2018 Australian Grand Prix - Melbourne, 22 -25 March

[johnny comelately]

They need to introduce some serious updates on the rear because the car lacks balance, plus the already mentioned consumption problem. They are two serious problems so I think it was pretty good to be second and third in the qualy. Anyway, the change in the wheelbase´s lenght is causing them more problems than benefits so far.

Dont the long wheelbase cars lose it when they do go (example Bottas)

It should be the other way round - Long wheelbase makes the car more predictable if it goes, and should make it easier to correct if it goes. At least that is my understanding in normal road cars...

Yes, but once they lose it the inertia just spins them so strongly (chassis blokes are going to love that)

[SiLo]

Yes a longer car will be more predictable, but once it steps out of line your corrections have to be so much bigger to catch it, it will most likely spin.

[NathanOlder]

The likelyhood of another SC AFTER the VSC was very small. Hence Vettel was massively disadvantaged and Hamilton was able to sustain the lead after the first round of pitstops.

The pendulum always swings both ways, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

It does ndeed swing both ways, In China last year you could maybe say it swung both ways in the same race. Yesterday it swung 1 way, very big one way.

Going back to China I remember a few cars stopping for slicks under the VSC when Vettel did, most spun off and one put it in the wall causing a SC. SO it was arguably the wrong tyre to be on, so Vettel may in fact have lost a lot of time in 2-3 laps while the track still wasn't ready for slicks. So it could be argued that the SC helped Vettel most as it bunched them all up again.

[johnny comelately]

Any thoughts on why Maxxie Verstappen's car was so twitchy (early race) before he the larger lose??

[Sieper]

Any thoughts on why Maxxie Verstappen's car was so twitchy (early race) before he the larger lose??

He had diffusor damage, he radioed (said post race all of a sudden he lost the down force / grip) it in to the team already several laps before the spin (and indeed the car was twitching all over the place). The damage was confirmed by the team during the pitstop. On the amus website they also have posted an interview with Horner who said "unbelievable that he kept this much pressure on Mag and Alo" (but yes, Horner is a very good marketeer )

Max said he had the most trouble in mid corner, later in the race you could also see that was exactly were Alonso pulled away the most (not that without the damage Max could have passed him, no way with Alonso!)

So now the question, is the diffusor too vulnerable, will this happen again, did max make a big mistake on the curbs (but the curbs in Melbourne aren't that aggressive are they?) that caused the damage? In any case, you should be able to run a bit wide without damaging the diffusor.

[ENGINE TUNER]

Anyone have any clue on this.

Was just going over the live timing again, and was interested in Vettels Final sector on his in lap. The live timing never displayed his sector time. So I thought maybe that was due to him pitting.

Alonso and Ricciardo both pit the same lap and their times were displayed Ric - 63.2 and Alo - 65.7. Would be really interested to see Vettels S3 time on his pit lap.

Anyone shed some light on to this ??

The Ferrari finished higher in the Wcc last year so that gives them a closer pit lane stop towards entrance I think. It's all jumbled up, some teams stop in their box b4 the start finish, some stop after, it sometimes makes it impossible to compare in and out laps.

[MuseF1]

Any thoughts on why Maxxie Verstappen's car was so twitchy (early race) before he the larger lose??

According to Horner he damaged the diffuser when he went wide and onto the kerbs at turn 12 exit.

[johnny comelately]

Any thoughts on why Maxxie Verstappen's car was so twitchy (early race) before he the larger lose??

He had diffusor damage, he radioed (said post race all of a sudden he lost the down force / grip) it in to the team already several laps before the spin (and indeed the car was twitching all over the place). The damage was confirmed by the team during the pitstop. On the amus website they also have posted an interview with Horner who said "unbelievable that he kept this much pressure on Mag and Alo" (but yes, Horner is a very good marketeer )

Max said he had the most trouble in mid corner, later in the race you could also see that was exactly were Alonso pulled away the most (not that without the damage Max could have passed him, no way with Alonso!)

So now the question, is the diffusor too vulnerable, will this happen again, did max make a big mistake on the curbs (but the curbs in Melbourne aren't that aggressive are they?) that caused the damage? In any case, you should be able to run a bit wide without damaging the diffusor.

Thank you for that

[johnny comelately]

Any thoughts on why Maxxie Verstappen's car was so twitchy (early race) before he the larger lose??

According to Horner he damaged the diffuser when he went wide and onto the kerbs at turn 12 exit.

Thank you

[komninosm]

Boring race. Fell asleep twice and didn't miss anything. Was Australia always this hard to pass or is it worse with this year's rules and aero?
Can't they change the track or move it to another track or something in Australia?

Software "glitch" aside from Mercedes part,i think the rule is just stupid...why on earth the guys on the track are forced to drive to a SC delta and those who pit can race on entry and on exit (exit being almost half of the main straight length).Its not that Merc was hosed...Next time it can be Ferrari/RBR/MCL etc.

Good point, it does seem weird that you can "race" during a safety car and during pitting no less, but maybe it's due to a limitation in measuring the delta or something. Should be looked at for a rules change maybe.

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.

Yeah it seemed really lame to do half the race (and Q3 burning lap) in the softest tire available in the race, which being a race almost as unpassable as Monaco made it worse. My view is that we need Refueling back to make things interesting and multiple pit strats better. Would also make pit stops slower so we see less dangerous tire-comes-off mistakes. But I've been saying that for over a decade.

Toto says it might be a software bug that may have represented the VSC delta times inaccurately.

makes sense, so maybe HAM drove to a wrong value?

Probably not, because I think Raikonnen did similar times. You could only say Vettel was too fast, but if he broke any limits surely he would have been caught and punished.
What I wonder about was if Hamilton had any more rubber left. Did he pit because of Rai or could he go on no longer? If he had a 3 second advantage over Rai and he could maintain it without pitting then he didn't have to pit until he ran out of tire completely. So was Rai making better times in new Soft tires than Hamilton in old Ultra Soft? I think it was only 1 lap so no measure, but still...

[Wass85]

I feel for Kimi as i think this bad luck will have already relegated him to No 2 driver, i hope that's not the case as for the first time in years he seems comfortable with the softest tyre and had the pace on Vettel all weekend.

[RZS10]

Interestingly, Vettel isn't so sure: [...]
This might be Vettel trying to play mental games with Hamilton - blowing smoke up his doo-dah - but it doesn't read that way.

Also this:
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=27103&p=751627#p751627

tl:dr
Lewis did not do a 2nd run in Q2 and his first Q3 run wasn't quicker than his first run in Q2 so he improved his time massively in one step - the others improved in several steps

[Midi]

Personally, I think the reason why Mercedes was tricked into pitting right after Kimi is because Kimi's outlap on softs was quite fast, possibly faster than sustainable to reach the end. After Hamilton pitted Kimis pace dropped quite a bit (around 8 tenths I believe). Hamiltons first laps on soft were quite fast too and then dropped relatively as well because Kimi was definitely no real threat at that point. I believe Ferrari said to Kimi to take it easy after Hamilton pitted and drawing Mercedes into a false sense of security.

With the VSC it is funny that we are used to display relative gaps on track in terms of time while in fact the real gap is distance of course. A relative gap of say 10 seconds at race speed means a certain relative distance on the track which means this same distance can be a 16 second gap at VSC speeds. I'm sure that the software takes this into account so only the extra pit entry and exit speed is the difference but Mercedes has made a mistake with a similar VSC situation before (Monaco 2015) . So it surprises me that it happened again.

[Wass85]

Interestingly, Vettel isn't so sure: [...]
This might be Vettel trying to play mental games with Hamilton - blowing smoke up his doo-dah - but it doesn't read that way.

Also this:
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=27103&p=751627#p751627

tl:dr
Lewis did not do a 2nd run in Q2 and his first Q3 run wasn't quicker than his first run in Q2 so he improved his time massively in one step - the others improved in several steps

He did do a second run but abandoned it, must have had a scruffy lap.

[f1316]

Interestingly, Vettel isn't so sure: [...]
This might be Vettel trying to play mental games with Hamilton - blowing smoke up his doo-dah - but it doesn't read that way.

Also this:
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=27103&p=751627#p751627

tl:dr
Lewis did not do a 2nd run in Q2 and his first Q3 run wasn't quicker than his first run in Q2 so he improved his time massively in one step - the others improved in several steps

Yes, I was going to say something similar - he had a gap of around half a second anyway for most of the sessions we saw and it was really his first Q3 lap that was the outlier; I think some of that might be because his tyres were not optimal, given his track position when Bottas crashed (he had already done the first sector or so).

That said, I think there was a decent amount more in the Ferrari and Red Bull packages, with just about everyone reporting a mistake; it’s unusual to see them all improve so little (1 or 2 tenths) from Q2 to the final lap of Q3, so you’ve also got to say Lewis was the only one who really maximised.

I still think Bottas would have been in the same zone as Vettel, Kimi and Verstappen.