2017 Spanish Grand Prix - Catalunya, 12-14 May

[tranquility2k4]

actually a wrong analysis
VSC ended directly on the end of the 36th lap for Lewis when he already entered on the pitlane.
Plots here
http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2017/05/14/2 ... ap-charts/
show that he lost on the entrance almost nothing to Vettel up to that moment. When on the next lap Vettel lose (relatively to other) more than 5 seconds just on the entrance before the finish line.
The gap Ham to Vet after the Ham pit is 24,4 s, the gap about a lap later just before the Vet pit is about 23s.
If VSC ended just after the Ham pit, he would gain some additional seconds and took the firm lead after the Vet pit.

Yes but did you actually read the analysis on espnf1. It's factual and it states he lost 2 sec due to VSC and 6 sec due to a Hams speed, which was insane at that point in the lap. Read all the points in bold in my previous post.

Yes I read. And I can say, they are wrong.

he delivered with truly awesome times in the middle sector (30.792s) and final sector (28.367)

Why they did not say directly that his out lap was 1.41.405 an the soft when Vet out lap was 1.43.275 on the medium.
1.9s is almost a normal difference between compounds + some loss on the first corner incident with Lewis. He simply could not win 6 seconds in this way. The actual gain was (as I said) 24.4-22.9=1.5s (between Ham out and Vet in) and about 2.0-2.5s over the whole Ham's out lap.
https://puu.sh/vS4qn.png
https://puu.sh/vS4z5.png
The rest 6 seconds were lose on the pit entrance under VSC.

Sorry but I think you're missing the point here. Comparing HAMs out lap with VET's out lap is irrelevant in explaining how HAM closed the gap to VET. VET's out lap was done after his pit stop when the gap had been closed, with HAM right behind him. It looks like VET also did a good outlap and yes you're correct MED was slower than soft but less so in race, maybe 0.5 - 1 sec, not so much 1.5 - 2 sec as in quali.

The comparison we need is the specific sectors on HAM's out lap vs VET's in lap. The fact of the matter is that HAM did a 30.7 and 28.3 on his out lap in S2/S3, which was so fast that they combined to be around 1.8 seconds faster than his fastest lap of 1.23.6 at the end of the race, even though he had half a tank of fuel at this time. I don't know VET's sector times on his in lap but considering he was on used softs that would be cold from running at VSC speed, then he would have lost a lot more than that. To put it into perspective VET lapped at a 1.25.5 the lap before the VSC came out, which is 2 SECs off HAM's fastest lap. Adding this to the further 1.8 sec we know his S2/S3 were faster then you have nearly 4 seconds. As already stated it's likely VET would lap even slower with cold tyres, so it's not inconceivable that 5 - 6 seconds were made up by the lap difference.

I'm not trying to make out Merc are better than Ferrari or Ham better than Vet I'm just saying I think a much bigger proportion of the 8 second gap was reduced by the pace difference on those respective out / in laps compared with the time lost in the pits due to VSC so it has been miscommunicated by the media. If you look at their pit stops Vet was actually 0.6 sec slower on lap 37 than Ham on lap 36 and Ham potantially had to enter pits slightly more slowly while VSC was still applicable, so this further accounts for a little time, i.e. Vet didn't have the best of stops. You could say the 8 seconds is made up of 5 sec for pace difference, 1 sec for poor stop and 2 sec for VSC which is probably ballpark correct.

The other point I tried to make earlier is with the sector times HAM did on that lap and a theoretical high 1m21s, e.g. 1m21.8 - with near half a tank of fuel, what is that as a fuel adjusted lap, is it even faster than pole? It must be close, which done in a race is really quite impressive, although track had rubbered in more.

[giantfan10]

...but RedBull maybe suffered the most by the suspension ban?

I'm not sure that i buy the mercedes became weaker theory....Mercedes just didnt improve as much as Ferrari did and IMHO that is not surprising.Diminishing gains i suspect is what we are seeing and the fact that Ferrari had a lot more room to improve after last year . regardless... i enjoy not knowing who will win the race so far this season... : )

[basti313]

The comparison we need is the specific sectors on HAM's out lap vs VET's in lap.

So why are you making completely wrong comparisons with the fastest laps which were done at completely different laps?
I was watching the life timing and S2 was not far different and this is the only sector you can compare. Surely not the 2sec you count here, max 1 sec, I think below. I saw it as remarkably fast, but far not dangerous with the time advantage Vet had.
The undercut was set to 2sec and this is what we saw in the sector times. Bad stop? Some tenth. The rest is VSC.

The problem why some here do not understand the time difference with the VSC is, that you do not only gain time by others running slow. You gain time by the simple trick that you can run faster in S3 on the way to the pits. You need the correct, slow time at the finish line and this you get automatically by running through the pits.
Here also S1 of Vet was compromised by running slow on the straight.

I'm just saying I think a much bigger proportion of the 8 second gap was reduced by the pace difference on those respective out / in laps compared with the time lost in the pits due to VSC so it has been miscommunicated by the media.

That is simply wrong.

I'm not trying to make out Merc are better than Ferrari or Ham better than Vet

Well, this would be bold. We saw both drivers running to their max and in the end they finished just a few seconds behind each other. Taking the VSC stop and the Bottas barrier into account, there is not much left to make Merc faster than Ferrari. Seems like Ferrari has the edge.
The problem here was the crash of Rai: With Rai behind Bot, Merc can not play the barrier trick without sacrificing Bot to Rai and can not play the undercut trick without pitting Ham behind the Rai barrier.
Merc simply had more tools (cars) to beat Ferrari on the strategy.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

Taking the VSC stop and the Bottas barrier into account, there is not much left to make Merc faster than Ferrari. Seems like Ferrari has the edge.
The problem here was the crash of Rai: With Rai behind Bot, Merc can not play the barrier trick without sacrificing Bot to Rai and can not play the undercut trick without pitting Ham behind the Rai barrier.
Merc simply had more tools (cars) to beat Ferrari on the strategy.

To counter this argument, let us take a few things into account -
1. Merc of Hamilton maintained a steady gap of 2.5 seconds for 10 laps (the gap after first lap was 2.2 seconds) and then started closing in and at one point the gap was 1.8 seconds which forced Vettel to pit, means that Merc at that point was faster, in spite having been following the leading car of Vettel, who was running in clean air AND
2. Ferrari pitting early and Vettel managing to overtake Ricciardo at the first available opportunity, did not leave any other strategic option for Mercedes but to continue going longer which allowed Vettel to build advantage on fresh, new softer tyres against Hamilton who was extending his first stint on those used tyres. No magic here. THAT advantage of Vettel was what the VSC and Bottas took away from Vettel and allowed Hamilton to come on equal footing AND
3. There was supposed to be a cross-over point where Lewis' softer tyres should have fallen off and Vettel's Mediums should have been faster. That did not happen as the Merc managed to take good care of those softs, just like it did in first stint. On a track that is notorious for tyre degradation, nobody had expected the leading cars to go on for 30 odd laps on Softs. Mercedes not just went that long, but also managed to put the fastest lap on fag end of that stint. If an answer is being sought from Mercedes about their tyre management issues, this track has definitely provided that.

If not for a fluffed start from Hamilton, he would have built a bigger lead in the first stint than what Vettel managed to do, purely because Hamilton was getting faster and faster in first stint while Vettel was getting relatively slower.

[Phil]

At the end of it, what bugs me the most is that when the VSC came out - Ferrari knew they had to pit again. That was a certainty, because at that point they had not used the medium tires yet. It then came down to a simple question:

A.) Pit under normal conditions at a later point when the cost of pitting would be the full 23 seconds.

B.) Pit under the VSC with less of a pit-time loss but lose track position.

IMO, it should have been a no-brainer to pit.

Scenario A is easy. Lets say Hamilton didn't pit. Then Vettel would have tried to extend his gap to Hamilton to the point he'd either get a free pitstop for his last stint on mediums or come out as close as possible to Hamilton on worn mediums and try to overtake him with fresher ones for the win.

Scenario B is more tricky. They would have sacrificed track position and put the ball into Mercedes hands. Do they go for the 1 stop with Hamilton and defend on equal but older tires? Or do they pit again and sacrifice the lead themselves? Either way, Ferrari would have been in a good position with 30 laps to go. I think in the end, they came down to the point that they gambled on track position over being on the quicker tires and try to overtake. Mercedes was also very bold (again) for pitting as late as they did to avoid Ferrari mirroring them and getting the same benefit. In the end though, this only accounted for 2-6 seconds of the 8 Hamilton was behind with 30 laps to go.

[dans79]

At the end of it, what bugs me the most is that when the VSC came out - Ferrari knew they had to pit again. That was a certainty, because at that point they had not used the medium tires yet. It then came down to a simple question:

A.) Pit under normal conditions at a later point when the cost of pitting would be the full 23 seconds.

B.) Pit under the VSC with less of a pit-time loss but lose track position.

I think they were banking on A because they didn't believe Mercedes could make a set of softs last 30+ laps. It will be interesting to see how this affects future races, because Ferrari now has to assume Mercedes and them are on par with regards to tire wear. Thus, the strategic picture has changed.

[AMG.Tzan]

Can't really understand why people keep on saying that the VSC helped Hamilton so much! It didn't since it ended right when Hamilton passed the pit entry line! I expected Ferrari to pit under the VSC since they were going for mediums! The tires would last to the end and they would have got a free pit stop! I think that Bottas's defense against Vettel and Hamilton's fast laps at that time and after the VSC pit stop is what won him the race! And I also think that he did pretty well both on his first and his last stint to keep his tires in such a good condition since in the first stint he had to follow Vettel's fast pace and at the end he had to get close to him, pass him and then keep it up for another 20+ laps!! I expected Vettel to come back at him in the last 5-10 laps but seems like Hamilton had it under control and traffic played a bit of a role there!

[Nuvolari]

The comparison we need is the specific sectors on HAM's out lap vs VET's in lap.

I'm just saying I think a much bigger proportion of the 8 second gap was reduced by the pace difference on those respective out / in laps compared with the time lost in the pits due to VSC so it has been miscommunicated by the media.

That is simply wrong.

Alright, I got this. The following are the sector times.

In lap : ham 35.555 45.428 40.226
In lap: vet 26.402 32.084 33.057
Out lap: ham 42.246 30.792 28.367
Out lap: vet 42.518 31.725 29.032

For comparison vettel's in-lap sectors from his first pit stop: 23.863 32.323 30.044

Vettel must have made a mistake in s3 or at pit entry as his s3 is 3 seconds slower than his in-lap sector with 25 laps of extra fuel on board. Hamilton's 2nd and 3rd sectors in the out-lap are not hugely faster than Vettel's out-lap on the Medium tyre/defending. Within the tyre delta, I'd say.

Conclusion: Hamilton did not defy physics. Easy.

[giantfan10]

Can't really understand why people keep on saying that the VSC helped Hamilton so much! It didn't since it ended right when Hamilton passed the pit entry line! I expected Ferrari to pit under the VSC since they were going for mediums! The tires would last to the end and they would have got a free pit stop! I think that Bottas's defense against Vettel and Hamilton's fast laps at that time and after the VSC pit stop is what won him the race! And I also think that he did pretty well both on his first and his last stint to keep his tires in such a good condition since in the first stint he had to follow Vettel's fast pace and at the end he had to get close to him, pass him and then keep it up for another 20+ laps!! I expected Vettel to come back at him in the last 5-10 laps but seems like Hamilton had it under control and traffic played a bit of a role there!

let me explain why it helped hamilton for you.....while hamilton was pitting Vettel was driving to a delta (aka slowly)..when vettel pitted hamilton was going as fast as he possibly could... i recall the VSC ending when hamilton entered the pits... that does not mean it was over it means it was ending shortly...3 second max stop and the damage is done....

[ferkan]

Ferrari lost the race as soon as Kimi DNF'd. Not only did they lose one of the drivers, giving Merc ability to do whatever the hell they want to with strat, given that Ric was nowhere. But cruically, Hamilton was at least a tenth up through S1 through entire race because Ferrari had ICE 1 with 4 races in it in Vettels car.

Had it not been for that, and they had new one, perhaps Hamilton deficit would have been too big in stint 1 to try an undercut therefore giving Ferrari chance to just ghost whatever Merc are doing.

As if that wasnt enough, in stint 2 where Vettel had to make big gap, not only did Bottas hold Vettel for 5 seconds, VSC came out and meant it was time for M tires, even though that stint wasn't long nor fast enough because of Bottas and VSC. To make things worse, Hamilton was on that stint with M tires and his deficit completely vanished therefore completely whipping out any lose he should have had in normal conditions with M set of tires in 2nd stint.

Basically, for Ferrari, everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. For Merc it was the other way around.

[Yurasyk]

Sorry but I think you're missing the point here. Comparing HAMs out lap with VET's out lap is irrelevant in explaining how HAM closed the gap to VET.

But to my mind it's relevant enough to show that Ham's pace was not as mysterious as -6 seconds gain to Vettel.

The comparison we need is the specific sectors on HAM's out lap vs VET's in lap.

they will not help due to messed by Ham out and Vet in 1st and 3rd sectors.

I don't know VET's sector times on his in lap but considering he was on used softs that would be cold from running at VSC speed, then he would have lost a lot more than that. [and the rest]

At the end of the day it's kind of "coulda woulda shoulda"™.
Ideally we should operate with minisectors time to be as precise as possible.

[NYGIANTS]

Yes but did you actually read the analysis on espnf1. It's factual and it states he lost 2 sec due to VSC and 6 sec due to a Hams speed, which was insane at that point in the lap. Read all the points in bold in my previous post.

Yes I read. And I can say, they are wrong.

he delivered with truly awesome times in the middle sector (30.792s) and final sector (28.367)

Why they did not say directly that his out lap was 1.41.405 an the soft when Vet out lap was 1.43.275 on the medium.
1.9s is almost a normal difference between compounds + some loss on the first corner incident with Lewis. He simply could not win 6 seconds in this way. The actual gain was (as I said) 24.4-22.9=1.5s (between Ham out and Vet in) and about 2.0-2.5s over the whole Ham's out lap.
https://puu.sh/vS4qn.png
https://puu.sh/vS4z5.png
The rest 6 seconds were lose on the pit entrance under VSC.

Sorry but I think you're missing the point here. Comparing HAMs out lap with VET's out lap is irrelevant in explaining how HAM closed the gap to VET. VET's out lap was done after his pit stop when the gap had been closed, with HAM right behind him. It looks like VET also did a good outlap and yes you're correct MED was slower than soft but less so in race, maybe 0.5 - 1 sec, not so much 1.5 - 2 sec as in quali.

The comparison we need is the specific sectors on HAM's out lap vs VET's in lap. The fact of the matter is that HAM did a 30.7 and 28.3 on his out lap in S2/S3, which was so fast that they combined to be around 1.8 seconds faster than his fastest lap of 1.23.6 at the end of the race, even though he had half a tank of fuel at this time. I don't know VET's sector times on his in lap but considering he was on used softs that would be cold from running at VSC speed, then he would have lost a lot more than that. To put it into perspective VET lapped at a 1.25.5 the lap before the VSC came out, which is 2 SECs off HAM's fastest lap. Adding this to the further 1.8 sec we know his S2/S3 were faster then you have nearly 4 seconds. As already stated it's likely VET would lap even slower with cold tyres, so it's not inconceivable that 5 - 6 seconds were made up by the lap difference.

I'm not trying to make out Merc are better than Ferrari or Ham better than Vet I'm just saying I think a much bigger proportion of the 8 second gap was reduced by the pace difference on those respective out / in laps compared with the time lost in the pits due to VSC so it has been miscommunicated by the media. If you look at their pit stops Vet was actually 0.6 sec slower on lap 37 than Ham on lap 36 and Ham potantially had to enter pits slightly more slowly while VSC was still applicable, so this further accounts for a little time, i.e. Vet didn't have the best of stops. You could say the 8 seconds is made up of 5 sec for pace difference, 1 sec for poor stop and 2 sec for VSC which is probably ballpark correct.

The other point I tried to make earlier is with the sector times HAM did on that lap and a theoretical high 1m21s, e.g. 1m21.8 - with near half a tank of fuel, what is that as a fuel adjusted lap, is it even faster than pole? It must be close, which done in a race is really quite impressive, although track had rubbered in more.

agree! no one talked about that from the UK or US announcers or post race. yes it was brilliant call with a few things going lewis way but that lap was beyond fast with fuel. id love to see the onboards of that.

[AMG.Tzan]

Can't really understand why people keep on saying that the VSC helped Hamilton so much! It didn't since it ended right when Hamilton passed the pit entry line! I expected Ferrari to pit under the VSC since they were going for mediums! The tires would last to the end and they would have got a free pit stop! I think that Bottas's defense against Vettel and Hamilton's fast laps at that time and after the VSC pit stop is what won him the race! And I also think that he did pretty well both on his first and his last stint to keep his tires in such a good condition since in the first stint he had to follow Vettel's fast pace and at the end he had to get close to him, pass him and then keep it up for another 20+ laps!! I expected Vettel to come back at him in the last 5-10 laps but seems like Hamilton had it under control and traffic played a bit of a role there!

let me explain why it helped hamilton for you.....while hamilton was pitting Vettel was driving to a delta (aka slowly)..when vettel pitted hamilton was going as fast as he possibly could... i recall the VSC ending when hamilton entered the pits... that does not mean it was over it means it was ending shortly...3 second max stop and the damage is done....

Yeah I understand but if you see FIA's highlights when Hamilton is approaching his pit box the VSC is already gone and not even ending which means that by that time Vettel would have accelerated and no way Hamilton would have already gained 8secs on him...maybe 3secs but most of the gap was closed in the 4 laps that Vettel stayed out while Hamilton had new rubber! That's why I ask this!

[Yurasyk]

The comparison we need is the specific sectors on HAM's out lap vs VET's in lap.

I'm just saying I think a much bigger proportion of the 8 second gap was reduced by the pace difference on those respective out / in laps compared with the time lost in the pits due to VSC so it has been miscommunicated by the media.

That is simply wrong.

Alright, I got this. The following are the sector times.

In lap : ham 35.555 45.428 40.226
In lap: vet 26.402 32.084 33.057
Out lap: ham 42.246 30.792 28.367
Out lap: vet 42.518 31.725 29.032

For comparison vettel's in-lap sectors from his first pit stop: 23.863 32.323 30.044

Vettel must have made a mistake in s3 or at pit entry as his s3 is 3 seconds slower than his in-lap sector with 25 laps of extra fuel on board. Hamilton's 2nd and 3rd sectors in the out-lap are not hugely faster than Vettel's out-lap on the Medium tyre/defending. Within the tyre delta, I'd say.

Conclusion: Hamilton did not defy physics. Easy.

The voice of truth is here. But I have to correct you. 30.044 have had Ham, when Vet has 33.749.
That denies any major mistake by Vet on the S3 on his in-lap.
Again, before the S3 of 36th lap there were 7.5 s between them.
Then up to the end of S1 on 38th lap just after the fight in the first corner the scenario was:

I believe that is the final point in our debates.

[Artur Craft]

Being Barcelona a downforce track this result must be depressing for RB, after the so waited updates they are REALLY far.

Let's not forget that Verstappen was just 0.5s on QLF but Ricciardo a full 1s. Maybe Verstappen could've had a far better race pace. Verstappen time was also 1.7s faster than any other Renault-powered car, including the only factory car of the midfield(considering Mclaren/Honda to be backmarkers rather than midfielders). Can we really ask for more than that from RB? The car had little visible updates, they can't shove winglets, vortex generators, flow conditioners and etc into their car because the drag will hurt them too much. Their hands are tied, imo.

Let's remember that eventhough downforce is very important in Barcelona, the power impact on lap time is that of the average circuit, ie, it's not as important as on some extreme circuits but it's not small either, as on places like Monaco or Singapore.

"I still think the reasons for them being so close is more Mercedes becoming weaker than Ferrari stronger" - i think if that was true, Red Bull would be also closer to Mercedes and Ferrari.

According to Renault, their 2017 PU is just 0.3s faster than their 2016's. Remember when somebody at Force India claimed, during winter testings, that Mercedes had made an "unprecedent" step forward with it's 2017 PU?

I know everybody wants to ignore RB's power deficit and put the blame on the chassis/aero but what if RB turns out to be particularly competitive at Monaco, what will be said about RB in such case?

The espnf1's article author is a complete joke of a journalist. One doesn't even need to check any data to instantly realise how absolutely ridiculous and absurd the claims are A formidable demonstration of the amount of nonsense that one thinks when in desperation to believe that something is true

@NYGIANTS, sorry to demystify what you guys are willing to believe but the hypothetical ("supernatural") 1.21.8 lap time(the one where Hamilton was said to have gained 6s over Vettel, meaning a 1.28 lap from Sebastian ) would be "just" around 1.20.5, on 3 laps o fuel, as the 40 or 50kg that Hamilton still had in his car would account for 1.2-1.5s, given that currently 10kg increases lap times by around 0.3s(cars weights far more now, so, proportionally, 10kg increase in weight means far less than when it accounted for 0.4s, on 605kg cars ). I must say, when it comes to people's willingness to mystify Hamilton, it's on par with Ayrton Senna, with all the supernatural and physics laws' defying aspects associated with it.

edit: this mystification also reminded me the time when some claimed that Schumacher would win even on a Minardi.