2017 Australian Grand Prix - Melbourne, 24 - 26 March

[ENGINE TUNER]

in the lap when hamilton pitted his first and second stint were particularly slow: much slower than vettel and maybe (not sure) even slower than verstappen: this maybe has not been properly taken into account in this discussion.

lapped traffic a Sauber

Also PAL spun around turn 13/14 so there were yellow flags in the last sector. HAM seems to be more observant to yellows than some of the other top drivers I've noticed.(since his penalty in India practice may have cost him the race)

[Jolle]

Two years ago we all were hoping for a bit of a fight when Vettel won the second GP because of a not so strong Mercedes strategy. This GP is a bit like that I think. The gap seems smaller but if they did the math right and cleared Verstappen before the pit stop....

[Sevach]

Two years ago we all were hoping for a bit of a fight when Vettel won the second GP because of a not so strong Mercedes strategy. This GP is a bit like that I think. The gap seems smaller but if they did the math right and cleared Verstappen before the pit stop....

If everything went right Hamilton could've kept track position and win the race, but this time Ferrari was legitimately faster.

[basti313]

in the lap when hamilton pitted his first and second stint were particularly slow: much slower than vettel and maybe (not sure) even slower than verstappen: this maybe has not been properly taken into account in this discussion.

No, already the second sector was purple.

[dans79]

If everything went right Hamilton could've kept track position and win the race, but this time Ferrari was legitimately faster.

I don't see how they where legitimately faster, because Vettel emerged from the pits just in-front of Max, with Lewis close behind. If max hadn't hindered Lewis one of two things would have happened. Vettel would have emerged in second behind Lewis, or Kimi would have had to play rear gun to hinder Lewis.

[Xwang]

I've read that the minimum allowed front tyre pressure has been lowered after FP2.
Is it real?

[ENGINE TUNER]

I've read that the minimum allowed front tyre pressure has been lowered after FP2.
Is it real?

It is always better If you can post a source rather than "i've read"
please and thank you

[Xwang]

https://it.motorsport.com/f1/news/pirel ... 86094/?s=1

[henry]

Whilst discussing the respective lap times for Hamilton and Vettel around their respective pit stops is an interesting intellectual exercise I think it is not very useful. Modern F1, even with these new more durable tyres, is not drivers going flat out every lap but a sophisticated excercise in resource management, mainly tyres and fuel but also power units and gearboxes. So once Vettel had established a small lead in the first few corners over Verstappen he will have settled down to bringing in the tyres to then run at the lap times the team predicted would win the race. That this wasn't close to flat out we saw late in the race when he popped in a faster lap just for fun. Similarly once Hamilton was in clear air he and the team looked at how much resource they had left and whether that would be enough to out race Vettel. They decided not enough and settled for second. Could Hamilton or Vettel have gone quicker? Probably, but they reasoned it would not have changed the result and would increase the risk of failure in this race, or subsequent races.

In my mind the sophistication of this was shown when OTMAR SZAFNAUER said in a post race interview on SKY (UK) that for Force India a 2 stop was 8 seconds quicker than 1. That's little more than 0.1%.

Up at the front modern F1 races are waged by engineers and their data crunching. In the main drivers follow their suggestions for lap times, stint lengths etc. because they know that doing so will give the the best result. This will be increasingly apparent if one team doesn't have an overwhelming advantage.

[ENGINE TUNER]

...

HAM could not have gone much faster in the first stint, VET could have if he wasn't being held by HAM.

HAM pitted too early and went as fast as he could until he was on VER's tail, then he was being massively held up. With no ability to pass even a slower car on old tires(VER), the race was effectively decided at that point(except for reliability).

It is in fact very useful to discuss these things because they will form the basis of the strategies being used going forward in 2017. Australia 2017 has proven that track position(and thus qualifying and starts) is of the utmost importance and that passing is very difficult and thus pitting yourself into traffic while giving the car behind you free air is not worth the perceived value of the undercut.

Also the tires do not take a long time to come up to temp as has been suggested.

[Xwang]

If I remember correctly the first lap of HAM with yellow tyres after the pit stop was 1.5 s faster than Vettel with purple used tyres.
So in case of a Vettel undercut with an HAM longer first stint, is it possible that he would have been able to pass HAM in any case since he was always between 1 and 2 seconds from HAM ?

[Sevach]

I don't see how they where legitimately faster, because Vettel emerged from the pits just in-front of Max, with Lewis close behind. If max hadn't hindered Lewis one of two things would have happened. Vettel would have emerged in second behind Lewis, or Kimi would have had to play rear gun to hinder Lewis.

One guy burned his tires and failed to open and any kind of gap.
When the other guy got infront the gap opened up and the race was pretty much over, doesn't leave much room for interpretation on which car was faster.

[Sevach]

If I remember correctly the first lap of HAM with yellow tyres after the pit stop was 1.5 s faster than Vettel with purple used tyres.
So in case of a Vettel undercut with an HAM longer first stint, is it possible that he would have been able to pass HAM in any case since he was always between 1 and 2 seconds from HAM ?

The only unimpeded lap from Hamilton was .5 quicker then Vettel, brand new softs vs US with 20 laps on them.

Also on the lap Hamilton pitted Vettel lowered the gap to less than 1s which probably was what spooked Mercedes.

[Wass85]

Does anyone think Hamilton is defeatist these days? Crying that it's impossible to overtake yet goes on to say Vettel would have passed him. Which is it Lewis?

Did he say on track?

No but it's obvious he meant that.

I doubt very much Hamilton would have settled for second had it been his teammate that got the undercut.

[Vasconia]

what if DRS set is 2 or 3 sec in stead of 1?

Getting into the 1 second range, isn't really the problem, getting from 1 second to 0 is. The cars loose so much front wing down force, that they can't follow a car for long within the 0.25 to 0.5 range, if they could they would breeze by on the straits.

Even if you made the entire back wing vanish, I don't think it would help much on an average track. What they really need to do is address the down force sensitivity issue.

23 years and I am still waiting to see this.