2017 Australian Grand Prix - Melbourne, 24 - 26 March

[godlameroso]

Pirelli thinks it'll be a 2 stop race, 56 laps, 12 on US, 20 on SS, 24 on S or SS.

That's assuming no safety cars or red flag accidents. Someone will be vying for the title of number one crashtor, will it be Stroll, or Kyvyat?

- Two stops because only 12 on US? OK. Weren't US close to SS? Not close enough and it was Barcelona I guess. There's probably difference in making harder tyres work too. One team (Sauber? from memory) claimed mediums were useless for them.
- Why them, why not Alonso, Verstappen or Vettel? Menace to society routine again? It would be smart to check who had the most incidents or the worst ones. You'd be surprised how media/crowd created noise differs from reality.

According to the drivers and interviews during testing, it seems the tires still have degradation but it's relatively linear, instead of essentially parabolic unless managed by grandma driving, like last season. In other words the tires still wear out and lose performance, but are far less prone to runaway thermal degradation.

Therefore, lap times stay relatively constant through the stint, as tire wear is offset by the car as it consumes fuel and becomes lighter. This means there is still a crossover point where pitting for new tires will make you faster. This just means finding the right time to make an undercut is harder to judge, not that the strategy is useless.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

Pirelli thinks it'll be a 2 stop race, 56 laps, 12 on US, 20 on SS, 24 on S or SS.

That's assuming no safety cars or red flag accidents. Someone will be vying for the title of number one crashtor, will it be Stroll, or Kyvyat?

- Two stops because only 12 on US? OK. Weren't US close to SS? Not close enough and it was Barcelona I guess. There's probably difference in making harder tyres work too. One team (Sauber? from memory) claimed mediums were useless for them.
- Why them, why not Alonso, Verstappen or Vettel? Menace to society routine again? It would be smart to check who had the most incidents or the worst ones. You'd be surprised how media/crowd created noise differs from reality.

According to the drivers and interviews during testing, it seems the tires still have degradation but it's relatively linear, instead of essentially parabolic unless managed by grandma driving, like last season. In other words the tires still wear out and lose performance, but are far less prone to runaway thermal degradation.

Therefore, lap times stay relatively constant through the stint, as tire wear is offset by the car as it consumes fuel and becomes lighter. This means there is still a crossover point where pitting for new tires will make you faster. This just means finding the right time to make an undercut is harder to judge, not that the strategy is useless.

I am not sure how someone can arrive at the conclusion that, tire wear is going to be linear and drop off the cliff like last year. No one has raced yet. If the basis is all those number crunching done by so many experts, then be prepared to be surprised.

The reason is, some teams are better than others in managing tire life. In the last 3 years, Mercedes has been the best team for manging the tires. Red Bull that managed the Pirellis so well until 2013, suddenly was extremely vulnerable in first part of 2016 and was nowhere in 2015. Ferrari started 2015 as the best team to manage the tires and went kaput. Once again, with such drastic changes to car designs, we might still see some or the other team getting the suspension geometry wrong causing high tire wear. Different circuits making tires behave different. All of these factors, changes the behavior of tires and teams would have different headache. To say that the tires will have more linear drop, would be too preconceived a conclusion.

[Vasconia]

I am not sure how someone can arrive at the conclusion that, tire wear is going to be linear and drop off the cliff like last year. No one has raced yet. If the basis is all those number crunching done by so many experts, then be prepared to be surprised.

The reason is, some teams are better than others in managing tire life. In the last 3 years, Mercedes has been the best team for manging the tires. Red Bull that managed the Pirellis so well until 2013, suddenly was extremely vulnerable in first part of 2016 and was nowhere in 2015. Ferrari started 2015 as the best team to manage the tires and went kaput. Once again, with such drastic changes to car designs, we might still see some or the other team getting the suspension geometry wrong causing high tire wear. Different circuits making tires behave different. All of these factors, changes the behavior of tires and teams would have different headache. To say that the tires will have more linear drop, would be too preconceived a conclusion.

Surprises may happen as you have said but I guess drivers and teams have much more information than us, so if they say the peformance is better and more lineal, I think they will be right. Tyres seem to be harder and with a more "coherent" degradation according to all the long runs we have seen. Yes, things can change depending on the track and temperatures but theoretically this should be the performance of the new Pirelli.

[kalinka]

Do you guys think think that the cars will be more vulnerable during outlaps ? It must be hard to make those wide fronts work in short time..and if you push them harder they will blister. For rears it's a bit different because they have huge power and DF at the rear....Can the bigger FW compensate this year for the wider tyres and increased rear DF ?
Of course I admit the armchair point of view Please tear this apart if wrong.

[Shrieker]

Any more track prep. picks from down under ? This is probably the stuff i like the most about the off-season.

https://imgur.com/gallery/lSWpI

Alternatively there's the "pro" version over at AMuS:

http://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/form ... 43785.html

Great stuff, thanks a lot man !

The ones that caught my eye the most are the wheels stacked next to each other. They look way off. They look like kegs now lol

And this one. Cascadeception

[zioture]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4br4U8mVfw

[CLKGTR]

Hamilton on the brink of new statistic milestone

https://maxf1.net/en/hamilton-chases-10 ... australia/

[godlameroso]

- Two stops because only 12 on US? OK. Weren't US close to SS? Not close enough and it was Barcelona I guess. There's probably difference in making harder tyres work too. One team (Sauber? from memory) claimed mediums were useless for them.
- Why them, why not Alonso, Verstappen or Vettel? Menace to society routine again? It would be smart to check who had the most incidents or the worst ones. You'd be surprised how media/crowd created noise differs from reality.

According to the drivers and interviews during testing, it seems the tires still have degradation but it's relatively linear, instead of essentially parabolic unless managed by grandma driving, like last season. In other words the tires still wear out and lose performance, but are far less prone to runaway thermal degradation.

Therefore, lap times stay relatively constant through the stint, as tire wear is offset by the car as it consumes fuel and becomes lighter. This means there is still a crossover point where pitting for new tires will make you faster. This just means finding the right time to make an undercut is harder to judge, not that the strategy is useless.

I am not sure how someone can arrive at the conclusion that, tire wear is going to be linear and drop off the cliff like last year. No one has raced yet. If the basis is all those number crunching done by so many experts, then be prepared to be surprised.

The reason is, some teams are better than others in managing tire life. In the last 3 years, Mercedes has been the best team for manging the tires. Red Bull that managed the Pirellis so well until 2013, suddenly was extremely vulnerable in first part of 2016 and was nowhere in 2015. Ferrari started 2015 as the best team to manage the tires and went kaput. Once again, with such drastic changes to car designs, we might still see some or the other team getting the suspension geometry wrong causing high tire wear. Different circuits making tires behave different. All of these factors, changes the behavior of tires and teams would have different headache. To say that the tires will have more linear drop, would be too preconceived a conclusion.

It's not my conclusion, unless you misunderstood me. I never said they'll fall off a cliff, I said they degrade linearly, as in they wear and reduce pace in a linear predictable fashion. As opposed to last year where if you made the tires overheat(by pushing or fighting for position), they would keep overheating and exponentially degrade. The only way teams could avoid this was to preserve the tires and not pushing the car to it's limits so that the tires would stay in their temperature window.

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/pire ... 83236/?s=1

[henry]

- Two stops because only 12 on US? OK. Weren't US close to SS? Not close enough and it was Barcelona I guess. There's probably difference in making harder tyres work too. One team (Sauber? from memory) claimed mediums were useless for them.
- Why them, why not Alonso, Verstappen or Vettel? Menace to society routine again? It would be smart to check who had the most incidents or the worst ones. You'd be surprised how media/crowd created noise differs from reality.

According to the drivers and interviews during testing, it seems the tires still have degradation but it's relatively linear, instead of essentially parabolic unless managed by grandma driving, like last season. In other words the tires still wear out and lose performance, but are far less prone to runaway thermal degradation.

Therefore, lap times stay relatively constant through the stint, as tire wear is offset by the car as it consumes fuel and becomes lighter. This means there is still a crossover point where pitting for new tires will make you faster. This just means finding the right time to make an undercut is harder to judge, not that the strategy is useless.

I am not sure how someone can arrive at the conclusion that, tire wear is going to be linear and drop off the cliff like last year. No one has raced yet. If the basis is all those number crunching done by so many experts, then be prepared to be surprised.

The reason is, some teams are better than others in managing tire life. In the last 3 years, Mercedes has been the best team for manging the tires. Red Bull that managed the Pirellis so well until 2013, suddenly was extremely vulnerable in first part of 2016 and was nowhere in 2015. Ferrari started 2015 as the best team to manage the tires and went kaput. Once again, with such drastic changes to car designs, we might still see some or the other team getting the suspension geometry wrong causing high tire wear. Different circuits making tires behave different. All of these factors, changes the behavior of tires and teams would have different headache. To say that the tires will have more linear drop, would be too preconceived a conclusion.

I think you might benefit from reading https://f1metrics.wordpress.com/2017/03 ... -analysis/, or if you have already, read it again.

[godlameroso]

Can the soft tires go half race distance, can the SS go one 1/3rd race distance, and can the ultra softs go 1/4th race distance? If so then there has to be 2 stops, the question is when and for what? The standard strategy would be US SS S, with a hot track temperature on Sunday, the only alternate strategy would be US S S.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

According to the drivers and interviews during testing, it seems the tires still have degradation but it's relatively linear, instead of essentially parabolic unless managed by grandma driving, like last season. In other words the tires still wear out and lose performance, but are far less prone to runaway thermal degradation.

Therefore, lap times stay relatively constant through the stint, as tire wear is offset by the car as it consumes fuel and becomes lighter. This means there is still a crossover point where pitting for new tires will make you faster. This just means finding the right time to make an undercut is harder to judge, not that the strategy is useless.

I am not sure how someone can arrive at the conclusion that, tire wear is going to be linear and drop off the cliff like last year. No one has raced yet. If the basis is all those number crunching done by so many experts, then be prepared to be surprised.

The reason is, some teams are better than others in managing tire life. In the last 3 years, Mercedes has been the best team for manging the tires. Red Bull that managed the Pirellis so well until 2013, suddenly was extremely vulnerable in first part of 2016 and was nowhere in 2015. Ferrari started 2015 as the best team to manage the tires and went kaput. Once again, with such drastic changes to car designs, we might still see some or the other team getting the suspension geometry wrong causing high tire wear. Different circuits making tires behave different. All of these factors, changes the behavior of tires and teams would have different headache. To say that the tires will have more linear drop, would be too preconceived a conclusion.

I think you might benefit from reading https://f1metrics.wordpress.com/2017/03 ... -analysis/, or if you have already, read it again.

Thank you for the link. I have read it and I have also read almost every other article on various websites doing something similar. The fact is, all of that analysis is based on full of assumptions and adjustments. In real world, when the races happen, all of that bound to change. I have seen that over the years and the experience tells me not to take all of it on the face of it.

Here is some insight from the horses mouth itself. Something that no one ever pointed.
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/pire ... ve-883236/

"The overheating was something that was a clear request, as drivers didn't want overheating when they were following another car," he said.

"They would lose grip, they would overheat the surface and they could not fight again. That [to remove that behaviour] was the target, and the feedback was positive in this direction.

"It is maybe not zero overheating, but it is a big step compared to last year. Deg should not be zero because otherwise you don't have any crossover.

"We need to have a delta lap time and a degradation that makes it possible to do different strategy, and in this case you keep the show."

Did anyone ever spoke about this in any of the analysis?

[GoranF1]

Is the press confarence over?
Why is there no transcript?

[ChrisDanger]

Is the press confarence over?
Why is there no transcript?

Part 1: Alonso, Hamilton, Ricciardo, Vettel
Part 2: Ocon, Bottas, Stroll, Massa

[Vasconia]

Is the press confarence over?
Why is there no transcript?

Part 1: Alonso, Hamilton, Ricciardo, Vettel
Part 2: Ocon, Bottas, Stroll, Massa

That "same engine for everybody" Alonso comment...

[Mansell89]

Loved Alonso in the press conference.

He sounds so focused that it is a crying shame he finds himself for the 4th year running in a car without he necessary power to fight. (Ferrari 14, MCL 15,16,and seemingly now 17).

He is pulling no punches and he is being honest right to the core of these issues.

Loved his quote about not simply writing off the opening races- a clear message to Honda that not only do they have to get it right, but that they have to get it right fast.

This isn't the Alonso of 2007 here. There is no drama queen or antics here. He's coming out fighting as a double world champion who wants a crack at a 3rd title. He has impressed me more in these last 4 years than at any point prior- he's been brilliant in adversity and no one thought he'd stand and fight. He could leave F1 for all sorts of options tomorrow, but he has a passion for one thing.

Come on Honda, for the sake of the sport and the show, sort it out.