2016 Australian Grand Prix - Melbourne, March 18-20

[dot235]

Not implying anything, but does anyone else find it a bit strange that as Alonso was getting alongside Gutierrez and started the move, he then turned right towards him just before the crash?



EDIT: Rehosted img.

[turbof1]

Not implying anything, but does anyone else find it a bit strange that as Alonso was getting alongside Gutierrez and started the move, he then turned right towards him just before the crash?

http://i.imgur.com/8W6ryEW.png

That's slightly misleading. The long corner bends off to the right so you are going to steer in that direction anyhow:


I'm very glad the crash structure and monocoque did their work:

Rest in peace, chassis 1 .

[dot235]

If you look at the steering angle before the move and at the beginning of the move, I don't see any reason to be turning right at such an high angle or to be turning right at all when you have room on the left and you need to clear the car in front.

The only reasonable explanation I can come up with is that he was correcting the snappy rear, but did it really snap there?

[ripper]

Alonso said in an interview that he braked a bit later and on italian Sky they said that telemetry showed that Gutierrez braked in the same place where he did in precedent lap.

[turbof1]

If you look at the steering angle before the move and at the beginning of the move, I don't see any reason to be turning right at such an high angle or to be turning right at all when you have room on the left and you need to clear the car in front.

The only reasonable explanation I can come up with is that he was correcting the snappy rear, but did it really snap there?

I really think he was just trying to follow the line of the curve. The high angle is due at the moment he was trying to overtake, and a higher then usual angle on the race line on the left, meaning you will have to turn harder to the right. As the commentator in the video said, he probably misjudged this with his DRS and Guiterez braking.

I wouldn't look too much into it; it's simply misjudgement. Maybe there is indeed too much input to the right, but it's nothing more then a mistake.

[Sevach]

Vettel was looking good until the safety car, he was going faster then Rosberg on SS vs S, both one more stop to do, and Hamilton was in seventh 30+ seconds behind.

Letting him continue on the same SS he was before stopping was a bad decision, the crossover point came too soon and from them on he was a sitting duck for Rosberg, i think he would've won on mediums (overtaking required a big performance advantage today even though Mercedes is impressive on mediums i don't know if it was going to be enough) and at least have a better shot at keeping in front of Hamilton with a strategy like Ricciardo.

[ripper]

Anyway I don't think it's possible to get a real picture on how much Mercedes was better than Ferrari today. They never were on the same compound at the same time, only on the first stint, but Rosberg was blocked by Raikkonen and Hamilton was in traffic behind.

Let's see next race, maybe warmer temperature will help Ferrari

[ollandos]

best lap time

1 3 Daniel Ricciardo 1:28.997
2 5 Sebastian Vettel 1:29.951
3 6 Nico Rosberg 1:30.557
4 44 Lewis Hamilton 1:30.646
5 7 Kimi Raikkonen 1:30.701
6 33 Max Verstappen 1:31.516
7 55 Carlos Sainz Jr. 1:31.671
8 22 Jenson Button 1:31.684
9 19 Felipe Massa 1:32.288
10 20 Kevin Magnussen 1:32.452
11 14 Fernando Alonso 1:32.553
12 94 Pascal Wehrlein 1:32.673
13 12 Felipe Nasr 1:32.711
14 77 Valtteri Bottas 1:32.725
15 11 Sergio Perez 1:32.780
16 27 Nico Hulkenberg 1:32.833
17 8 Romain Grosjean 1:32.862
18 30 Jolyon Palmer 1:32.955
19 21 Esteban Gutierrez 1:32.998
20 88 Rio Haryanto 1:33.847
21 9 Marcus Ericsson 1:33.89

[H2H]

That McLaren chassis certainly did its job. Great to see Alonso walk away like that after this shunt.

As Sevach pointed out the safety car had a big impact on the race. I was surprised to see Ferrari go for the supersoft for the same reasons. I expected to see the medium one, considering the difficulties in overtaking and the still high safety car chance. Maybe Ferrari with it's performance gap was biased towards a higher-risk strategy to put pressure on Merc, a classic approach for the slower car.

It seems that Rosberg didn't take much out of his engine while Hamilton seemed to use more aggressive settings. All in all itoday's datapoints are more difficult to interpret due to all the different tyres and strats.

[henra]

Do you understand that the SS should've been 2 seconds quicker? But all Vettel got within 5 laps or more was a 3 second gap. Speaks for the Mercedes I guess.

It's not that simple.
Supersofts are maybe good for 1,5s over one lap. But only for one lap. After that they are maybe good for 1s per lap and fast decreasing. So 3s in 5 laps sound about right. Should have been a tiny bit more but not that much.
If you extract 2s in one lap you have to slow down the a pace by 3 - 4s to cool them down and prevent them from graining. Overall you will lose time or you you have to change tyres after 5 laps. Qualy pace difference between tyres is entirely different from race pace delta.

[FrukostScones]

Raikkonen said in an interview that it wasn't the PU but something else, but they still didn't know what happened

PU is not just the ICE. With such a fire, the whole EC would have gone for sure. ICE would have bore the brunt. We will only know the damage once their full analysis is complete.

maybe just those silly active trumpets failed...

[ollandos]

Comparing drivers Nico Rosberg VS Sebastian Vettel at Australian GP 2016
here
http://en.mclarenf-1.com/index.php?page ... n%20Vettel

ss clearly the worst race tyre ...cost better result for ferrari and mclaren .....

[NutritionFact]

Good race. The Tire options are a Good solutions. Wtf What a Crash. Ferrari wasted Victory. And congrats to haas. First race poins.. Mercedes is the force to Beat.

Nice morning.....

[nim_peter]

I think it is a tough call to make regarding tyres. I'm assuming the teams don't know the tyre choices of other cars.
* If Vettel started on M and Rosberg and cars behind on SS, Vettel would have lost a few position.
* Starting on SS seems like safe option as he can keep the cars behind him, if they were on SS or create a gap if others started on M.

Looks like they underestimated the pace of Mercedes on M.

[Henkka]

+++ Nice debut by Haas
++ New tire rules, brings some variance to the race
+ Solid race by Rosberg
- Ferrari had a bad day