2018 Canadian Grand Prix, Montreal June 8-10

[Godius]

Verstappen butchered Ricciardo once again on pure merit.

Verstappen had a brand new latest spec engine, Ricciardo was clearly driving his old mongrel PU only as fast as he had to go get home. Proof is he set the fastest lap of the race once the team let him of the hook.

Both cars raced in Canada with the updated power unit from what I understand.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

Verstappen had a brand new latest spec engine, Ricciardo was clearly driving his old mongrel PU only as fast as he had to go get home. Proof is he set the fastest lap of the race once the team let him of the hook.

If that is how the reasoning works, then Verstappen's car failures of early last year should give him the benefits and that can easily make him the better driver.

I see people become selective in judging. It has been clear in the last two years that, whenever they both have an incident free race, its Verstappen who finishes ahead.

Ricciardo did have an old MGU-K of which they had to break the seal, legally, to make repairs to. I am not sure by how much that older component affected his performance, but certainly it's worth not ignoring it. Often times an older MGU-K is not optimized for a newer ICE.

I'm not going to speak about events outside this race. That's not relevant to the thread. Note this does nothing away for the brilliant performance by Verstappen this race. He drove well, even making Bottas' life difficult at the end of the race.

I absolutely do not discount the lack of parity in the PU components due to the older MGU-K, that may or may not have played part in the performance. I am only highlighting that, these sort of problems hurts either driver over the course of season and would we remain consistent in measuring them by having an unbiased comparison at the end of the year? People have the tendency to choose and talk what suits their narrative. I am not saying @djos is doing that here, but when the debate heats about these two drivers' performance, it doesn't go unbiased.

[F1NAC]

The tires are a big problem. Why can't they make a tire that like in most auto racing has been for decades, the driver is able to push the car hard for many laps continuously? Maybe not extremely hard but hard enough to be considered going close to maximum possible limit. With these tires it seems the optimal fastest race strategy is to baby them. What kind of auto racing is this where the best driver is the one who knows how to baby tires the most? People said it was like that when Perelli had the 3-4 pit stop race tires. Why do other tires manufacturers like in Nascar manage to make tires that can be raced hard that still drop off linearly, unlike these weird F1 tires that have to stay in this narrow temp window?

On the subject of the cars being too big... there was a great post on this forum in one of the car design sub-forums about how car weight limit bloat happens, with a cycle of teams complaining about needing a higher weight limit. But I can't find it at the moment. Seemingly another case of how in F1, the inmates run the asylum - the teams make the rules, even if those rules are to the detriment of the racing (and ultimately to the teams bottom line!)

I am sorry but you guys all missing the point with the reason about the "boring" race.

This race was "boring" because cars were in order of their potential speed. Ferrari was the slightly faster car followed by closely matched Redbull and Mercedes. There was no pass because cars which were behind were slower or almost identical speed to the car front. Top 3 cars are very closely matched and that is that. Qualifying and mistakes are critical factors this season. When everything goes according to plan in a sunny weekend, this is expected.

There was only one thing unexpected and that was Merc's mistake with Lewis pitstop which cost him one place.

Also, I am glad to see Mclaren suffering I've used to find their complaining of Honda childish, very unprofessional and I am glad this season proved me "right". Although I hope RedBull doesn't win with Honda, that will be too much

I don't know what race you were watching. There were plenty of instances in this race where a slightly faster car was stuck behind a slightly slower one. Good racing involves slightly faster cars being able to pass slightly slower ones if the driver does a good overtaking move... but in this race there was no chance, no matter how good the driver performed it was impossible to pass unless they were much faster than the car in front of them.

I saw somewhere but unfortunately I cannot find where, an article where was said that Pirelli is unable to provide that kind of tyre (durable and fast where you can push it) in comparison with Michelin and Bridestone. Simply they are not capable of producing it . Even of they got freedom fro FIa

[jz11]

Refueling had a much bigger impact on cars back when the weight limit was much lower, now with the 700+kg boats the difference is not big enough for that to matter enough, and then remember the mickey mouse tyres that you can't push with low fuel setup or the compound starts to boil, so today introducing refueling won't change much

Now if they would lose the lousy ultra expensive (in terms of development and integration) kers and ters, lowering weight by good 150kg, reducing aero and dimensions of the cars, do away with fuel flow limits - that may work, but it would also mean that the latest developments, which were someones ideas, were bad, and that someone will be very much against reverting back because of personal ego, as sad as it may sound

Today, IMO the biggest problem is the tyres that can't take punishment, they overcook and destroy themselves, so the following car cannot pressure the guy in front into an error, or a mistake, and as a result - get the opportunity to overtake, the only way left to overtake is with the help of DRS, and as a consequence, the leading guy also has inherent advantage to manage his tyres, this is why we only see racing in the first lap and rarely on safety car restarts, every other time it is the "eco" race - can't push the tyres, they overcook, can't push the engine because it needs to last bizillion races, and because everyone is pretty much underfueled, so while saving the tyres, they also lift and coast to save fuel which again favors the guy in front

If there was refueling allowed today, I'd make a rule that you need to qualify with the amount of fuel you are going to start the race on, on top of that, tyre allocation is done by the supplier, meaning every team gets equal amount of said compound tyres for the race - that may expose a little more the cars ability to cope with different compounds under certain conditions, which may introduce slightly higher performance variations between the cars on different tracks - but after some development time the teams would converge on best solution - so the party wouldn't last long

[turbof1]

The tyre question is getting quite off topic, let's speak about it in function of this race

Back in 2010, Bridgestone had very conservative tyres, in general much more than Pirelli has now. However, coming to this race the issue was that the tyres were that hard, and track rubber was washed away before the race, that the tyre blistered: the outside of the tyre getting overheated while the inside is still relative cool. This ripped tyres quickly to pieces on this track. Pirelli actually did it wrong: their logic is "if we make the tyre softness good enough, it will wear out.". That does not work because teams know how to extend tyre life once they are able to keep the temperature within range.

Pirelli should either take way too soft or way too hard tyres for each race. For instance, if Pirelli took the hypersoft, hard and superhard for this, teams suddenly were faced with a huge gap between the obvious Q tyre and the next softest tyre, the hard. You can be certain that teams would be coming in atleast one additional time to change the ruined hard tyre back to the hypersoft.

Still doesn't solve the other and much bigger blatant issue: overtaking has become neigh impossible. If you fail to see overtake action in Canada with 3 DRS zones, it means F1 as a show is in a bad state.

[f1316]

...Ultimately I think the missing link is refueling...

No matter how many variables there are, all teams will do the same calculations, and all teams will end up with same strategy.

If we want racing, then we need to reward racing. Awarding points based only on position does not encourage racing. The gap to the driver in front and the gap to the driver in back should be taken into consideration.

I don’t think refueling would help by having different drivers on different strategies. I think it would help in racing flat out, from lights to flag. There would be no need to babysit the tyres if you had to stop for fuel anyway. That in addition to not having to baby the drivetrain over 7 races and DRS, AT LEAST you might have drivers driving balls to the wall for 99% of the Grand Prix. Today, drivers raced for the first 5 laps and the last... 5-10 laps. That’s how the tyres, and the PU/gearbox regs force drivers to race.

I completely agree about refuelling - the issue with tyres, about how much they should last/wear, simply did not exist prior to 2010 - I.e. the exact year refuelling was removed.

But I actually DO think you would still see some additional variation of strategy, so long qualifying was still done on race fuel; prior to the ban, teams had found that track position was so important that it was worth qualifying on a sub optimal fuel load in order to get further up the grid - it was often McLaren’s problem that they qualified too heavy and compromised their race. And yet still, within that understanding, there was still always some variance - not the whole field pitting all on the same lap.

What’s more, it would also contribute towards making the cars lighter - smaller fuel tanks (hence smaller cars) + circulated more of the time on lower fuel would already help significantly.

[Vasconia]

Verstappen butchered Ricciardo once again on pure merit.

Verstappen had a brand new latest spec engine, Ricciardo was clearly driving his old mongrel PU only as fast as he had to go get home. Proof is he set the fastest lap of the race once the team let him of the hook.

Both cars raced in Canada with the updated power unit from what I understand.

Ricciardo overtook a Ferrari and then a Mercedes during the race and he was not very far from Max until the last laps, so I don´t see the butchery anywhere.

[Sawtooth-spike]

Still doesn't solve the other and much bigger blatant issue: overtaking has become neigh impossible. If you fail to see overtake action in Canada with 3 DRS zones, it means F1 as a show is in a bad state.

This pretty much sums the whole thing up.

This is a great track and has almost always provides great racing. So in this case it not the track.

[Andres125sx]

Backmarkers too effin dumb to respect blue flags, Sirotkin being the worst of them ...

was it Sainz who couldn't let Bottas by in time making Bottas miss his braking point earlier too?

They were on completely different lines, Bottas hitting the brakes sooner or later was only his own responsability. Probably he was on a dirt line wich didn´t stop him as he did expect

[Vasconia]

I am pleasantly surprised with Ferrari´s performance. Well, let´s say Vettel´s performance.

1. The race pace was very good, he was faster during almost all the race and more importantly, he was faster with both compounds. I thought he was going to suffer with the hardest one, especially in comparison to Mercedes pace with the hardest compounds.

2. Fuel consumption. I aslo thought that Ferrari was going to suffer with this aspect, ,but it seems that the new PU has solved this problem. In fact, Mercedes(according to Bottas) suffered with lack of fuel during the last laps. This is a very important aspect. Don´t you think?

Anyway, I won´t be optimistic because I am pretty sure that Mercedes will bring a good update in France. It will be the moment to measure if Ferrari can still compete and defeat Mercedes or if Canada was only a an exception.

[Vasconia]

Backmarkers too effin dumb to respect blue flags, Sirotkin being the worst of them ...

was it Sainz who couldn't let Bottas by in time making Bottas miss his braking point earlier too?

They were on completely different lines, Bottas hitting the brakes sooner or later was only his own responsability. Probably he was on a dirt line wich didn´t stop him as he did expect

He was pushing very hard to reduce the gap to Vettel, and he braked too late. In fact it was a problem for Sainz because he was forced to let him pass twice.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

2. Fuel consumption. I aslo thought that Ferrari was going to suffer with this aspect, ,but it seems that the new PU has solved this problem. In fact, Mercedes(according to Bottas) suffered with lack of fuel during the last laps. This is a very important aspect. Don´t you think?

Of course the Safety car to start the race, while on full tank which requires more power to drag the car, certainly helped I guess. Running the race as leader, without having to push too much (certainly not at the latter part of the race) might also have contributed.

With the kind of performance sealing that should be impending for PU manufacturers, the obvious gains can be made through optimization, which also include the fuel efficiency. That shouldn't come as a surprise.

[marvin78]

But that helped everyone.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

But that helped everyone.

Leading from the front and having to turn down?

[ThumbsUp]

Verstappen butchered Ricciardo once again on pure merit.

Verstappen had a brand new latest spec engine, Ricciardo was clearly driving his old mongrel PU only as fast as he had to go get home. Proof is he set the fastest lap of the race once the team let him of the hook.

Both cars raced in Canada with the updated power unit from what I understand.

Ricciardo also mentiond to Sky that he stuggled with the driveability of the new Renault engine.

Edit: Ricciardo was only driving with an used MGU-K, and Max had a new MGU-K