As a start, thank you all for the appreciation, I’d like to participate a bit more often and I’ll try to but the problem is, obviously, lack of spare time.
The comparison 2007-2008 is something I was already planning to do (just out of curiosity, not because the level of precision of the analysis is enough to tell something quantitative about the cars), even though obviously, as checkered said, the different format of qualifying means that the different fuel load has more influence than one year of improvement had and consequently the pole lap was some 7 tenths slower than last year.
Still impressive considering that last year KR had IIRC some 10-12 laps of fuel less than Lewis had this year and that should correspond to somewhere around 30 kg, 1.2-1.3 s more or less, meaning more than half second improvement with same tyres and no driving aids (although the latter should matter little on a single lap).
Anyway, I found the video of LH pole on youtube and made the comparison of speed vs time :
Unfortunately as you can see it’s not the whole lap, I don’t know if it’s because the video itself wasn’t complete or something went wrong in the download as I didn’t watch it till the following day and when I tried to download it again the video wasn’t there anymore (Bernie longa manus did catch it apparently), so it ends at the penultimate corner right before pit entrance. As expected, given the higher fuel load and the higher total time, cornering speeds are a bit lower pretty much every corner (remember that it’s speed vs time, so the fact LH speed drops at the same moment or even later is because it took him more time, from the start of the lap, to arrive in the same point, not because he actually braked later for the same corner).
Another interesting thing I did is an analysis of the video of Kovalainen’s mistake (found it on youtube too, don’t know how long it will be there, it’s the one starting with the images from Alonso’s Renault and then switching on Kovalainen’s onboard after the overtake).
Here you can see rpm of Kova’s car, with the drop at around 11 seconds, few instants after he upshifted to 5th, and the sudden raise of rpm at roughly 13.5 when he downshifts in 4th to re-accelerate (you should be able to figure out by your own the various gears used knowing that at the slowest corner he’s in second).
And here the corresponding speed.
If someone can tell me why there isn’t a “protection” that, when the PL button is pressed, checks other parameters and avoids to activate it when car is at 240 km/h in fifth gear and full throttle, I’ll be grateful.
At the end, here a few numerical data about braking again from last year Kimi’s pole (I had them already last week but I forgot to attach them to the post...) :
Braking : initial speed / final speed / time / distance / avg acc. / peak acc.
1 : 308 km/h / 151 km/h / 1.93 s. / 109 m. / - 2.3 g / -3.97 g
2 : 300 km/h / 82 km/h / 3.42 s. / 139 m. / - 1.81 g / -4.95 g
3 : 289 km/h / 132 km/h / 1.90 s. / 100 m. / - 2.33 g / -4.01 g
4 : 284 km/h / 115 km/h / 2.08 s. / 101 m. / - 2.3 g / -4.84 g
5 : 296 km/h / 228 km/h / 1.37 s. / 97 m. / -1.4 g / -2.53 g
6 : 297 km/h / 133 km/h / 2.03 s. / 103 m. / - 2.3 g / -4.86 g
7 : 243 km/h / 192 km/h / 0.97 s. / 61 m. /-1.47 g / -1.77 g
8 : 247 km/h / 82 km/h / 2.56 s. / 97 m. / - 1.83 g / -4.10 g
That would be quite interesting, as their have been quite a few changes in electronics and aero between last years GP and this weekends.
