2018 Italian Grand Prix - Monza, 31 Aug - 2 Sep

[WaikeCU]

I was wondering if Ferrari could have put Kimi on a different strategy, because he was the first to come in. Could they have seen it coming that Kimi would have come out behind Bottas and thus lose tremendous amount of time behind him? First I thought Merc was hesitant towards pitting Lewis, but I think they were looking at the severity of the rain that was falling. Either way, Merc still could have had the upper hand with 5 laps fresher tires towards the end. It was just pure smart racing by the team and just Lewis on his best imo.

[aran.vtec]

I was wondering if Ferrari could have put Kimi on a different strategy, because he was the first to come in. Could they have seen it coming that Kimi would have come out behind Bottas and thus lose tremendous amount of time behind him? First I thought Merc was hesitant towards pitting Lewis, but I think they were looking at the severity of the rain that was falling. Either way, Merc still could have had the upper hand with 5 laps fresher tires towards the end. It was just pure smart racing by the team and just Lewis on his best imo.

There wasn't really much Ferrari could do, After kimi pitted he was building a gap to Lewis so looked like the right call,

If kimi had stayed out to try and build a gap to Bottas ,Merc would have pitted lewis and then would of jumped kimi on fresher tyres anyway

[sosic2121]

I take it you are referring to the vertical bar on the left of the Renault display?

He is at full throttle for approximately 10 seconds after parabolica. So it’s unlikely he consumed more than about 2MJ, probably much less.

So I don’t think the bar is full scale ES SOC, nor is it ES>K which would reset for the new lap. So I wonder what it’s showing. Whatever it is he used most of it during that pass.

It seems it's going up while breaking.

Yes it does. By about the 20%? It’s about a 3 second stop so that’s about 360 kJ. Which might suggest full scale is in the region of 2MJ. that would be consistent with the 10second full power if the ES was supplying both K and H.

It's 15s wot on main straight.

[djos]

So overall a very interesting race, I was rooting for Kimi but Ferrari really didn't get the tire strategy right unfortunately.

Unsurprisingly Max was back to his old tricks of trying to run others off the road. The penalty was well deserved and the petulant radio conversation very entertaining.

[siskue2005]

So overall a very interesting race, I was rooting for Kimi but Ferrari really didn't get the tire strategy right unfortunately.

Unsurprisingly Max was back to his old tricks of trying to run others off the road. The penalty was well deserved and the petulant radio conversation very entertaining.

Max i really childish..... he could have let go Bottas and stay in his Slipstream and finish 4th in the process
instead he had to show his ego and not let Bottas go and eventually lose 4th place

[tranquility2k4]

I'm not sure how much it has been commented on here but Merc, or Hamilton at least, seemed to have far superior race pace, which was really surprising to me. All the talk and data over the weekend suggested Ferrari would be further ahead in the race, as they were in Spa (compared to Q2 which looked really close on raw speed). I know there's the caveat of what could Vettel have done, but Kimi was on good form this race and must have been highly motivated as he was leading. I doubt Vettel could have gone significantly faster. But Hamilton was under a second behind for the majority of the race, even through most corners, which suggests far superior speed - it felt more like the days when Merc still had a good buffer over Ferrari.

Toto did say Merc made a good step from Spa to Monza in terms of both engine and chassis - I wonder if they unlocked more from their engine after assessing it during spa, as Ferrari did with one of their previous engine upgrades a few races after it was initially introduced. It does make me think how far Merc could be ahead if Ferrari didn't come up with this electrical boost trick around Austria/Silverstone time. It looks like the engines are very similar again now and that's after Ferrari doing a big boost for engine 2 and engine 3, plus the electrical trick. If their engine upgrades had of been relatively minor then Merc would be far up the road. It also makes you wonder if Merc have always had performance in hand with their engine after such dominance and simply go conservative with their upgrades for reliability reasons. Maybe this time they have unleashed the beast so to speak and we're seeing what they're truly capable of. Imagine if Merc work out how to get the extra electrical energy between now and the end of the season!?

Of course the other factor is tyres, which still cease to amaze/confuse me. All the talk is that Ferrari are kinder on their tyres, but I don't buy this - it used to be the case, but this season there have been many examples of Merc being better. At the start of the season in certain races, e.g. China comes to mind, I felt Ferrari had a big pace advantage but had to be more gentle on their tyres than Merc. In more recent times at Germany Ferrari seemed better on the supersoft (or it may have been ultra) but then when they switched to the soft tyre (which Hamilton had ran for a huge amount of laps with good pace) they were destroying them very quickly and didn't look comfortable. In Hungary the exact opposite happened where Vettel looked more comfortable than Merc on the soft, but Hamilton did a brilliant opening stint. Something similar happened in Spa whereby Ferrari looked better on the soft, and then in Monza Merc were just better on both tyres. One thing is for sure, there is not a massive difference and it very much depends on a given track layout, for a given weather condition, for a given tyre.

Finally, the 30 point lead Hamilton now has looks to be quite crucial in the championship battle. If my math is correct, I think Vettel could win 5 of the remaining 7 races and come 2nd in the other two, whilst Hamilton could win two races come 2nd in three and 3rd in two (which seems very plausible), and win the championship by 3 points.

Singapore is critical because at all other tracks (even Mexico) I cannot see RB troubling Merc - RB seem to have fallen behind; even in Hungary RB didn't look a realistic threat in the dry or wet. If in Singapore Hamilton can get ahead of the RB then he is guaranteed 3rd position, and Kimi doesn't tend to go too well at Singapore so maybe even 2nd. I feel if Hamilton manages to get 2nd or 3rd at Singapore then assuming he doesn't have any reliability issues or crashes (a big 'if' I know) then he should win the championship.

[turbof1]

So overall a very interesting race, I was rooting for Kimi but Ferrari really didn't get the tire strategy right unfortunately.

Unsurprisingly Max was back to his old tricks of trying to run others off the road. The penalty was well deserved and the petulant radio conversation very entertaining.

I don't think Max did it on purpose though. Either he did not see Bottas coming, or he thought he left a one car width. Still rather foolish, but it happens.

Bottas was quite lucky he did not suffer damage there. His front wing could have been lobbed off, his suspension could have been broken, he could have been launched into the wall,... . Max, please be a bit more careful next time .

[Sierra117]

I take it you are referring to the vertical bar on the left of the Renault display?

He is at full throttle for approximately 10 seconds after parabolica. So it’s unlikely he consumed more than about 2MJ, probably much less.

So I don’t think the bar is full scale ES SOC, nor is it ES>K which would reset for the new lap. So I wonder what it’s showing. Whatever it is he used most of it during that pass.

It seems it's going up while breaking.

Yes it does. By about the 20%? It’s about a 3 second stop so that’s about 360 kJ. Which might suggest full scale is in the region of 2MJ. that would be consistent with the 10second full power if the ES was supplying both K and H.

Aren't those lights on the top-left of the steering only DRS-related? I'd imagine the battery is shown on the actual LCD. You can see Bottas has the same setup. When DRS is available that one light comes on and when they activate it, the rest come on. Or in another setup, the higher engine mode seems to light them up.

I would also think it's the battery except after his overtake, under braking, the lights don't come up (unlike when he brakes before the overtake), so they're not related to any sort of recharging.

Just speculating.

[djos]

So overall a very interesting race, I was rooting for Kimi but Ferrari really didn't get the tire strategy right unfortunately.

Unsurprisingly Max was back to his old tricks of trying to run others off the road. The penalty was well deserved and the petulant radio conversation very entertaining.

Max i really childish..... he could have let go Bottas and stay in his Slipstream and finish 4th in the process
instead he had to show his ego and not let Bottas go and eventually lose 4th place

Yeah that was just a stunning display of stupidity! Really arrogant and if I were a RedBull team member, I'd be furious at the loss of WCC points he'd cost the team despite their hard work!

[siskue2005]

Kimi's tyres....wonder how he manged to finish that race

I half expected Ferrari to pit Kimi on "safety grounds" so that Vettel can take 3rd
But then they would be handing 1-2 to Merc at Monza and that would be seriously damaging to them

[Wynters]

Not sure what happened to Ferrari's pace here, they really should have just driven off into the sunset. How much of that was due to their failure to bring one extra set of Soft tyres?

Particularly interesting was Hamilton being able to 'Hammer Time' for several laps and then still managing to stretch the rubber into getting a decent offset. He was running in mostly clear air but I think that's still pretty impressive. It was also important for Hamilton to best Vettel on track. He takes the idea of being a better racer than Vettel pretty seriously and Vettel schooled him hard at Spa. This result should stop any further undermining of Hamilton's ego (for now at least) and Hamilton appears to be a driver strongly influenced by such things.

Disappointing performance from Bottas. He's been tentative on the brakes all weekend and that really cost him against Red Bull's skinny wing and Max's almost faultless display. The smartest thing Bottas did was stop trying to overtake Max once he had the penalty as it allowed the two of them to lap faster. Given his comments in the car I'm actually surprised that Max didn't back Bottas into Vettel.

A series of poor decisions from Vettel but I think it shows that Ferrari weren't planning to swap them for the lead. I say that because otherwise Vettel wouldn't have compromised himself trying to dive up the inside. Anyway, error 1) Why dive up the inside there? He's faster than Kimi and faster than Hamilton. Why not just wait for the start finish straight and breeze past? Error 2) Why fight Hamilton at all? He's faster than Hamilton, why not let him past then breeze past on the start finish straight? Even if you can't pass him there, you've then got Hamilton trapped between two faster cars so you'll definitely nail him during the stops. Error 3) Vettel could not afford a DNF and yet took that risk unhesitatingly. It amazes me that teams and drivers don't seem to game out these situations beforehand so they can make a logical decision away from the heat of the moment.

Points for Williams too (probably their last points of the season).

Why didn't Red Bull respond to Max's truculence after the penalty was issued by telling him that the overhead was quite clear and that he did squeeze Bottas ("Not by much Max but, yeah, fair penalty"). Having his engineer say that he's looking at an overhead shot and it's definitive should be reasonably convincing. Other drivers listen to their engineer in these situations.

Poor Hartley. Still, if you are at the back of the grid, tough breaks seem to be pretty common. In this case, a literal break.

[bonjon1979]

I'm not sure how much it has been commented on here but Merc, or Hamilton at least, seemed to have far superior race pace, which was really surprising to me. All the talk and data over the weekend suggested Ferrari would be further ahead in the race, as they were in Spa (compared to Q2 which looked really close on raw speed). I know there's the caveat of what could Vettel have done, but Kimi was on good form this race and must have been highly motivated as he was leading. I doubt Vettel could have gone significantly faster. But Hamilton was under a second behind for the majority of the race, even through most corners, which suggests far superior speed - it felt more like the days when Merc still had a good buffer over Ferrari.

Toto did say Merc made a good step from Spa to Monza in terms of both engine and chassis - I wonder if they unlocked more from their engine after assessing it during spa, as Ferrari did with one of their previous engine upgrades a few races after it was initially introduced. It does make me think how far Merc could be ahead if Ferrari didn't come up with this electrical boost trick around Austria/Silverstone time. It looks like the engines are very similar again now and that's after Ferrari doing a big boost for engine 2 and engine 3, plus the electrical trick. If their engine upgrades had of been relatively minor then Merc would be far up the road. It also makes you wonder if Merc have always had performance in hand with their engine after such dominance and simply go conservative with their upgrades for reliability reasons. Maybe this time they have unleashed the beast so to speak and we're seeing what they're truly capable of. Imagine if Merc work out how to get the extra electrical energy between now and the end of the season!?

Of course the other factor is tyres, which still cease to amaze/confuse me. All the talk is that Ferrari are kinder on their tyres, but I don't buy this - it used to be the case, but this season there have been many examples of Merc being better. At the start of the season in certain races, e.g. China comes to mind, I felt Ferrari had a big pace advantage but had to be more gentle on their tyres than Merc. In more recent times at Germany Ferrari seemed better on the supersoft (or it may have been ultra) but then when they switched to the soft tyre (which Hamilton had ran for a huge amount of laps with good pace) they were destroying them very quickly and didn't look comfortable. In Hungary the exact opposite happened where Vettel looked more comfortable than Merc on the soft, but Hamilton did a brilliant opening stint. Something similar happened in Spa whereby Ferrari looked better on the soft, and then in Monza Merc were just better on both tyres. One thing is for sure, there is not a massive difference and it very much depends on a given track layout, for a given weather condition, for a given tyre.

Finally, the 30 point lead Hamilton now has looks to be quite crucial in the championship battle. If my math is correct, I think Vettel could win 5 of the remaining 7 races and come 2nd in the other two, whilst Hamilton could win two races come 2nd in three and 3rd in two (which seems very plausible), and win the championship by 3 points.

Singapore is critical because at all other tracks (even Mexico) I cannot see RB troubling Merc - RB seem to have fallen behind; even in Hungary RB didn't look a realistic threat in the dry or wet. If in Singapore Hamilton can get ahead of the RB then he is guaranteed 3rd position, and Kimi doesn't tend to go too well at Singapore so maybe even 2nd. I feel if Hamilton manages to get 2nd or 3rd at Singapore then assuming he doesn't have any reliability issues or crashes (a big 'if' I know) then he should win the championship.

Good analysis. Seb needs to win at Singapore. There's no two ways about it. I still think that there's going to be a reliability twist in this tale somewhere. Hamilton can survive one calamitous day but Vettel really can't. Seb got very lucky yesterday in that the safety car allowed him to not lose a lap on the pack. Had there not been a safety car then he would have struggled to get much more than 7th place.

Ferrari strategy has to share a great deal of the blame yesterday. Firstly, they should've brought more softs so they could get some running on them in practice. Second, they should have given Seb the tow in qualifying (although maybe this wouldn't've made that much difference as Seb had a two from Hamilton instead. Thirdly, they should've worked out their race strategy more clearly. Seb should never have been trying to overtake Kimi where he did. His focus should've been on keeping hamilton behind for the first few laps. After it settled down they could've swapped Kimi and Seb at their leisure. Some very strange decisions going on from the team/Seb and i wonder if it's the pressure telling on them.

Overall though, one must credit hamilton. He was incredible yesterday, not just in the overtakes he made but also the fast laps he was able to pull out when Kimi pitted. He was pretty much matching the ferrari shod on brand new tyres with tyres that were twenty laps old. the pace he showed at that point in the race forced Kimi to mess up his soft tyres and effectively won hamilton the race. Brilliant Grand prix to watch.

[saviour stivala]

I take it you are referring to the vertical bar on the left of the Renault display?

He is at full throttle for approximately 10 seconds after parabolica. So it’s unlikely he consumed more than about 2MJ, probably much less.

So I don’t think the bar is full scale ES SOC, nor is it ES>K which would reset for the new lap. So I wonder what it’s showing. Whatever it is he used most of it during that pass.

It seems it's going up while breaking.

Yes it does. By about the 20%? It’s about a 3 second stop so that’s about 360 kJ. Which might suggest full scale is in the region of 2MJ. that would be consistent with the 10second full power if the ES was supplying both K and H.

K and H were shating ES power on that Renault during that pass (free load mode at full permitted fueling), and than he harvested some by the K under braking.

[djos]

So overall a very interesting race, I was rooting for Kimi but Ferrari really didn't get the tire strategy right unfortunately.

Unsurprisingly Max was back to his old tricks of trying to run others off the road. The penalty was well deserved and the petulant radio conversation very entertaining.

I don't think Max did it on purpose though. Either he did not see Bottas coming, or he thought he left a one car width. Still rather foolish, but it happens.

Bottas was quite lucky he did not suffer damage there. His front wing could have been lobbed off, his suspension could have been broken, he could have been launched into the wall,... . Max, please be a bit more careful next time .

I used to give him the benefit of the doubt but he just keeps doing these stupid pincer moves on other drivers - clearly he has amazing skills and pace. That said he is prone to misjudging things and crashing all on his own eg Monaco.

[tranquility2k4]

I'm not sure how much it has been commented on here but Merc, or Hamilton at least, seemed to have far superior race pace, which was really surprising to me. All the talk and data over the weekend suggested Ferrari would be further ahead in the race, as they were in Spa (compared to Q2 which looked really close on raw speed). I know there's the caveat of what could Vettel have done, but Kimi was on good form this race and must have been highly motivated as he was leading. I doubt Vettel could have gone significantly faster. But Hamilton was under a second behind for the majority of the race, even through most corners, which suggests far superior speed - it felt more like the days when Merc still had a good buffer over Ferrari.

Toto did say Merc made a good step from Spa to Monza in terms of both engine and chassis - I wonder if they unlocked more from their engine after assessing it during spa, as Ferrari did with one of their previous engine upgrades a few races after it was initially introduced. It does make me think how far Merc could be ahead if Ferrari didn't come up with this electrical boost trick around Austria/Silverstone time. It looks like the engines are very similar again now and that's after Ferrari doing a big boost for engine 2 and engine 3, plus the electrical trick. If their engine upgrades had of been relatively minor then Merc would be far up the road. It also makes you wonder if Merc have always had performance in hand with their engine after such dominance and simply go conservative with their upgrades for reliability reasons. Maybe this time they have unleashed the beast so to speak and we're seeing what they're truly capable of. Imagine if Merc work out how to get the extra electrical energy between now and the end of the season!?

Of course the other factor is tyres, which still cease to amaze/confuse me. All the talk is that Ferrari are kinder on their tyres, but I don't buy this - it used to be the case, but this season there have been many examples of Merc being better. At the start of the season in certain races, e.g. China comes to mind, I felt Ferrari had a big pace advantage but had to be more gentle on their tyres than Merc. In more recent times at Germany Ferrari seemed better on the supersoft (or it may have been ultra) but then when they switched to the soft tyre (which Hamilton had ran for a huge amount of laps with good pace) they were destroying them very quickly and didn't look comfortable. In Hungary the exact opposite happened where Vettel looked more comfortable than Merc on the soft, but Hamilton did a brilliant opening stint. Something similar happened in Spa whereby Ferrari looked better on the soft, and then in Monza Merc were just better on both tyres. One thing is for sure, there is not a massive difference and it very much depends on a given track layout, for a given weather condition, for a given tyre.

Finally, the 30 point lead Hamilton now has looks to be quite crucial in the championship battle. If my math is correct, I think Vettel could win 5 of the remaining 7 races and come 2nd in the other two, whilst Hamilton could win two races come 2nd in three and 3rd in two (which seems very plausible), and win the championship by 3 points.

Singapore is critical because at all other tracks (even Mexico) I cannot see RB troubling Merc - RB seem to have fallen behind; even in Hungary RB didn't look a realistic threat in the dry or wet. If in Singapore Hamilton can get ahead of the RB then he is guaranteed 3rd position, and Kimi doesn't tend to go too well at Singapore so maybe even 2nd. I feel if Hamilton manages to get 2nd or 3rd at Singapore then assuming he doesn't have any reliability issues or crashes (a big 'if' I know) then he should win the championship.

Good analysis. Seb needs to win at Singapore. There's no two ways about it. I still think that there's going to be a reliability twist in this tale somewhere. Hamilton can survive one calamitous day but Vettel really can't. Seb got very lucky yesterday in that the safety car allowed him to not lose a lap on the pack. Had there not been a safety car then he would have struggled to get much more than 7th place.

Ferrari strategy has to share a great deal of the blame yesterday. Firstly, they should've brought more softs so they could get some running on them in practice. Second, they should have given Seb the tow in qualifying (although maybe this wouldn't've made that much difference as Seb had a two from Hamilton instead. Thirdly, they should've worked out their race strategy more clearly. Seb should never have been trying to overtake Kimi where he did. His focus should've been on keeping hamilton behind for the first few laps. After it settled down they could've swapped Kimi and Seb at their leisure. Some very strange decisions going on from the team/Seb and i wonder if it's the pressure telling on them.

Overall though, one must credit hamilton. He was incredible yesterday, not just in the overtakes he made but also the fast laps he was able to pull out when Kimi pitted. He was pretty much matching the ferrari shod on brand new tyres with tyres that were twenty laps old. the pace he showed at that point in the race forced Kimi to mess up his soft tyres and effectively won hamilton the race. Brilliant Grand prix to watch.

Hamilton also did his fastest lap of the race (a 1:22.4) on lap 30, which at the time was about a second quicker than what Kimi was able to do only a few laps before, and I'm not even sure that Lewis was pushing as much on that lap as Kimi was during the pit crossover period, as whilst he'd want to catch Kimi it wasn't as critical as staying in the lead was for Kimi. It just looked like the Merc was on fire on race day and had quite a lot of pace in hand for some reason.