Moose wrote: ↑23 Jul 2018, 03:44
cooken wrote: ↑23 Jul 2018, 00:49
Well true enough on that, but Bottas on S vs Ham on US an on damp track, that's to be expected even without considering Hams skill in wet. Tyre temp I reckon certainly was playing a factor and not surprising Seb had better pace than Bot given Ferraris characteristics there.
Eh? I'm not sure I get you. The Mercedes tends to keep its tyres warmer than the Ferrari as far as I can tell.
Points that back up this view point:
- At the circuits with the thinner tyre treads, Mercedes have had an advantage - it's harder to get heat into the thinner treads because they move around less. Mercedes putting more heat into their tyres makes them work better
- Mercedes had an advantage for the whole weekend at Austria until race day, that advantage reversed on race day, suggesting that in P1/2/3/Q Ferrari struggled to warm the tyres, while at the race, Mercedes struggled to cool them.
- Mercedes have historically been (and still are) better on harder tyres than on softer. They get less of an advantage from softer rubber than Ferrari does. The softer tyres have both a lower operating window, and move around on, making them easier to heat up. Keeping the tyres warmer explains this.
- Mercedes do poorly in Singapore - a circuit that has the perfect storm of lots of braking (raising brake and tyre temps), soft rubber, and high track temperatures.
- You often see Ferrari taking 2 hot laps in qualifying, while Mercedes only take one, suggesting that the Mercedes gets temperature into the tyres fast, while the Ferrari needs a lap to build up the temperature.
I think a cooler track actually favoured the Mercedes. That, plus Hamilton having the better tyres for the cooling track, plus Hamilton being a rain master added up to Hamilton being multiple seconds a lap faster.
Ferrari heat up tires more.
Hamilton was cruising out front till Bottas failure, the tactical mistake not to pit him meant he went from a comfortable 1st to an uncomfortable, I forget, 4th or 5th. Where Vettel/Kimi came out of the pits and didn't push but cruised to warm the tires up slowly, Hamilton came out with Vettel right behind in already slowly warmed up tires meaning to not lose position Hamilton had to step on the gas, he was also trying to chase to get back to 1st. If he settled for 4th right then and cruised his tires would have been fine to the end.
Notice Verstappen and Ricciardo, Verstappen was comfortable and cruising, Ricciardo pushed to catch him (verstappen had no one to catch), in doing that the same cars had completely different types of tire life.
Hamilton also talked about lacking power soon after his pitstop. Before issues Ham/Bottas were extremely comfortable leading and faster than everyone else. If Ham pits and comes out in 1st, cruising and not pushing tires, he goes to the end with no blisters (ignoring car failure).
NOthing reversed in the race. In every situation faster tire warm up helps Ferrari do great, in conditions where too much tire warm up hurts, Ferrari suffer, only in situations as the above where strategy ruined Merc ability to control tires the same way as others in the race has their tire wear been a problem.
This isn't new either, Singapore and Mexico in particular last year Ferrari and Max did great with tire warm up, Merc's couldn't get the tires warm and Ricciardo struggled as did most of the rest of the grid. In Singapore Merc struggled again. Even back in 2015 Ferrari had this car trait and did great in Singapore again then.
Ferrari struggled with overheating tires in Spain as did RBR to a lesser degree, the reason they went on the harder compound was the softer compound was running out of grip due to overheating within a lap. It was actually borderline for RBR where taking it a bit easier on the softest tire and pushing harder on the harder tire gave almost the same result. With Ferrari they couldn't get the tire to stick the whole lap.
