2017 Malaysia Grand Prix - Sepang, 29 September-01 October

[TAG]

0.682 behind his teammate - must have been Mercedes worst upgrade in the past 5 years.

To be fair to the upgrades, he was .68 behind Lewis in Singapore as well.

[Fulcrum]

0.682 behind his teammate - must have been Mercedes worst upgrade in the past 5 years.

To be fair to the upgrades, he was .68 behind Lewis in Singapore as well.

A much longer lap with respect to time, many more corners, but point taken. Bottas is looking the equivalent of Raikkonen since the Summer break.

[Sevach]

http://formula1.ferrari.com/en/2017-mal ... t-for-seb/

Ferrari now officially saying that Vettel had a turbo problem.
Quiet interesting that this happened basically in the first lap with the new engine. What do you guys think, is this just a coincidence or does the spec 4 engine produces to much power for that 'old' TC or what else could have gone wrong?

I doubt that's the case, If engine 4 overwhelms the TC that fast Ferrari wouldn't even try it.

Bad installation, misdiagnosed issues on FP3, and the fact that is a very old unit are more likely.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

Patience is a virtue!

Where are all those people that claim that this was a Mercedes track? The graphic that was posted earlier made me think that Ferrari had a shot here, but I didn't foresee the Mercedes being 1.4s off the pace. Wow!

With regards to the upgrades.

0.682 behind his teammate - must have been Mercedes worst upgrade in the past 5 years.

To be fair to the upgrades, he was .68 behind Lewis in Singapore as well.

Bottas has been behind Lewis on way too many occasions in qualifying, starting from Canada. So, his performance difference to Lewis is not a good barometer to assess the upgrades.

This is a difficult season with regards to the Mercedes upgrades.

F1 testing 2017: Some Mercedes updates 'didn't work out' - Lauda

It definitely is an incredible job from Mercedes up until now. FP1 got washed out and they only could see that their upgrades aren't working, at the end of FP2. They chose to go in two directions. Without upgrades with Lewis, which means, they were back to Friday morning. With upgrades with Bottas, which is slightly better way to move forward (not saying upgrades are better).

I am not sure how much work they had done for Malaysian GP, with regards to setting up the car without upgrades! A team with positive frame of mind, especially after Singapore, wouldn't be thinking of their upgrades not working and could most likely have focussed on setting up the car with upgrades. So, all the work back at factory, would have been setting up the car with upgrades. So, to witness the upgrades failing and to then set the car up without upgrades while, most likely, not having a lot of work done to set the car up without upgrades would have put them in totally unknown territory.

They had one hour to witness if that would work and then quickly optimize the car for qualifying. In a scenario, where upgrades would have worked as they expected, the gap to Ferrari would have been larger OR if they wouldn't have brought upgrades, but would have continued work at factory to set the car up without upgrades, still they would have been in better place.

As much as Vettel got unlucky, Mercedes have also got unlucky with their upgrades. Where someone argues "IF" Vettel wouldn't have suffered engine failure, then equally, there should be an argument about Mercedes' upgrades not failing. So that, the debate about hypothetical scenario is equally discussed.

As for last fliers, while Kimi, Max and Bottas all improved for their last run, only Hamilton and Ric did not improve. There was video footage related to Ric making mistake and couldn't improve on, there wasn't much on Hamilton.

[MtthsMlw]

http://formula1.ferrari.com/en/malaysia ... in-sepang/

Seb was unable to set a time due to a problem which prevented the compressor from feeding air to the engine properly.

[Wynters]

What a job from the Ferrari mechanics...just astounding.

Interesting that Bottas didn't gain anytime between Q2 and Q3. With the wick turned up he should have gained at least a couple of tenths. He can blame the aero package if he likes (although Toto said that all the data they have show that it is an upgrade) but I suspect driver errors in Q3 are responsible for a big chunk of that gap.

As for tomorrow, if Kimi can remember what he did at the start in Singapore then Hamilton is going into the 1st corner in second and I expect the Ferrari to steadily pull away from him...and that brings the Verstappen factor into play.

[iotar__]

What a job from the Ferrari mechanics...just astounding.

Interesting that Bottas didn't gain anytime between Q2 and Q3. With the wick turned up he should have gained at least a couple of tenths. He can blame the aero package if he likes (although Toto said that all the data they have show that it is an upgrade) but I suspect driver errors in Q3 are responsible for a big chunk of that gap.

- You can't be serious? The answer is simple: Bottas developed his "style related set up problems" at the right time in this race between Q2-Q3 and the season. Instead of looking for a replacement they gave him a new contract. His role is not to get in the way and avoid Hungary type of awkwardness.

- Ferrari need not to worry, they still have Raikkonen. If you don't think they were the quickest here I don't know what to tell you.

- Overall: stick a fork in it, at least they'll get a bit of an excuse, as if it mattered and this season wasn't already dead.

[foxmulder_ms]

Season is alive and kicking unless one is a hamilton hater.

Great job by Merc, Good turn out to cover over a second gap from practice 2.

Raikkonen was so close..

Ferrari did a great job. I was sure MErc will be dominant here but they are dead equal.

Not surprisingly Vettel got the turbo problem for the season. Now they can install a new turbo/engine and collect the place penalties and look for the next race. I still think he can reach top 5.

[lebesset]

pretty obvious now that ferrari have the better car , at least pro tem
and the wdc is about like before , vettel needed for hamilton to have a non finish , and that is still true
balance of probabilities is that hamilton will be conservative tomorrow , maybe 15 points , and at least 10 for vettel

fat lady still in her dressing room

[FrukostScones]

my crystal ball says: HAM dnf, VET podium, VES victory.

[Restomaniac]

What a job from the Ferrari mechanics...just astounding.

Interesting that Bottas didn't gain anytime between Q2 and Q3. With the wick turned up he should have gained at least a couple of tenths. He can blame the aero package if he likes (although Toto said that all the data they have show that it is an upgrade) but I suspect driver errors in Q3 are responsible for a big chunk of that gap.

As for tomorrow, if Kimi can remember what he did at the start in Singapore then Hamilton is going into the 1st corner in second and I expect the Ferrari to steadily pull away from him...and that brings the Verstappen factor into play.

I think you need to go back and watch that start again. Hamilton was no slouch off the line either.

[Artur Craft]

You can't be serious? The answer is simple: Bottas developed his "style related set up problems" at the right time in this race between Q2-Q3 and the season. Instead of looking for a replacement they gave him a new contract. His role is not to get in the way and avoid Hungary type of awkwardness.

Yup. Mercedes has been made sure since Canada(with a couple exceptions) that the poor Bottas would be turned into a Sochi/Monaco Hamilton , that is, have a car totally off for him so that he would be much slower. He can't unlearn how to drive and he was so much better up until Monaco(and it's not like this hasn't happened with Rosberg many times before, especially on 2015)....

Very surprised that Ferrari was this close. I guess Kimi just drove much better than Hamilton today because I don't think this layout suits Ferrari's car.

If Hamilton have a DNF tomorrow and Vettel still grabs some decent points, maybe he could still be in the championship battle as his problems with using a 5th PU are now gone

[GoranF1]

I am sorry if already told, but how is the weather prediction for race?
Thanks.

[ferkan]

Lol yea Merc coming out with upgrades not working is exactly the same as Vettels engine getting broken right at the end of FP3 (2nd time this year). I guess all those years Ferrari brought non working upgrades and Honda coming up with shitty engine not working on track can be called "unuckly".

[PlatinumZealot]

A surefire way to compare two tracks would be to create dimensions for vectors out of the characteristics of the straights and corners and then do a cosine similarity of both. Other similarity metrics might work better or worse.

For corners, things to consider as dimensions could be:

• curvature,

• arc length,

• entry speed,

• exit speed

• width

For straights, the dimensions could be:

• maximum speed,

• length,

• width

• entry speed,

• brake point speed

Of course, the similarity test can be done for either the entire track or for a set of sections.

Ah crap.. work caught up with me.. but anyways all of it went to crap. In theory Mercedes is supposed to be strong at this track.. looks like tyre temperatures are very nuanced these days.