2015 Malaysian Grand Prix - Sepang

[Andres125sx]

I´ll never praise enough F1 Fanatic´s lap time chart

Too easy to analyse a GP with this chart =D> =D> =D>

McLaren was consistently faster than FI, and matching RBR lap times when not beating them. That´s a huge step forward compared to Melbourne.... at least perfomance wise, reliability is another story

Hamilton was around 1 second/lap faster than Vettel on his second stint, the rest they both match lap times almost perfectly. Only difference is time lost behind trafic for Lewis, around 2 seconds/lap for 3 laps after the SC and 5 seconds more when he entered pit-lane with SC when Seb stayed out. Those are 11 seconds, what IMHO means with same strategy Lewis would have win this race, even with that high track temp (61ºC/141ºF) wich was favorable to Ferrari


STR lap times are quite impressive, comparable to Williams!!

[Chene_Mostert]

Why is everyone trying to explain what Mercedes did wrong?

Because we are trying to determine if Mercedes could have won this race or not. And we can only do that if the assumption is that that first pitstop was wrong in the sense that it 1.) gave up track position and 2.) put them ~11 seconds behind Vettel due to traffic and 3.) possibly pushed them from the planed 2-stop race, into a 3-stop race.

Those are interesting variables to play with right there. But I for one still think Vettel would have had the pace thanks to tyre deg and performance on the prime tyre to have won the race.

I think it's quite obvious that Mercedes absolutely did have the pace to win. They were a second a lap faster than Ferrari on the options, if they could make them last. If they had waited for lap 12 to pit for primes, they would have pushed everything further back, and would have shortened the final stint to 10 laps, making it also an options run (even though the options they had were worn). The result is that they would have been a second faster than Ferrari for 22 more of the laps they ran. That 22 seconds, plus the 11 seconds they lost in traffic would have caused Hamilton to finish about 20 seconds clear of Vettel.

Even if you assume Vettel could push a bit harder, that seems like Ferrari probably didn't have the pace to match that.

?? Lot of it's and could have's,
were exactly was Merc 1sec per lap faster on the options? Not in the first 5 laps?
Merc fans need to make peace with it, Ferrari now has the pace to push Merc out of their comfort zone.. No more lift and coast, looking after tyres for them. 2014 their PU advantage flattered them. Pre season testing already pointed to the Ferrari pace. Had they qualified ahead of Massa in Aus Merc would also have had a real challenge.
So better get ready for more of the same in Shanghai!

[Phil]

I think it's quite obvious that Mercedes absolutely did have the pace to win. They were a second a lap faster than Ferrari on the options, if they could make them last. If they had waited for lap 12 to pit for primes, they would have pushed everything further back, and would have shortened the final stint to 10 laps, making it also an options run (even though the options they had were worn). The result is that they would have been a second faster than Ferrari for 22 more of the laps they ran. That 22 seconds, plus the 11 seconds they lost in traffic would have caused Hamilton to finish about 20 seconds clear of Vettel.

I very much doubt that.

Here are the pit-stops I noted back two pages in this very topic:

Vettel: pitted on 17 and 37 (o17 / o20 / p19)
Hamilton: pitted on 4, 24, 38 (o4 / p20 / o14 / p18)
Rosberg: pitted on 4, 26, 41 (o4 / p22 / p15 / o15)

Note Hamiltons second stint on the prime tyre. 20 laps. Note the stint on option tyres. 14 laps. He couldn't do more as at that point, on either tyre, his times were crumbling at the end of them. Now, if Mercedes hadn't pitted on lap 4 under the safety car, and if we assume they could have made it to lap 12, they still had another 44 laps to go. So, we're looking at a OPO stint - 12 laps option first, then perhaps 20-24 laps which brings us to lap 32-36 and... another 16-20 laps on the option tyre? Not sure that would have worked out. At best, it would be right at the limit. Personally, I don't think the Mercedes had the ability to do 20 laps of option tyres on the last stint. 16 might be cutting it and highly depends if he would have managed 24 laps on the prime tyre. The drop off at the end was always immense.

IMO the only reasonable way Mercedes could do a 2 stop race is, again, assuming they could have made it to lap 12 on the option tyre, then go two stints on the prime tyre. 20-24 laps perhaps, which would have brought him to lap 32-36 again and and then another 16-20 stint on another set of prime tyres.

Compare that to Vettel who easily did O-O-P. Great stint times, extremely good degredation on high fuel loads on the option tyre. The race would have been Vettel on options vs Mercedes on primes.


ACTUALLY (EDIT): I'm beginning to doubt the Mercedes was even good to get to lap 12 if they hadn't pitted during the safety car. Hamilton struggled to get 15 laps out of the option tyre on a lighter car. So perhaps assuming lap 10 is more reasonable considering Vettel would have been breathing down his neck.

[raymondu999]

So, Vettel on a OOP strategy would probably still have edged Hamilton on a OPP strategy (assuming they'd both 2 stop and Mercedes would run the P tyre as their prefered tyre).

Initial plans had them at OPPP. They did basically what RBR did in 2013 - save all primes in quali, in anticipation of OPPP.

Coming into the race, there were two main choices to be made: whether to make two or three stops, and whether the Prime or the Option would be the better race tyre. It was clear yesterday that opinion was divided on that question, as we saw the leading teams using different tyre compounds in Q1. We saved new Prime tyres for the race, while others saved new Options. We planned a three-stop strategy favouring the Prime tyre

Source: https://www.formula1.com/content/fom-we ... umpur.html

[SectorOne]

Mercedes messed up their 3-stop strategy. You need to make sure you do enough running on each stint so that they don´t handicap each other.
You can´t do 4 laps on a set of tires and think that´s a good way to do a 3-stop strategy.

first of all there´s not enough time to gain back the time it take to do a pit stop and second of all, all your other stints will be much longer then they needed to be. (i know i know, they got half the pit time for free, but with the addition of traffic that certainly hurt tires more then a relatively clean air)

If they had not pitted and stayed out, in order for Vettel to gain that type of advantage he had when the Mercedes was driving in traffic he would have to slowly extend his gap to Hamilton by ten seconds. Mercedes would have been in a much better position by hitting the pits as soon as Vettel was say 4-5 seconds up the road instead, assuming he would make a pass and start gapping them. That way they can control how big the gap gets before they get on a new compound and start reeling Vettel back in.

Now it´s not certain Mercedes would have won but they would have been right there with Vettel.

[dren]

A lot of ifs in hindsight. The car didn't perform as Mercedes was expecting. They told Hamilton he'd be challenging Vettel with 5 laps to go and he never got close.

I don't know if they could have done many more laps with the medium tires at the start. If they only went another 4 or so laps, the lap differential to Vettel would not make up for the "free" pit stop time they gained during the safety car.

[H2H]

A lot of ifs in hindsight. The car didn't perform as Mercedes was expecting. They told Hamilton he'd be challenging Vettel with 5 laps to go and he never got close.

I don't know if they could have done many more laps with the medium tires at the start. If they only went another 4 or so laps, the lap differential to Vettel would not make up for the "free" pit stop time they gained during the safety car.

To be honest their team radio about catching Vettel around 5 laps to go surprised me at the time as the performance delta between a Merc on fresher hards and a Ferrari on older mediums or lack didn't seem nearly large enough earlier. Obviously at the time you hear the comms due to their delay you additionally had another lap or two to see the recent lap and sector time trends.

My personal take is that for a couple of reasons among them the track surface, heat, strategic approach Mercedes couldn't nearly get the most out of their car. The words of the Ferrari team and their drivers as well as the comments by Hamilton and maybe others I didn't catch seem to support that.

[ringo]

In the first stint Lewis was in clear air, and couldn't shake Vettel off, on the same tires.
In the final stint, Lewis was 10sec behind Vettel, in clear air, on the same tires, and couldn't really close the gap.
Even if he had closed the gap, I doubt he would have been able to overtake on track.
What happened in between, one can put down to track position and strategic decisions, or mistakes, but as far as I am concerned Ferrari/Vettel had equal, if not better, pace this weekend based on these facts.
Why is everyone trying to explain what Mercedes did wrong? Maybe they didn't do anything wrong. Maybe this was just the best they could achieve on this track, under these conditions, and that's all there is to it.
In which case, they did a really good job of securing 2nd and 3rd on a track they could have lost a lot more than 1st place.
Would have been very interesting to see what the result would be if Kimi had qualified 4th or 5th and had not received the puncture..
I strongly suspect he might have finished 2nd or 3rd.

Regarding Alonso @ McLaren move, I totally agree he is thinking about a title and doesn't care much about GP wins. Sadly we'll never know if he made the right decision, because based on his performance in the poor Ferraris of the last few years, with this car he might have actually been able to challenge for a WDC!!! Don't forget the 6 tenths that he always brings along!

Well i don't blame Alonso for moving. This year's ferrari is not any better than the 2012 and 2013? ferrari, ie the years that Alonso lost in the final round. Alonso had championship fighting cars, just not dominant cars. I don't wrong his move for that reason mostly. We have forgetten that Ferrari knows how make challengers, and this is what Vettel has now.
Alonso wants a dominant car, just like what Hamilton and Rosberg has. 2 races from now Ferrari may even lose their polish and look ordinary again. 2 or 3 years ago Lotus was showing the exact same form that Ferrari is showing, and it's no coincidence with James Allison leading. They will thrive in warm conditions.

Ferrari had better pace in this race.This was confirmed by Allison himself. Mercedes could have still won with better strategy but things would have to be perfect.

[AnthonyG]

I´ll never praise enough F1 Fanatic´s lap time chart

Too easy to analyse a GP with this chart =D> =D> =D>

McLaren was consistently faster than FI, and matching RBR lap times when not beating them. That´s a huge step forward compared to Melbourne.... at least perfomance wise, reliability is another story

Hamilton was around 1 second/lap faster than Vettel on his second stint, the rest they both match lap times almost perfectly. Only difference is time lost behind trafic for Lewis, around 2 seconds/lap for 3 laps after the SC and 5 seconds more when he entered pit-lane with SC when Seb stayed out. Those are 11 seconds, what IMHO means with same strategy Lewis would have win this race, even with that high track temp (61ºC/141ºF) wich was favorable to Ferrari


STR lap times are quite impressive, comparable to Williams!!

Chart confirms imo that Rosberg was faster than Hamilton, certainly at the end. I think Rosberg had a small advantage in tyre life over Hamilton.

[Unc1eM0nty]

Ferrari now has the pace to push Merc out of their comfort zone.. No more lift and coast, looking after tyres for them. 2014 their PU advantage flattered them. Pre season testing already pointed to the Ferrari pace. Had they qualified ahead of Massa in Aus Merc would also have had a real challenge.
So better get ready for more of the same in Shanghai!

I very much doubt that, the Merc is a car for all tracks, low down force, high down force - and everything in between. The temps during the race were very high, their deg was also very high which meant Merc couldn't use their full pace, it won't be this hot at every race though so I don't expect them to suffer the same problems at every race.

There was a lot of hysteria after Merc dominated in Melbourne, now it looks like it's all swinging the other way.

[Moose]

Note Hamiltons second stint on the prime tyre. 20 laps. Note the stint on option tyres. 14 laps. He couldn't do more as at that point, on either tyre, his times were crumbling at the end of them. Now, if Mercedes hadn't pitted on lap 4 under the safety car, and if we assume they could have made it to lap 12, they still had another 44 laps to go. So, we're looking at a OPO stint - 12 laps option first, then perhaps 20-24 laps which brings us to lap 32-36 and... another 16-20 laps on the option tyre? Not sure that would have worked out. At best, it would be right at the limit. Personally, I don't think the Mercedes had the ability to do 20 laps of option tyres on the last stint. 16 might be cutting it and highly depends if he would have managed 24 laps on the prime tyre. The drop off at the end was always immense.

No, not OPO, OPOO - 14,17,13,12. That's the same number of pit stops, but running options for much more of the race, and in doing so saving 22 seconds.

While the first stint of 14 laps on options looks long (exactly as long as the one he did in the race, and had eaten all his tires), it actually probably would have been fine, due to a couple of laps under the SC, making this in reality a 12 lap stint.

[felix]

Now this race was certainly A LOT more interesting than the first one.

But those F1 cars of today, I still cannot stand them. In the Onboards I was very often checking if there was a little "replay" sign I didn't see because at times it looked like the cars would drive at 75% speed only. And the sound does not help either. I thought the onboard was shown to show a dying engine more often than I didn't think that......this is not cool.

And then the Cameras......it is so hard to see which car is actually in front in a side by side overtaking maneuver. You first think wow this is tight, and then the car behind slots in with a 5m gap......I prefer the old cameras with not so wide lenses...

Same here, was watching the onboard with Vettel and at first I thought he had a problem.

Cars were lapping ~10 seconds faster in race trim 10 years ago...

Yes quite and GP2 is faster than F1 car that doesn't move, the horror. Perhaps it would be a good idea to create rose-tinted glasses nostalgia thread? Like a broken record good-old-timers are trying to outbid themselves in placebo and selective facts department and pollute every single race thread with their fairy tales of the past. For them exactly the same lap time with shaky camera of Senna onboard is a blur of demonic speed whereas watched from less ancient car it "feels" like a slideshow.

Yes let's not criticize anything because it upsets you.

If you're happy with slow motion races that's fine, I'm not so I stated my opinion, simple as that.

I don't expect the cars to get faster every year, for obvious reasons. But 39's in qualifying? ZzzZzZz

[Juzh]

SC restart onboard:
https://vimeo.com/123671687

[giantfan10]

I think it's quite obvious that Mercedes absolutely did have the pace to win. They were a second a lap faster than Ferrari on the options, if they could make them last. If they had waited for lap 12 to pit for primes, they would have pushed everything further back, and would have shortened the final stint to 10 laps, making it also an options run (even though the options they had were worn). The result is that they would have been a second faster than Ferrari for 22 more of the laps they ran. That 22 seconds, plus the 11 seconds they lost in traffic would have caused Hamilton to finish about 20 seconds clear of Vettel.

I very much doubt that.

Here are the pit-stops I noted back two pages in this very topic:

Vettel: pitted on 17 and 37 (o17 / o20 / p19)
Hamilton: pitted on 4, 24, 38 (o4 / p20 / o14 / p18)
Rosberg: pitted on 4, 26, 41 (o4 / p22 / p15 / o15)

Note Hamiltons second stint on the prime tyre. 20 laps. Note the stint on option tyres. 14 laps. He couldn't do more as at that point, on either tyre, his times were crumbling at the end of them. Now, if Mercedes hadn't pitted on lap 4 under the safety car, and if we assume they could have made it to lap 12, they still had another 44 laps to go. So, we're looking at a OPO stint - 12 laps option first, then perhaps 20-24 laps which brings us to lap 32-36 and... another 16-20 laps on the option tyre? Not sure that would have worked out. At best, it would be right at the limit. Personally, I don't think the Mercedes had the ability to do 20 laps of option tyres on the last stint. 16 might be cutting it and highly depends if he would have managed 24 laps on the prime tyre. The drop off at the end was always immense.

IMO the only reasonable way Mercedes could do a 2 stop race is, again, assuming they could have made it to lap 12 on the option tyre, then go two stints on the prime tyre. 20-24 laps perhaps, which would have brought him to lap 32-36 again and and then another 16-20 stint on another set of prime tyres.

Compare that to Vettel who easily did O-O-P. Great stint times, extremely good degredation on high fuel loads on the option tyre. The race would have been Vettel on options vs Mercedes on primes.


ACTUALLY (EDIT): I'm beginning to doubt the Mercedes was even good to get to lap 12 if they hadn't pitted during the safety car. Hamilton struggled to get 15 laps out of the option tyre on a lighter car. So perhaps assuming lap 10 is more reasonable considering Vettel would have been breathing down his neck.

this was vettels race to lose
same tire .. same fuel load lap 3 right before the safety car came out hamilton could not shake vettel... vettel was in drs range with a faster car on the straight....then the safety car came

[giantfan10]

anybody else notice how much more downforce mercedes was running compared to anybody else... down the straight in a couple shots it looked like the mercedes front wing was twice the size of any other front wing on the grid(height)...looked like the cascades were at like 45 degrees versus everyone else having theres at like 25 degrees