2016 Italian Grand Prix - Monza, 02-04 September

[Manjhi]

You're biased af. Massa had much trouble on Friday, don't forget that.

That is why I kept him below Haas & Mclaren. Massa is struggling and will be fighting with Mclaren & Haas, FI will have their own race here, coz bottas is clearly looking faster here, and RB also looks stronger than FI. But we have seen RB struggling will low drag config chassis so who knows what happens tomorrow.

[GrizzleBoy]

Hamilton certainly looks to be in a class of his own this weekend, but it might not be all that. Remember - he has 3 engines for the rest of the season, pretty much everyone else (Rosberg included) has only 2. It may well be that Mercedes are allowing him to run higher power modes for longer thanks to the slight engine cushion he has. Each of those machines has to only do 3 races, 2 in the case of the one that does Monza and (at a guess) Brazil.

Another way of thinking about it is that Lewis is now not driving in a way required to protect his one remaining engine in case it explodes unexpectedly.

[Sonador]

So it is the end of the road for Jenson Button ....

I loved him in F1, such a great and underrated driver.
Nice guy too, and keeps Alonso honest!
Why trade a WC for a old (proven) rookie, when you're still are developing the car is beyond me.

I am absolutely gutted that he wil not be racing next year when the cars are much better.
The manner in wich Button is treated over the years by Mclaren is just not the way you treat a WC!

Crap .....

[Spoutnik]

OK, let's try another angle.
According to Arivabene, Ferrari has two main issues. Slow corner traction and aero efficiency.
FI is known to have great traction. Also they have low drag car which should be very aerodynamically efficient.
So if FI engine is more powerful than Ferrari, how can Ferrari be faster?!

I really hope that you are right and l'm not, so next year Mercedes will loose it's chassis advantage and field will be levelled.

What is strange about a Williams suffering traction issues? It happens frequently.
The Ferrari PU is not the issue in relation to Ferrari being 0.8 seconds down on Mercedes, they are lost in terms of set up.
This too, happens frequently.

As for Force India, have they ever looked like beating Ferrari? Nooooope.
Why would Monza be different to any other Track Ferrari have trounced them such as Canada and Baku, both High speed circuits?

Williams is geared shorter than Mercedes would there be more tourque in the lower revs of Williams that might explain why they loose traction. (Or their mapping is not as sophisticated)

Another reason Mercedes is pulling further away is because they don't have the same engine specification.

For the record I don't want to start a debate about tourque [-o<

From the onboard of Hamilton's pole lap I think it's the Mercedes who are geared shorter, their top speed is of 350kmh and even on the straight at the end of the sector 2 (slighly shorter than the main straight) they reach it. And as always they run with the Strat.1 mode (qualy engine spec) which allow them to go above 12 000RPM.

[ChrisDanger]

So it looks like Verstappen gets one free questionable blocking maneuver per race now.

Verstappen also explained that he was comfortable with how the situation with F1 race director Charlie Whiting had developed following his discussions on Friday morning.

"We had a chat about it," he said. "Maybe they are going to introduce the black-and-white flag again.

"We just wanted to have a discussion to clear everything, instead of doing it in the drivers' briefing. It is better to just go up to Charlie - Seb [Vettel], Kimi [Raikkonen] and I to have a chat with him."

When said if Whiting had asked him to change his approach, Verstappen said: "They didn't see it as something wrong. Maybe it was on the edge. And then maybe they would introduce a black-and-white flag if it happened again."

[ChrisDanger]

[Juzh]

What is strange about a Williams suffering traction issues? It happens frequently.
The Ferrari PU is not the issue in relation to Ferrari being 0.8 seconds down on Mercedes, they are lost in terms of set up.
This too, happens frequently.

As for Force India, have they ever looked like beating Ferrari? Nooooope.
Why would Monza be different to any other Track Ferrari have trounced them such as Canada and Baku, both High speed circuits?

Williams is geared shorter than Mercedes would there be more tourque in the lower revs of Williams that might explain why they loose traction. (Or their mapping is not as sophisticated)

Another reason Mercedes is pulling further away is because they don't have the same engine specification.

For the record I don't want to start a debate about tourque [-o<

From the onboard of Hamilton's pole lap I think it's the Mercedes who are geared shorter, their top speed is of 350kmh and even on the straight at the end of the sector 2 (slighly shorter than the main straight) they reach it. And as always they run with the Strat.1 mode (qualy engine spec) which allow them to go above 12 000RPM.

lel.
Gear ratios don't matter 1 single bit anymore. When will people finally understand this? Strat 1 allows them to go over 12k? And other modes somehow do not? Plz...
Mercedes runs strat 1 only in Q3. Other teams probably run it in Q1 or 2 because they don't have any buffer to other teams.

Also, merc and williams are geared almost identically in higher gears, but again, it doesn't matter at all. Hamilton went all the way up to 366 in baku. 350 is small potatoes.
http://www.f1technical.net/forum/viewto ... 05#p631705

[FoxHound]

Also, merc and williams are geared almost identically in higher gears, but again, it doesn't matter at all. Hamilton went all the way up to 366 in baku. 350 is small potatoes.
http://www.f1technical.net/forum/viewto ... 05#p631705

Traction issues wont be rearing it's head so much in higher gears.

And 350 aint bad at all, almost as much as Magnussen doing 354km/h in Q1 for Renault, which interestingly has something to do with gearing....
Red Bull have very short higher gears....imagine the implications on speed when discussing PU "equality" or a perceived lack thereof....

[Juzh]

Also, merc and williams are geared almost identically in higher gears, but again, it doesn't matter at all. Hamilton went all the way up to 366 in baku. 350 is small potatoes.
http://www.f1technical.net/forum/viewto ... 05#p631705

Traction issues wont be rearing it's head so much in higher gears.

And 350 aint bad at all, almost as much as Magnussen doing 354km/h in Q1 for Renault, which interestingly has something to do with gearing....
Red Bull have very short higher gears....imagine the implications on speed when discussing PU "equality" or a perceived lack thereof....

Even in a thread where i don't mention renault at all and the conversation had nothing to to with it you still somehow manage to bring them into the conversation.

But since you started it.
Magnussen had a shitload of slipstream in Q1 behind rosberg and then never once came close to 354.

FP1:
http://i.imgur.com/UE4RVeG.jpg
FP2:
http://i.imgur.com/X0FJmEf.jpg
FP3:
http://i.imgur.com/UCVCSFy.jpg

Oh look. Renault have somehow found another ~100 bhp of deployment to use suddenly in the time space from fp3 until Q1. But only for 1 car of 4 that they run

So no, top speeds don't have sh1t to do with gearing anymore, and it most definitely didn't influence red bull/magnussen discrepancy.

[alvinkhorfire]

I hope that during the warm-up lap approaching the grid, Rosberg will stay much further behind from Hamilton, leaving Hamilton much longer on the grid waiting for 5 red lights to go off.

Correct me, if I am wrong. I thought that during the warm-up lap, each car needs to be within 2 car lengths from the car in front.

However, whenever Rosberg qualified first and Hamilton qualified second in the past few races, Hamilton tends to stay much further behind from Rosberg during the warm-up lap. In my opinion, it is inappropriate.

[Phil]

Usually when Hamilton starts from pole, he bunches up the field more to avoid exactly that from happening towards the end. And it's AFAIK 10 car lengths.

[rahulyamgar]

Very close team battles at Ferrari, Red Bull and Force India. But Rosberg, come on.. should do better.

Force India doesn't look strong here, they are .3-.4 sec slower then Williams in long run, It will be :

Mercs
Ferrari
Williams(bottas)>RB
Force India>Haas>Mclaren>W(Massa)

Most probably Williams will screw there strategy...hope 4 a gd race

[basti313]

Usually when Hamilton starts from pole, he bunches up the field more to avoid exactly that from happening towards the end. And it's AFAIK 10 car lengths.

Yes, Ros tried the same in Germany in the last corner, but Ham reacted with the same "stop". Here is a nice video showing the distace:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Yiy8rAEu1U
If I count correctly, there are 10 grid positions between the cars when Ros passes the camera. One grid position is 1.8 car lengths, plus the time for turning the camera makes ~19 car lengths.
I wonder how a start of the Mercs would look like when Ric would have left the same distance? Maybe Vet cooks the Merc clutches today?
I would really enjoy the Mercs going side by side into the first corner, maybe with a Ferrari leading for the crowd. They will win anyway, but this would be much better than the Mercs just flying away.

[f1316]

http://i.imgur.com/rOm8zok.jpg

This is quite interesting.

You suspect that Mercedes would want to do a one stop on softs then super soft.

But given that they're starting on super softs and Vettel has one new set of softs and one new set off ss, will he try a two stop with SS-SS-S? Is that possible? I agree (believe it or not!) with something GPR-A said in the last race thread that the tyres are generally lasting longer than predicted this year, and it might work in their favour in terms of a well timed safety car (as we saw in the GP2 race).

None of it will make any difference to the outcome, I suspect - even if Ferrari get ahead at the start, I'm sure Mercedes have the pace to get past - but at least we have a bit of variation for a change.

[Fulcrum]

I'll be interested to see if Massa can make a counter strategy work. Medium followed by Soft or Supersoft - depending on how many laps he can manage on the Medium.