2018 Spanish Grand Prix - Catalunya, May 11-13

[bosyber]

But, with all this moaning and conspiring about tyres, if the weather does indeed turn up rainy during the race, the strategies will again be different, and it will be a matter of who manages to extend the wet/intermediates the best and who goes onto the dry at the right moment. Also, Verstappen will like that, and it could bring Red Bull further into competition. Will be interesting.

[!Technical]

A podium is definitely possible if there is chaos between the top three. Hope it happens!

[GPR-A duplicate2]

As the data continues to accumulate, and we head into the heart of the European season, Mercedes will continue to understand all of the tires and how to optimize their setups accordingly

The W08's early season tire woes last year were much worse; that car ate through rears like butter in race trim. The W09, on the other hand, has been much gentler on the tires in race trim this year. That's really helped Merc from not only a pace perspective, but a strategy perspective as well (Bottas has had some quality stints lately).

If Merc can continue the trend of keeping the tires in the window over the course of a single lap in quali, the car's development curve will accelerate. Could be in for one hell of a championship this year.

With the kind of car that Ferrari has turned up with for this season, if they allow Mercedes to slip away one more time, I don't think Ferrari would ever win a championship in the near future.

SF71H is a wonderful car with such agility that it has performed extremely well on every single track that it has visited, whereas W09 has similar characteristics to it's predecessor, which reflects very poorly on Mercedes as they couldn't resolve the fundamental problem with their car. But that car is probably the fastest when it wakes up, but so far on most occasions, it hasn't, in qualifying.

Luck has favored both teams on different occasions and mostly, it's Mercedes who have committed blunders with strategy so far. So essentially, on a day when everything goes right for them, they stand to win.

The core of the problem in this GP is the fact that the Barcelona has resurfaced the track and has smoothened it up. Couldn't they have figured out ways of resurfacing, without screwing up the character of the circuit?

[atanatizante]

1. On the press conference after the Qualy one journalist put the following question: “It looks pretty strange for us because usually Mercedes has some problems to extract the maximum out of the softest compound tyre, today you were pretty strong on that. Ferrari was quite the opposite. Do you have an explaining for that? Seb mentioned thinner tyres this weekend. Is it related to this or is it special track surface we have here track layout or…?” Lewis didn`t knew/wanna respond, Bottas did something vaguely but Seb answered and told us that:“The tyres are different. They are different for everyone so everyone needs to cope with that. I think it was exceptional that Mercedes were struggling in the last events as much as they were – but thinner tread, basically the tyre is harder, so, we still have the same tyres, if you look at the colours, but they are harder than they used to be.”

2. Another one put the following question:“All of you are saying you’re having problems with the tyres. What is it, exactly? Do they not reach the temperature? Go over temperature? Graining? They have blisters? Also, Lewis, you used the supersoft at the end of Q2 after registering your time on soft tyres, and also you got the best time on supersoft in Q3. All weekend until now you didn’t have a so-good lap with supersoft.” And Lewis did the following answer:“ It’s because it’s a constant learning process – but these tyres, they seem to have the smallest working window. Whether you give us more rubber or less rubber, they appear to be a lot harder than last year. I know they went softer but I think it’s more so because the working range is far narrower than it was last year – and so you give it everything on an out-lap and you still don't have your tyres in the window. And they heat the tyres up in the blanket. This year they’re just too hard. That’s why everyone struggles. I don’t understand why they worked in Australia and haven’t worked ever since and today we have them working. Yeah, let’s hope… I was saying to Valtteri, when we get to Monaco we’re going to just be driving around on cold tyres because it’s not very easy to get your temperatures up there.”

3. Now, first of all, we must look at Pirelli site in order to understand which working window has both S and SS tyres (at least the old ones): https://www.pirelli.com/tires/en-us/mot ... omepage-f1# In case of the SS this tyre “is ideal for slow and twisty circuits, especially in cold weather, when maximum mechanical grip is needed. The supersoft benefits from an extremely rapid warm-up time, which makes it ideal in qualifying as well, but the flip side to that important characteristic is, of course, increased degradation. This is a low working range compound”. ...
In contrast, for S tyre: “This is one of the most frequently used tires in the range, striking a very good balance between performance and durability, with the accent on performance. It is still biased towards speed rather than long distances but is nonetheless capable of providing teams with a competitive advantage both at the beginning of the race on full fuel and when used as a ‘sprint’ tire at the end. This is a high working range compound.”

4. These new tyres have a thinner inner tread by 0.4mm so their operation window shifted up by a few centigrades, as Seb said being harder than the previous ones. This means now a car which has a setup to run them harder now can`t overheat them, so they could reach the optimum operating window and extract the maximum grip out of these tyres. Not to mention a lower rake car philosophy gives you a shorter suspension setup hence car`s operation window is smaller …

5. In order to understand that we should look back at China qualy when Merc went faster on S tyres and Ferrari on US ones. US tyres being “low working range compound for use on tight and twisty circuits that place an emphasis on mechanical grip” were overheated both in Q1&Q3 by Merc`s car setup and that`s why they went for S tyres ending being fastest in Q2. Another reason why they went to the S tyres is the fact that these soft tyres have the widest operating window from all of 2018 tyres available, so they could reach it even having a small one. Now here at Barca Ferrari having a softer setup than Merc and having a harder tyre than previously known ones they couldn`t put enough energy hence heat into them in order to hit the sweet spot aka optimum temp working range, which went upwards as I said before …

[Restomaniac]

Watching the F2 race and the track looks damp and treacherous off line and on the curbs. I would guess it’s rained recently.

[Bill_Kar]

Watching the F2 race and the track looks damp and treacherous off line and on the curbs. I would guess it’s rained recently.

Yes and more so in the middle sector. But just right in the end, the sun popped out, and probably will stay so, so it could be a clear dry line until F1 start.

[Tom145145]

Watching the F2 race and the track looks damp and treacherous off line and on the curbs. I would guess it’s rained recently.

Yes and more so in the middle sector. But just right in the end, the sun popped out, and probably will stay so, so it could be a clear dry line until F1 start.

It’s now dry and clearing up, it rained heavily overnight so it’s a green track. Still quite cold but it s likely to be hotter by lights out. It will not be as hot as Friday though.

[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.

His car is not fast enough to build a gap to fall into after he pits. A two stop plan is suicide for him! The suspersofts are not bad at accelerating out of corners. Watch the Verstappen Ricciardo side by side. Max clearly had better acceleration up to sector three where his tyres start to lose it. Alonso must take full advantage of this on the first lap!

I'll be mighty impressed if someone can pull off a one stopper, no one was able to do so in testing regardless of the tire used. They'll be so slow at the end of each stint that they'll be sitting ducks.

[Vettel165]

Dont know why but I expect Bottas to be able to overtake Hamilton at the start with a nice slipstream.

[djones]

How many times has pole sitter here led the first lap?

Just looking at a replay of some starts, it seems VERY likely pole man is overtaken.

[Zynerji]

Lots of empty seats on the driver parade...

[RZS10]

Rain north of Barcelona, forecast has it at 80% during the race

[Restomaniac]

Watching the F2 race and the track looks damp and treacherous off line and on the curbs. I would guess it’s rained recently.

Yes and more so in the middle sector. But just right in the end, the sun popped out, and probably will stay so, so it could be a clear dry line until F1 start.

Indeed but even after the pre events the track will be green as hell.

[Restomaniac]

The last winner in a Williams was Crashtor..

What a damning statement that is for Williams.

[Fulcrum]

Even if it doesn't rain, there might be a good chance to see some vortices being generated.