2018 Australian Grand Prix - Melbourne, 22 -25 March

[GPR-A duplicate2]

Ferrari and RB will get roasted on many if not most tracks with the Qualiy Mode advantage Merc has shown. They both will have to find some temporary HP urgently if they want to have a chance of not being overtaken on the straights.

Up next, are Bahrain, China and Baku! All power circuits. RB manages to skim down the wing and be fast in Baku, but can Ferrari do the same? Seemingly, they tried in qualifying in here and were a tenth ahead of the RB.

[Unc1eM0nty]

So 3 drs zones x 50 laps and what, 2/3 overtakes? That’s even worse stats than Monaco.

That's a very sad statistic, Ross Braun and the boys need to look at some of the tracks as well as the cars if they want to see a proper racing.

[ripper]

Ferrari and RB will get roasted on many if not most tracks with the Qualiy Mode advantage Merc has shown. They both will have to find some temporary HP urgently if they want to have a chance of not being overtaken on the straights.

Up next, are Bahrain, China and Baku! All power circuits. RB manages to skim down the wing and be fast in Baku, but can Ferrari do the same? Seemingly, they tried in qualifying in here and were a tenth ahead of the RB.

In next races FER will have to play defensively and try to capitalize everything they can. MER is a much better car at the moment

[sosic2121]

There's one thing I don't understand about VET strategy: if there wasn't any VSC or SC would they have tried SS instead of S?

Probably!
That's the only other option they had.
All of this was possible because Bottas wasn't there, just as Kimi wasn't there so many times last season!

Ferrari should have sacked Kimi long time ago! Too often he's just to slow, even for a number 2 driver. Useless!

Somehow, Kimi was put on crappy strategies fairly often last year.
This weekend, he was faster than Vettel
Chances of a SC are fairly high, maybe Ferrari knowingly gambled for that with Vettel

Also, the only overtakes that I'm aware of were Daniel Ricciardo on Sainz, and then some by Valtteri Bottas.

I agree, he often gets less than ideal strategy. More then once Ferrari tried to use him as a roadblock, but it almost always failed, thus IMO he is useless even as a no.2 driver.
Mercedes used Bottas in Spain last year. (Hamilton also gained time from VSC pitstop)

BUT today it was Seb with inferior strategy!
(same as Monaco last year...)

[Fulcrum]

How many laps did Vettel run on the Ultra Soft tyres, half the race? And doing so with the car at its heaviest. Surely that is too durable for what is supposed to be the second softest tyre?

And this being the evidence thus far, what on earth was the point of introducing a Super Hard, when I doubt we will see any teams running anything harder than a Medium.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

And this being the evidence thus far, what on earth was the point of introducing a Super Hard, when I doubt we will see any teams running anything harder than a Medium.

Super Hard is part of the lobby that the back markers are working out with FIA, to allow them to run 1 set of tyres for the whole of the weekend, to save cost. 3 Engines is already achieved, so it's a little more push. I fully support them. Last heard, Tony Fernandes is working hard on this lobby to bring Caterham back!

[Vanja #66]

How many laps did Vettel run on the Ultra Soft tyres, half the race? And doing so with the car at its heaviest. Surely that is too durable for what is supposed to be the second softest tyre?

And this being the evidence thus far, what on earth was the point of introducing a Super Hard, when I doubt we will see any teams running anything harder than a Medium.

Because of this, I was surprised not to see more cars going for 2 stop strategy. Seems like teams have mastered nursing these new tyres already. Or Pirelli haven't made them a step softer, just a bit softer than last year.

[matt_b]

How many laps did Vettel run on the Ultra Soft tyres, half the race? And doing so with the car at its heaviest. Surely that is too durable for what is supposed to be the second softest tyre?

And this being the evidence thus far, what on earth was the point of introducing a Super Hard, when I doubt we will see any teams running anything harder than a Medium.

In hindsight they perhaps could've used hyper, ultra and supersoft to force a 2 stop but given that's its the first race of the season and testing was in cold temperatures they opted for a conservative approach. Going forward maybe we can get 2 stop races at other tracks.

[Edax]

>100hp
i think you forgot a 0 there m8

Uptade on Verstappen http://www.planetf1.com/news/verstappen ... f-the-car/
Apparently it was "something". I can help them with an algorithm: count what was on the car at the start, what was at the finish, substract, provide info and impact in points of DF and say Sixth Sense couldn't cope with a dreaded lack of something . OK whatever, if it's in the material world it's the reason, but until details, "something" = we couldn't come up with "anything" else.

That "something" broke on VES car in lap 4 should hardly come as a surprise as he radio'd it in and RB later confirmed it. But being "sixt sense" he was probably anticipating a spin and fabricating an excuse beforehand.

I wonder whether it traces back to the way he hit the kerb in Q. If so then that really was a costly mistake.

[henra]

Up next, are Bahrain, China and Baku! All power circuits. RB manages to skim down the wing and be fast in Baku, but can Ferrari do the same? Seemingly, they tried in qualifying in here and were a tenth ahead of the RB.

Yes, will be interesting to see if the SF71 can live with low DF setups. Still they won't have much of a choice. With a Laptime optiised high DF setup they won't have a chance defending against Merc on the straights of more overtaking- friendly circuits. That will on the other hand compromise their Qualifying Laptimes.
They are somewhat between a rock and a hard place with their clearly inferior Qualiy Mode.

The only up- side was that tyres lasted well. Especially the US. On the downside, the Ferrari didn't really seem to be able to switch on the softs. They lasted also well but weren't really quick. Merc on the other hand seemed to be quick with the softs but managed to overheat them towards the end.

[George-Jung]

I do think Hamilton threw it away himself when he switched on the attack mode and immediately went off the track..

After that he had like 4 or 5 laps to get back behind Vettel, but by this time he had used too much of the attack mode, forcing him to switch it off again...

[NL_Fer]

And this being the evidence thus far, what on earth was the point of introducing a Super Hard, when I doubt we will see any teams running anything harder than a Medium.

Super Hard is part of the lobby that the back markers are working out with FIA, to allow them to run 1 set of tyres for the whole of the weekend, to save cost. 3 Engines is already achieved, so it's a little more push. I fully support them. Last heard, Tony Fernandes is working hard on this lobby to bring Caterham back!

Yer just joking right?

Superhard is actually last years hard tyre. The made all the compounds one step softer. Super Soft is last years ultrasoft. Ultrasoft now is softer and hypersoft more soft than that.

Last years supersoft was a pretty useless tyre, not much more durable than ultra, not much faster than soft. Wonder what this year’s worst tyre is.

[PlatinumZealot]

It's true that Vettel wasn't really making any inroads at Raikkonen in the first stint but he also wasn't losing that much time. But I just can't see how you can say that when you consider Vettel's and Hamilton's pace after restart and how they gapped Raikkonen and Ricciardo

Vettel was on tyres 8 laps younger than Raikkonen. Vettel was clearly slower than Hamilton until Hamilton decided overtaking was pointless and he turned his engine down. Raikkonen was also clearly holding up Ricciardo who was also on far younger rubber.

Hamilton was not faster;
Strat mode 14 was clearly faster to what Seb was using, until Hamilton decided to turn it down.

He didn't use start mode 14. Did you even watch the race?

[CriXus]

Vettel's win was pure luck and after yesterday press conference it goes to show that sometime is better to be more humble and not so arrogant.

[Juzh]

Vettel was on tyres 8 laps younger than Raikkonen. Vettel was clearly slower than Hamilton until Hamilton decided overtaking was pointless and he turned his engine down. Raikkonen was also clearly holding up Ricciardo who was also on far younger rubber.

Hamilton was not faster;
Strat mode 14 was clearly faster to what Seb was using, until Hamilton decided to turn it down.

He didn't use start mode 14. Did you even watch the race?

It was suggested to him, but did he use it? I don't know. It was also mentioned it's not sustainable, meaning it probably uses too much battery.

Regarding the tires. Pretty much all cars did their personal best laptimes on 26 laps or more old soft tires, while Vettel was able to go 28 laps (25 race + 3 quali) deep on ultras with his best lap on those tires on lap 24 (21 race laps + 3 quali). It seems to me there's no doubt tires are still way too hard for mixed strategies, but they are good for at least some kind of racing (engine temps aside).