2017 Monaco Grand Prix, Monte Carlo, 26-28 May

[mani517]

...

@mani517, what race did you watch? Maybe I massively missed a second pit from VER but, afaik, he had the same SS tyres as BOT. RB just seemed much faster on that compound.

VER went into pits under SC (as soon as it came out, I think) to swap his SS for fresh US.

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2017/05/28/2 ... pit-stops/

[djos]

Anyone else here think the new Monaco podium and processes were complete rubbish? It was so painfully slow and then they had to come down stairs again for the interview with Nico (which was surprisingly good).

[GPR-A duplicate2]

On a track where power is not be all and end all of racing, mercedes suddenly became only the 3rd fastest race car. Just gonna leave that here.

As always, you notice the very important things that most people seems too miss.

Gotta give a big applause for you guys. Always thrive on the misfortune of a team and an individual. A car that dominated the last couple of grand pries, on circuits where one is most rewarding for power and the other most rewarding for best aero, suddenly seems 3rd fastest to you. Kudos to your technical knowledge. Take a bow.

[djos]

On a track where power is not be all and end all of racing, mercedes suddenly became only the 3rd fastest race car. Just gonna leave that here.

Well when you are the only team who have the wheelbase of a Hummer and you find yourself on the tightest track of the year......

[basti313]

On a track where power is not be all and end all of racing, mercedes suddenly became only the 3rd fastest race car. Just gonna leave that here.

Well when you are the only team who have the wheelbase of a Hummer and you find yourself on the tightest track of the year......

It was quite often stated, that the wheelbase does not play such a big role.
The ban of the trick suspensions hurts Merc and RedBull more, especially in Monaco.

[sriraj1031]

Nice article on espn F1 website and makes sense ... http://www.espn.in/f1/story/_/id/194903 ... nen-monaco.
It also discusses relative sppeds of other drivers too.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

Nice article on espn F1 website and makes sense ... http://www.espn.in/f1/story/_/id/194903 ... nen-monaco.
It also discusses relative sppeds of other drivers too.

Nice piece of postmortem from that article that shows how Ferrari favored Vettel.
Covering a non-existent threat

But this is where Ferrari's strategy call becomes murky. Neither Verstappen nor Bottas showed particularly impressive pace on their new tyres and it would only be a couple of laps before they got bottled up behind Carlos Sainz, who had yet to pit in his Toro Rosso. Ferrari could argue that it wasn't worth the risk and that's why Raikkonen was told to come into the pits one lap after Bottas, but in his post-race quotes Arrivabene made no mention of the threat from Bottas and instead said Raikkonen pitted on a pre-planned lap.

Vettel did mention Bottas in the post-race press conference, claiming he was told that the Mercedes was lapping in the 1:16.1s. If that had been the case then Raikkonen's pit call would have been understandable, but the reality was that the Mercedes first four laps out of the pits were a 1:19.431, a 1:17.783, a 1:17.164 and a 1:18.914. At no point in the race -- even in the closing stages on low fuel -- did Bottas' lap times dip below a 1:16.5.

In the meantime, Raikkonen had been consistently in the low 1:17s ahead of his pit stop, with one scrappy lap on lap 32 where his time dropped to a 1:17.663. Perhaps it was that lap that convinced Ferrari to pit him from the lead, but on lap 33 he was back down to a 1:17.034 -- the sort of pace that could easily cover the threat from Bottas and Verstappen.

More significant for the lead battle was his pace in comparison to Button and Wehrlein. Since lapping Wehrlein seven laps earlier, Raikkonen had pulled a 17-second gap over the backmarker and with another three laps at that pace he would have easily had a 21-second gap over the backmarker. That number is significant because a pit stop costs roughly 21 seconds at Monaco and those three laps would have been enough to allow him to exit ahead of the Wehrlein/Button battle, comfortably ahead of Bottas and with free track ahead of him all the way to Daniel Ricciardo and Vettel. According to Pirelli, tyre degradation was not a major issue and Vettel later proved the ultra-soft compound could do 39 race laps without any problems.

[basti313]

Nice article on espn F1 website and makes sense ... http://www.espn.in/f1/story/_/id/194903 ... nen-monaco.
It also discusses relative sppeds of other drivers too.

Puh...I think it is rather poor:
1. It does mention but not discuss the really fast outlap of Ver. The sector times match low 16 lap times and this matches the radios to Vettel.
2. It takes laptimes from Bot after Rai stop as a reason why Ferrari should not have pitted. Ferrari pitted because of the lap times before (see 1.). They called Rai in when Bot entered the pits, the only trigger was the fast laptime of Ver.
3. It ignores, that Wehrlein dropped to 1:20 a lap before they called in Rai. With this speed and a clean inlap Rai would have come out in front. The 3 laps they claim do not make sense at all.
4. They take Sai as a measure...no one knew when Sai will pit, so they could not bet on him holding up Bot. They had to react on a possibly 1.5 sec faster car 4 sec behind.

[Big Mangalhit]

Also it was not Kimi that was under threat of Bottas. It was Vet being in second place. To pit Vet they first needed to pit kimi so if they made the mistake of leaving kimi a few more laps in the eventuality of Bottas going really fast they could lose the P2 cause they needed at least 2 laps to react and pit Vet. In hindsight Bot was slow and Vet still had a lot of pace in the US but I dunno if they knew that when the decision was made.

If they pitted first Vet I think he would still make the undercut, he only had 1s behind kimi and had faster in/out laps. And if this is controverse imagine that scenario, nobody would shut up about it for ever

[GPR-A duplicate2]

Nice article on espn F1 website and makes sense ... http://www.espn.in/f1/story/_/id/194903 ... nen-monaco.
It also discusses relative sppeds of other drivers too.

Puh...I think it is rather poor:
1. It does mention but not discuss the really fast outlap of Ver. The sector times match low 16 lap times and this matches the radios to Vettel.

Verstappen's pit lap (32) - 1:35.170
Next lap (33) - 1:18.341
Next Lap (34) - 1:17.774
Next Lap (35) - 1:16.863
So where is that out lap of low 1m16s?

While Verstappen was doing a good out lap, Bottas was brought in and even before Ferrari knew exact complete sector times (S2 and S3), Bottas came back ahead of Verstappen and held him up. How was Verstappen a threat at that point?

[jonas_linder]

Another article showing the same thing.
http://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12433/ ... aps-win-it

Poor sportsmanship from Ferrari to rob Kimi of the victory and not even acknowledging that they did it!

[sosic2121]

Also it was not Kimi that was under threat of Bottas. It was Vet being in second place. To pit Vet they first needed to pit kimi so if they made the mistake of leaving kimi a few more laps in the eventuality of Bottas going really fast they could lose the P2 cause they needed at least 2 laps to react and pit Vet. In hindsight Bot was slow and Vet still had a lot of pace in the US but I dunno if they knew that when the decision was made.

If they pitted first Vet I think he would still make the undercut, he only had 1s behind kimi and had faster in/out laps. And if this is controverse imagine that scenario, nobody would shut up about it for ever

+1

[ferkan]

Another article showing the same thing.
http://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12433/ ... aps-win-it

Poor sportsmanship from Ferrari to rob Kimi of the victory and not even acknowledging that they did it!

Great article. Comparing out lap to regular lap. How do these people get a job? We can talk all night and all day about this one, but Kimi had no buffer (1.1s is no buffer) to make pits look easy in streets of Monaco. His own fault.

[WaikeCU]

Considering how much difference between both Ferrari was when Seb left the pitlane, you could imagine Kimi still being in front if he didn't have to deal with Button and Wehrlein when he was released. Not his own fault truth be told. Kimi backed off once Seb was in front that's for sure, because the race was lost at that point. Overtaking was a no-go (surely not on your own teammate on this circuit) and Kimi knew well enough that for the team it's best to take both cars home 1-2. That's also the thing he said after the race as well. From the team's point it's absolute everything they've wanted. From Kimi's point of view, he wanted a different result.

If I was Kimi, I would have done the same. I wouldn't risk the overtake on Seb with risking to take both out, surely on this kind of circuit. I would think the race is lost as well. It's a 1-2 for the team for sure if nothing odd happens, so I'll turn the engine down and cruise home. It's still a long season so I need to keep the heart of this car as fresh as possible for future races. P1 is of course what I wanted, but P2 with both Merc's and RB's behind is not a bad thing either.

[Vanja #66]

This whole "controversy" issue is blown out of proportion by the media, especially English media. They started setting the foundations the moment the Q3 ended on Saturday. Whatever Ferrari had done with their drivers, if Seb won it would have been the same bashing as it is now. And seeing how much faster he was, there is very little Kimi could have done to prevent that whatever the tactics were. Why wasn't he pushing harder than he was prior to his pit stop? He was leading the race and he wasn't comfortably ahead of the driver behind, so there is every reason to push as hard as possible... And if he was, for some reason, saving fuel after the pits (one explanation of a large gap that Seb pulled quickly), that just means he was driving slower than what Vettel could have before the pits and was also burning more fuel at the same time...

Back when we had refueling, it was normal to have different tactics for team mates fighting for victory. Were those also indirect team orders? Or is pitting just a normal part of the race and a legitimate way of getting ahead of the driver - team mate or not - in front?

Unlike most people, I have no problem with #1 and #2 driver in a team, even if that #2 is a former champion. I have absolutely no problem with Merc favoring Hamilton. I have a problem with their hypocrisy concerning this subject, with their driver (but not the team leaders obviously, as they want to keep their hands clean) openly denying this and trying to project this on their opponents. But again, my view is that this subject is artificially and ridiculously inflated by the media using some very poor arguments...