2018 Spanish Grand Prix - Catalunya, May 11-13

[Wynters]

Oh dear.

Man thanks fellow professional shock!

It's a good thing there's nothing similar for Ferrari from, oh, I don't know, say...2017? Wasn't that when they, purely coincidentally, somehow closed the gap to a dominant team just days later?

Oh...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLPIArmRKSwSeriously, it's just F1. Things change. Sometimes it benefits some teams, other times it benefits other teams. Often, it doesn't benefit any team. Posters whining about it demean themselves and the forum as a whole. The races threads are already painful places to visit, please don't make them worse.

[Phil]

I find it highly annoying to be honest. I am a Mercedes supporter, but i didnt go around calling it cheating when the FIA banned FRIC and other innovative suspension technologies. It’s just the way it is. Move on and enjoy how close it is.

[carisi2k]

Time to bring back tyre competition I feel.

[diffuser]

Just checked the weather forecast, chance of rain for race tomorrow just dropped from 43% to almost 8% in the last few hours. Chance of rain for the race looking increasingly bleak.

It should be raining or drizzling now, and should continue until the morning, there's a small chance the track is damp come the race.

Would be good for Alo to skip that stint on SS.

[Brenton]

True, but Ferrari not working well on SS doesn't change the fact that SS is a faster tyre than S. In the first run both Vettel and Kimi made huge mistakes. After that Ferrari went on S maybe because they didn't have enough time left to bring the SS in the right working range. Mercedes managed to do it.

You are clearly grasping at straws here. The SS isnt working right on this track (overheats). It was very obvious in FP2 when the track surface was even warmer (40+ degrees). The softs were better for all teams, but differing tire allocations and race strategy factored in that not everyone used the soft for their Q3 runs. Obviously Mercedes was already quickest on the first Q3 run, so Ferrari took a gamble.

The difference between the SS is very very small on this track.

That makes the guys that made the tires in past days seem like magicians. With the exception of an odd Indianapolis weekend it was pretty much bolt on and go. A qualifier was just that, two laps of hair raising performance, no matter the track temperature, wind direction, or whatever excuses get thrown upon us nowadays.

This week Williams with all their F1 experience couldn’t get any of the tires to work. The pecking order shifts with a few degrees of track temperature. I wonder how many people the top teams have employed just to understand the tires, (talk about cost efficiency).

What is causing all these issues, Is it that the tires cannot keep up in the evolution of HP and downforce, or is it the concept of an engineered cliff that is making these tires so sensitive?

Truly. I don't understand what happened. Nostalgic glasses: in the 90s and seemingly other decades , it seemed that in every racing series I watched, the tires were simple. A lap to get up to optimal operating temperature, followed by gradual decline in grip each lap until pitting either when out of fuel or a safety car period. They could overheat temporarily if pushing repeatedly well past the limit, but cool off after taking it easy for a lap. No extremely finicky temp window, no strange wear sequences, no driving to a delta. In Nascar, F1, cart, irl, etc.. Especially Nascar... Much heavier cars yet with 90s tech the tires characteristics made for great racing.

It hurts the appeal of F1 to see these supposedly cutting edge tech cars be so incapable of performing outside of very narrow circumstances. Drivers shouldn't have to worry about their windshield wiper fluid needing to be between 19.5-20.1 C in order to do a qualifying lap.

[rkn]

Oh dear.

https://postimages.org/

Lauda: Thank you for brand new tyres, they worked.
Pirelli guy: No problem, from now on the same tyres will be used for the entire season but it wont be told to other teams.
Lauda: I appreciate it, dont worry you will get yours 1 million dollars on your bank account.
Pirelli guy: Ok its a deal, if you want even more durable tyres you can always ask for it. We can design the tyres around your car, so you can win again.
Lauda: Thats what we thought also.
Pirelli guy: We will meet again, secret meeting at Canada GP if things wont work for you in next races?
Lauda: Alees klar, auf wiedersehen.

Full clip for context: Lauda's hand (heart?) sign, Toto's smile. Wouldn't suprise me if Isola found a box of cigars in his office Monday morning.

[diffuser]

Considering the different tyre specs compared to the Barcelona tests and the amount of upgrades from other teams, the team has done an absolutely stunning job. I believe they have improved with around ~1 second with this upgrade. Every single upgrade has been kept on the car. Just imagine how these upgrades might affect the race pace knowing how much it has done for the qualifying pace. Gotta give credit where credit is due!

Not sure of that...the gap to pole is .5 less than year.

[LeClerc]

What tyre is Magnussen starting on?
Alonso did not improve in Q2 after all on Soft so he starts on SS.

MAG is on soft, but he is not.

[Phil]

Truly. I don't understand what happened.

It’s rather simple, actually. Take refueling away (for safety reasons) and you end up with a progressional race. Fastest car qualifies on pole, the race is pretty mich guaranteed to finish the way it starts.

Add mandatory pitstops with a singular durable tire, pretty much the same is guaranteed to happen - at worst, the leading car will pit at the last lap with a huge margin. To invoke a higher level of strategic influence, you need differing tire compounds. This leads to more unpredictability and therefore excitment.

The ‘sensitive tires’ provoke the situation that the faster car ahead will need to stop at some (early) point, which will likely bring him into traffic which gives us more overtakes and a spectacle.

For all intents and purpose, it’s not that much different than the refueling era when teams could opt to fuel more for longer stints but at a pace penalty, or run shorter but quicker and stop more.

[bonjon1979]

I don’t know about everyone else but I was surprised to hear that this introducing different gauge tyres was standard. They’ve done it at spa and silverstone before. They were always planning to do it at those two races this year and added Barcelona to the mix after teams (including Ferrari) complained of blistering in winter testing.

Personally, I think it’s wrong that a tyre should need to be changed at all. The super soft or whatever should remain the same throughout the season or you’re always going to be open to accusations of favouring none team or another as every team treats the tyres differently. I’m sympathetic to any Ferrari or red bull fan who might be cheated by this result as it does seem manipulated. However, I would add that the situation is already quite manipulated because of the narrow operating windows of these tyres across the board. Teams started their designs 12 months ago before the final compounds had been finalised. I think any seasoned f1tevhnical forumer can see that certain cars have been able to get the tyres into the window than others and that isn’t necessarily down to the skill of the design team, it’s more to the fact that the tyres happened to suit their car. Tyres should not be this sensitive, if their make up and compound is not nailed down before design of the car had started, otherwise it’s completely left to chance if your design will suit the tyres you end up running on.

[bonjon1979]

Just to add to that, I remember last year that Ferrari struggled to get one of the compounds to work for them, was it the medium or soft? Anyway, it damages the sport when tyres are seem to manipulate results. Softer tyres should be quicker but not last as long, harder tyres should be slower but last longer. All this operating window nonsense makes it far go complicated but yet they seem to be aiming for this madness with Pirelli stating they want tyres that operate better under different temperatures. Just make it simple. Make them operate across a broad range of temps and just change how grippy they are and how long they last.

[Dazed1]

Truly. I don't understand what happened.

It’s rather simple, actually. Take refueling away (for safety reasons) and you end up with a progressional race. Fastest car qualifies on pole, the race is pretty mich guaranteed to finish the way it starts.

Add mandatory pitstops with a singular durable tire, pretty much the same is guaranteed to happen - at worst, the leading car will pit at the last lap with a huge margin. To invoke a higher level of strategic influence, you need differing tire compounds. This leads to more unpredictability and therefore excitment.

The ‘sensitive tires’ provoke the situation that the faster car ahead will need to stop at some (early) point, which will likely bring him into traffic which gives us more overtakes and a spectacle.

For all intents and purpose, it’s not that much different than the refueling era when teams could opt to fuel more for longer stints but at a pace penalty, or run shorter but quicker and stop more.

processional race?

[Brenton]

What tire strategy is expected tomorrow? Is it really predictable or uncertain? Two stops for everyone?

Is there any expectations on race pace being significantly different than qualifying for any of the drivers? What's up with the big performance gaps between teammates today? Can hulkenberg overtake many cars? The close gap in the top 6 is exciting.

Edit: hulkenberg had a mechanical problem... Fuel pressure. What's up with Ericson being much slower than leclerc? Bad mistake by Hartley... That rare clipping the grass on corner entry type of crash was Maldonado esque.

I worry that McLaren's low top speed will cause Alonso to get overtaken 2-4 times on the front stretch after getting a great start, maybe p4 or p5 after lap 1 if there's a couple cars ahead collide or run off track.

[godlameroso]

It's not ideal but I would wager the super soft is probably good for 10-12 laps, if I were Alonso I'd be banking on a 2 stopper. 12 laps on the SS then two 27 lap stints on the mediums.

[godlameroso]

Considering the different tyre specs compared to the Barcelona tests and the amount of upgrades from other teams, the team has done an absolutely stunning job. I believe they have improved with around ~1 second with this upgrade. Every single upgrade has been kept on the car. Just imagine how these upgrades might affect the race pace knowing how much it has done for the qualifying pace. Gotta give credit where credit is due!

Not sure of that...the gap to pole is .5 less than year.

Alonso will clearly be best of the rest Magnussen can't outrace him, not happening. Hell, I'm pretty sure Vandoorne will have to pace to finish in the points. I wonder who will trigger the saftey car or VSC this race, with the field being so close the drivers will push harder than ever so there's bound to be some incident.