2018 Azerbaijan Grand Prix - Baku, April 27-29

[George-Jung]

Verstappen gaining almost half a second on Vettel in Sector 3. Weird.

From +0,9 to +0,4.. saw it too- weird indeed.

[NathanOlder]

Verstappen gaining almost half a second on Vettel in Sector 3. Weird.

Yeah, and it was showing a yellow sector for him ??

[MtthsMlw]

Verstappen gaining almost half a second on Vettel in Sector 3. Weird.

From +0,9 to +0,4.. saw it too- weird indeed.

Maybe their using more ERS on the straight than Ferrari at the moment.

[Sieper]

Vettel had a problem exitting turn 16. Unless the MB party mode is strong here I expect Ferrari pole. If Hamilton can get all sectors together he might also be up there. Don’t know If that is in the tires but he has Been quick in all sectors, just not at the same time.

[Vettel165]

Verstappen gaining almost half a second on Vettel in Sector 3. Weird.

From +0,9 to +0,4.. saw it too- weird indeed.

Seb made a big mistake in S3 on his fastest lap time, which cost him about 0,4. Without that mistake he would be about 0,7 s ahead. But in qualy everything is possible, others arent standing still.

[Morteza]

[MtthsMlw]

Gearbox penalty for HULK

[Vettel165]

Gearbox penalty for HULK

Oh dear, his qualy performance in last races was absolutely spot on. He deserves to be in a better team, feel bad for him.

[Vanja #66]

I agree but that wasn't the point I was making. Teams have misjudged how many US they needed and the reason is because it was a blind guess. Something the user I was replying to stated wasn't the case.

Yup, because out of 4000+ staff in F1 not one single person stopped to wonder - is this too much purple tyres? Guess you know better than them.

[Phil]

Verstappen gaining almost half a second on Vettel in Sector 3. Weird.

RedBull is using Spa level of downforce for little drag. It means they are compromised through the slower corners on this track. Horner said this during FP3 in an interview with CH4.

[djos]

Why on earth is Ricciardo so far down the order?

[Phil]

I agree but that wasn't the point I was making. Teams have misjudged how many US they needed and the reason is because it was a blind guess. Something the user I was replying to stated wasn't the case.

Yup, because out of 4000+ staff in F1 not one single person stopped to wonder - is this too much purple tyres? Guess you know better than them.

When the teams made their allocations for these tracks, they had little information on how these tires were going to be on all these tracks. The trend has usually been that the softest is the best, especially for qualifying, because it gives you the fastest lap, even if they only last for 3 laps. Obviously, this sets you up for a disadvantage during the race when you need to start on them.

If you look at the trend of the last few races - race circumstance meant that it was better (strategically) to run a harder tire in your 2nd stint (or even in Q3 and the first stint of the race) in order have a better outlook for the race because sometimes, race position and stopping fewer is better than running faster but being stuck in traffic. Also, because these tires have a different temperature window they need to hit, it's important to know what you are getting into. For that they need tires. If they only have 2 or 3 sets for the entire weekend, it obviously sets them up at a disadvantage, because they need to test one in FP to know how long they last and what kind of performance they can extract, they may need one during Q2 (if they want to start on that tire during the race) and then it would of course be preferable to have an extra set during the race (like in China when Mercedes didn't) when a circumstantial safety car meant having one would have been key to win the race.

[Vanja #66]

When the teams made their allocations for these tracks, they had little information on how these tires were going to be on all these tracks. The trend has usually been that the softest is the best, especially for qualifying, because it gives you the fastest lap, even if they only last for 3 laps. Obviously, this sets you up for a disadvantage during the race when you need to start on them.

If you look at the trend of the last few races - race circumstance meant that it was better (strategically) to run a harder tire in your 2nd stint (or even in Q3 and the first stint of the race) in order have a better outlook for the race because sometimes, race position and stopping fewer is better than running faster but being stuck in traffic. Also, because these tires have a different temperature window they need to hit, it's important to know what you are getting into. For that they need tires. If they only have 2 or 3 sets for the entire weekend, it obviously sets them up at a disadvantage, because they need to test one in FP to know how long they last and what kind of performance they can extract, they may need one during Q2 (if they want to start on that tire during the race) and then it would of course be preferable to have an extra set during the race (like in China when Mercedes didn't) when a circumstantial safety car meant having one would have been key to win the race.

Phil, this discussion between Restomaniac and myself started from completely different reasons and morphed into this because of some arguments from his side. This is the post in question:

I would be reasonably sure that the Ferrari team are fully aware as to how their car uses each type of tyre, and their strategists will have chosen the tyres that in their educated opinion, will work best for them.

Ferrari will have had no clue how their car treats the new compounds in 'anger' when they decided on this weekends tyre compounds.

The point is, it's a street circuit and all teams brought 8+ SS compounds last year, which was the softest at the time. Now most of the brought 9+ compounds of softest available, some however brought 7 (Renault) and Pirelli stated the track is a bit smoother this year. To say that teams (specifically Ferrari, but I don't think he meant only them) have had no clue how tyres would react to being run on this track at the time of choosing is a serious underestimation of their knowledge, experience, understanding of statistical data and whatnot.

I'm not talking about differences between starting from pole and starting from second row, I'm talking about having a good understanding of what the track will be at the time of running. How your car behaves in simulator in different temperature conditions, how bad the wear should be, could it be like China (teams have certainly had in mind an option of running on Softs in Q2 and going all the way on Medium to the end, yet they chose a lot of Ultras) or could it be like Monaco (when Seb ran more than half a race distance on Ultras). The most important for teams is - can they make a good correlation between different compounds and use the data from, say, softest compound to have a good estimation on how the harder ones will behave. If they do, well, they don't need more than 2 sets of prime and option tyres for any weekend - and I will be very surprised if this turns out to happen on every race for the rest of the season.

I giggled reading Restomaniac's post, I'm not even close to understanding how F1 tyres are made and how they work - but I know what I don't know and I understand what teams can know before choosing their tyres for the weekend. Ferrari used a lot of time in 2016 to learn about 2017 tyres. That knowledge didn't evaporate and it seems Mercedes (for example) is still playing catch-up. As far as I'm concerned, this discussion should be put to rest and we should enjoy the Qualy ahead of us.

[Phil]

I personally think there's merit to both points. The teams had to decide the tire allocation for this weekend well in advance. As you say, F1 is data driven and thus it's logical there was a lot of reasoning why teams allocated what they did. I think what most here (Restomaniac included) are arguing, is that with the power of hindsight, with the power of knowledge of the last 3 races, there's a genuine point that allocating as many softest tires as possible may not have been the best allocation. If most teams could revert their allocation, I'm sure they would have brought some more SS instead. Which tires are best for a race is very dependent on tire temperature, their car and well, factors that are well outside what they could possible predict couple of months ago. And there has definitely been a trend so far this year that suggests that having as many of the softest tires as possible is not the way to go. It may have been in the past, because for example last year, the Pirellis were very conservative in their compounds and ended up being far more durable than what they wanted/expected. This year, the tires are more on point. You have a qualifying tire (the HS and the US), but those are arguably not very good 'race tires'.

Personally, I think Renault had their tire allocation spot on, but they are a little too far off the pace to really gain a big advantage from them. It would have been great for Mercedes to have more softs or super-softs for the race - it would definitely set us and them up better strategically.

[cplchanb]

all the times on their graphics just disappeared...FAIL