your reputation as this forums grumpy old contrarian.

;D

Back on topic:

The race wasn't too shabby at all, I'm looking forward to Singapore!

[Phil]

Why did Lewis pull away after the "chicane gate" where prior to that Nico was keeping a gap...

for several reasons:
1. Lewis was faster all weekend
2. it's harder to go fast while ridding in the draft unless you are substantially faster than the car infront
3. it probably took Nico a lap or two to collect himself after watching Lewis blow by

I'll give you first 2 points but the 3rd point I can't believe which is why it's smells of controversy

You are comparing the lap times from two different stints. On the option tyre - Lewis probably took more out of his option tyres to get past MAG and MAS and close the gap to ROS. Then, after the pit stops - on the prime tyre - Lewis seemed quicker which he used to close the gap significantly. In just about 2-3 laps, he reduced the gap quite significantly (at some point, just after his race engineer had told him to wait till the end, he reduced the gap by nearly 6 tenths). He was just within DRS zone when ROS missed the chicane and that got him over a second behind Lewis (I think nearly 2). Lewis continued to put in the laps until there was a gap that slowly increased to the 4 seconds.

I think what you're seeing here is simply that Lewis had quite good pace at Monza and was just that bit quicker. I don't see Rosberg suddently being slower after he missed the chicane - it was simply that at that point, Lewis was in clear air and used his pace advantage.

[prince]

Perez was driver of the day. Ricciardo - not even close, bad qualifying, bad start and no on to compete with except for his struggling team-mate (competitive no-man's land). Perez made a difference with a mediocre car, finished two places behind DR, gained positions and kept it thanks to driving not huge car advantage, beating faster McLarens and Ferrari (faster including both Q and race).

I agree that Ricciardo wasn't anything sensational. Well, if you analyze how Ricciardo is strategizing his races, you will see a pattern. He will not be very aggressive in the first half of the race and will let go places if gets attacked in the beginning, chooses clear air to drive his first stints, goes longer than most. By that time, people in front of him, including Vettel would be fighting cats and dogs to gain positions and would have damaged their tyres and would be losing speed, whereas in clear air Ricciardo would be doing better times although further behind. People in front then choose to pit, come back and keep fighting and destroying their tyres. Ricciardo takes late pits, gets fresh tyres and would start attacking when others are going down fighting. This has been the case for him most of the times. It is not that he is fighting Cars who has tyres of same age. At the moment, It is working for him and in instances of late Safety Cars, it would be gold mine for him. Thats my analysis.

[SectorOne]

Rosberg simply cracked under the pressure from first Massa then Hamilton.
Only this time there wasn´t anything to save him from the mistake.

[djos]

Riccardo drives like Prost used to, clean, fast and smart.

[Hobbs04]

You are comparing the lap times from two different stints. On the option tyre - Lewis probably took more out of his option tyres to get past MAG and MAS and close the gap to ROS. Then, after the pit stops - on the prime tyre - Lewis seemed quicker which he used to close the gap significantly. In just about 2-3 laps, he reduced the gap quite significantly (at some point, just after his race engineer had told him to wait till the end, he reduced the gap by nearly 6 tenths). He was just within DRS zone when ROS missed the chicane and that got him over a second behind Lewis (I think nearly 2). Lewis continued to put in the laps until there was a gap that slowly increased to the 4 seconds.

I think what you're seeing here is simply that Lewis had quite good pace at Monza and was just that bit quicker. I don't see Rosberg suddently being slower after he missed the chicane - it was simply that at that point, Lewis was in clear air and used his pace advantage.

After a good rest and reflection I was a little hung over from the media after the last two weeks leading up to monza.
In the end I wanted a Kimi vs Hamilton Spa battle but Nico looked like he gave up after the chicane.

[i70q7m7ghw]

Perez was driver of the day. Ricciardo - not even close, bad qualifying, bad start and no on to compete with except for his struggling team-mate (competitive no-man's land). Perez made a difference with a mediocre car, finished two places behind DR, gained positions and kept it thanks to driving not huge car advantage, beating faster McLarens and Ferrari (faster including both Q and race).

His struggling teammate who happens to be a 4x world champion... I mean if that's not a benchmark I don't know what is.

[prince]

Perez was driver of the day. Ricciardo - not even close, bad qualifying, bad start and no on to compete with except for his struggling team-mate (competitive no-man's land). Perez made a difference with a mediocre car, finished two places behind DR, gained positions and kept it thanks to driving not huge car advantage, beating faster McLarens and Ferrari (faster including both Q and race).

His struggling teammate who happens to be a 4x world champion... I mean if that's not a benchmark I don't know what is.

If you look at the lap times, they are not very different and actually, Vettel was faster in the first stint on average, despite fighting off with McLarens, Force India and Ferrari. It was the early pit stop (18th lap) which was undoing for Vettel whereas a late stop (26th Lap) gave fresh tyres for an attack for Ricciardo. Had they given a late stop to Vettel too, result would have been similar I guess and Daniel would not have been able to pass Vettel.

Code: Select all

1 S. VETTEL	3 D. RICCIARDO

1 14:05:20		1 14:05:23
2 1:31.066		2 1:32.117
3 1:30.714		3 1:30.983
4 1:30.446		4 1:30.796
5 1:30.521		5 1:31.761
6 1:30.559		6 1:31.259
7 1:30.805		7 1:30.850
8 1:30.558		8 1:30.807
9 1:30.507		9 1:30.711
10 1:30.396		10 1:30.896
11 1:30.534		11 1:30.637
12 1:30.362		12 1:30.544
13 1:30.547		13 1:30.338
14 1:30.499		14 1:30.313
15 1:30.652		15 1:30.448
16 1:30.628		16 1:30.448
17 1:30.846		17 1:30.404
18 P 1:35.276		18 1:30.315
19 1:50.748		19 1:30.312
20 1:30.049		20 1:30.326
21 1:29.890		21 1:30.242
22 1:30.089		22 1:30.294
23 1:30.005		23 1:30.229
24 1:29.837		24 1:30.553
25 1:30.182		25 1:31.056
26 1:29.753		26 P 1:34.737
27 1:29.865		27 1:50.629
28 1:29.764		28 1:29.570
29 1:30.025		29 1:29.587
30 1:30.265		30 1:29.480
31 1:29.630		31 1:28.987
32 1:29.672		32 1:29.161
33 1:29.433		33 1:29.048
34 1:29.141		34 1:28.880
35 1:29.521		35 1:28.884
36 1:29.508		36 1:29.065
37 1:29.513		37 1:28.840
38 1:29.598		38 1:29.540
39 1:29.913		39 1:30.570
40 1:30.565		40 1:29.498
41 1:29.687		41 1:29.246
42 1:29.596		42 1:28.875
43 1:29.648		43 1:29.466
44 1:29.624		44 1:28.831
45 1:29.985		45 1:28.734
46 1:29.762		46 1:28.804
47 1:31.961		47 1:29.928
48 1:30.229		48 1:28.922
49 1:30.200		49 1:28.962
50 1:30.556		50 1:29.689
51 1:30.495		51 1:29.451
52 1:30.453		52 1:28.818
53 1:30.463		53 1:28.588

[SectorOne]

https://twitter.com/tgruener/status/508990980385939456

[markn93]

Watching onboard I was concerned with that.

[mipade]

So the Vettel undercut against Magnussen cost him the 5th place but gaint him 2 or 3 positions all in all. I'd say th tactic was not to shabby.

[dans79]

I'd probably do the same thing if I had no launch control.

[NTS]

So the Vettel undercut against Magnussen cost him the 5th place but gaint him 2 or 3 positions all in all. I'd say th tactic was not to shabby.

Indeed, the early stop was clearly to jump the little train he was in. Some people call it a bad strategy, but I think this was their best option. Staying out longer would have meant overtaking the whole train with the new tires which would also have killed them at the end.

Ricciardo's bad start was made worse by being forced to go straight at the first corner. But ultimately his strategy worked very well and the overtaking he did was just superb.

For the horse power discussion: the top recorded speed is a very bad indicator, because the ICE top power is quite evenly matched and the top ERS power is exactly equal for all teams since it's specified in the rules. So having DRS, a good tow and emptying the batteries completely on 1 straight gets you the highest "score" but it does not mean the PU doesn't have a disadvantage.

What is interesting to look at is how often they are able to reach those speeds over a lap. Or the average speed on all the straights for a couple of consecutive laps. You could see in the Bottas overtakes that for example Alonso and Vettel had no chance at all, if their PU would have had half a chance to go fast enough they would not have moved over.

So the difference is mostly in the turbo and ERS systems, allowing the Mercedes PU to use MGU-K power for more time per lap. There is only a limit on the amount of energy coming from the Energy Store per lap, so the simplest explanation is that they feed more MGU-H energy to the MGU-K at speed.