2018 Mexico Grand Prix - Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, 26-28 October

[drunkf1fan]

Vettel was fastest man on the track at that moment. He was gaining 7 tents on Max, and his tires were 4 laps younger(although probably used harder).
Many drivers have dane 50+ laps on SS, including Kimi.
Maybe the worst of all, for last 24 laps he switched on set of used US, (in his first stint he barely managed 17 laps on US) which allowed Max to put on set of shiny brand new SS tires(by far the best race tire).
When Ricciardo retired Vettel already done 13 laps on his used tires, so it's really hard to believe he had a pace advantage to overtake him.
Only downside to one stop was risk of puncture, which AFAIK didn't happen to anyone that day.

I strongly believe that victory was on the table and that they should have left him on the track until his times dropped off.

Edit: According to JA blog his US tires were not used.

Pace doesn't work like that, the lap before he was 2/10ths faster and went from 12.1 to 11.9 seconds behind, when one guy is trying to catch and the other has a 12 second lead he doesn't have to do the same pace. Verstappen had a massive gap he was protecting, Vettel had a massive gap he was pushing to close and he was only making a very minor impact.

IT took him the previous 16 laps to gain around 6 seconds, and again Verstappen had a huge gap and zero reason to push hard, Vettel was pushing hard to go for the win. Even best case scenario and that pace was maintained he needed another 30 laps to catch Verstappen let alone pass him.

He was 7/10ths faster on a lap he was pitting the next lap, everyone pushes before a pitstop. Also could simply have been a lap Max got held up in traffic for a few corners, I don't recall that specific point in the race.

Regardless his pace was nothing special and that is if you completely ignore that the leader has no need nor reason to push. Once you get a 2-3 second gap most guys out front go into cruise control because it's the best way to win. I would also say that because Vettel was pushing harder than anyone else out there, that's pretty much why his front left looked worse than anyone else out there and had the highest chance of failure.

Reality is again he didn't have the pace to catch over 20 laps left, Verstappen was in cruise control and Vettel had more than enough time to pit, make sure the front left didn't fail, had plenty of life to get to the end on ultras and had every chance of getting 2nd back over Ricciardo. Tire life is irrelevant but at that point Ricciardo was always going to have 36-37 lap older tires, the fact is on the same tire in the second stint Vettel was significantly faster than Ricciardo. On the same tire he had a pace advantage, on 36 lap fresher tires he had a tire advantage and he gained on Ricciardo easily after his stop and moved into DRS range repeatedly only to be prevented from passing on the straight as Ricciardo got his drs/slipstream.

Honestly I think he'd have been past him within 5 laps and would finish 10+ seconds ahead of Ricciardo, not least because Ricciardo would back off with 2nd place gone while VEttel would chase after Verstappen.

[GPR-A]

You can't compromise the quality of F1

Define 'quality' in this instance.

I would leave it to your imagination as you have a good one, very random though.

I am sure the F1 world would be a great place if there are 6 top drivers battling for the championship in equally matched cars, regardless of whether those cars belong to 2 teams or 3.

So you want a spec series? Why didn't you say so, because you won't get consistently evenly matched cars with more than one manufacturer.

Wrong. You already got Ferrari and Mercedes matching. While Red Bull has matched in races, It's only a matter of time before Red Bull Honda matches them in qualifying too as the regulations continue to stay the same on PU. Despite having all the trouble, Honda power has seemingly moved ahead of Renault. The reason why the Manufacturers resisting 2021 PU changes, is because they are catching up.

What will you do about drivers of different ability levels? Are you going to give Max a faster car to make up for him constantly binning it? I take we're also going to slow Lewis down so that 'Mercedes driver No.3' can keep up?

Does anyone look back at Hamilton & Kovalainen and think 'wow, what a great battle those two had in evenly matched cars'?

We certainly think Hamilton and Nico had! In 2010, there was Hamilton/Button in McLaren and Webber/Vettel in Red Bull went fighting along with Alonso in a Ferrari. Forgot already?

How are you going to get new drivers into F1 so they can find their feet? They're going to be pretty slow so, do we give them a faster car too? Or do we just keep the same drivers forever?

You got Hamilton, Vandoorne, Norris walking straight into a McLaren. The very reason you have F2 (GP2) is to get the talent ready for next level!

You might want to give this a little more thought...

Don't get lost by creating a self conceived web of thoughts.

Look how far you digressed from what we started with. Spec series, Kovalainen, readiness of young drivers! It's a complement for you.

[Juzh]

Once you get a 2-3 second gap most guys out front go into cruise control because it's the best way to win.

Yeah right, that 3 second gap worked out very good for vettel in china . Depending on the track and state of tires the undercut could be anything from 2 to 4 seconds powerful. To be absolutely safe you need around 5s gap and no one is cruising before that kind of gap is created.

[Big Tea]

Once you get a 2-3 second gap most guys out front go into cruise control because it's the best way to win.

Yeah right, that 3 second gap worked out very good for vettel in china . Depending on the track and state of tires the undercut could be anything from 2 to 4 seconds powerful. To be absolutely safe you need around 5s gap and no one is cruising before that kind of gap is created.

As well as the 3 seconds to the following car, they also have to call the pitstop at a time when there is a window for an unobstructed pit exit. This is usually what muffs up the strategy, as long as the actual stop goes well.
Coming out behind a group of cars, or one the leader will struggle to pass is usually what does for 'the plan'

[Wynters]

***Removed off topic comments***

[drunkf1fan]

Once you get a 2-3 second gap most guys out front go into cruise control because it's the best way to win.

Yeah right, that 3 second gap worked out very good for vettel in china . Depending on the track and state of tires the undercut could be anything from 2 to 4 seconds powerful. To be absolutely safe you need around 5s gap and no one is cruising before that kind of gap is created.

You cruise when you feel comfortable cruising. Hamilton kept a gap that small in Singapore then before pitting he upped pace, he protected the engine and did just fine. Bottas without a lot of pace most of the year wasn't falling back from Vettel fast and even then had Vettel actually pitted on one lap after Bottas rather than two, he'd have come out ahead. He couldn't get past Bottas because, he wasn't actually faster.

IF he was faster that 3 seconds would have been more than enough. As it was Verstappen had a ~12 second lead on Vettel and was absolutely cruising, Vettel was as said, closing at a rate that would take another 30 laps to close, one lap being faster than average in difference doesn't mean anything, with back markers any given lap might be much slower.

A single safety car and if you are pushing hard you've taken the life out of tires and engine only to have the gap removed and now the guy right behind you.

Lastly, 95% of races this year and last year are races to the pitstop, then see where things are. YOu've had Max in most podiums say things in the green room along the lines of asking Hamilton if he was cruising after the stop. Saying you had it in hand right. After a stop you try to push, if you can't gain because the guy has you covered you both back off. Pits are the only time an undercut, or a mistake might change things, if it's all settled you give it a lap or two to see if tires are better for you than the other guy, if not it's cruise control mode. Max was 1st with a huge gap after his stop, he was absolutely cruising from there to the end of the race and then slowed even further on engine mode after Ricciardo's failure.

[Restomaniac]

But what I don't get is - people complain when there's 1 stop races and people complain when the tires degrade? Doesn't seem to me like there's a happy middle ground!!! We as fans need to come to an agreement what we want.

There are 3 key factors that have "destroyed/robbed us" of great racing.
1. Aero - Increased turbulent wake that induces increased understeer to the following car, as the following car has ever increasing dependency on the complex aerodynamics at the front of the car.

2. Tyres - The stupidity of trying to create high degrading tyres to create racing has lead to teams burning 100s of millions of dollars in understanding the tyres and building complex solution to help them in better managing tyre life.
- Drivers have to back off from constant attack as turbulent wake destroys tyres.
- Make everlasting tyres and make it mandatory to use all 3 compounds in races! Pirelli anyway brings 3 compounds to the races. Stop making tyres a rocket science.

3. Limited PUs - It has not served anyone's purpose. Too much of conservatism on PU components has destroyed the show. FIA to benchmark PU performance and allow the weaker PU manufacturers to catch up until the difference is around 5% between different PUs, until then freeze the top performing PUs. Once the weaker manufacturers catch up, then freeze the development, which reduces the R&D and manufacturing costs and then allow as many PUs as a team wants to use.

Smaller teams have never made significant contribution to F1 ever. So, don't waste energy on trying to help them to make the playing field even for them. Let them go and then allow the bigger teams to run an extra car.

With regard to the tyre situation I again would give teams free reign in what tyres they want.

They can pick any 2 side by side compounds M/S, SS/US, US/HS, etc for a race weekend but they have to use both during a race. That choice like now would be picked months in advance. Teams can then have a direct choice. Great qualifying and higher up the grid but more pit stops or worse qualifying and a lower start but less pit stops or somewhere in the middle. Teams could then design their car for the type of tyres the want to use.

It would mix up the grid a treat and have different teams on different strategies all over the place.

[notsofast]

Nothing would change. All teams would converge on the same strategy, just like they do now.

To make the race a little more interesting for the casual viewer, simply mandate a minimum of 2 stops. At the Mexico GP, a one-stopper implies a stop around lap 20, followed by 50 laps driving in circles. With 2 stops, the casual viewer still has something to look forward to after lap 20.

[Restomaniac]

Nothing would change. All teams would converge on the same strategy, just like they do now.

To make the race a little more interesting for the casual viewer, simply mandate a minimum of 2 stops. At the Mexico GP, a one-stopper implies a stop around lap 20, followed by 50 laps driving in circles. With 2 stops, the casual viewer still has something to look forward to after lap 20.

Mercedes have a very fondness to the Soft tyre, Ferrari like their’s with more grip.
Now imagine Mercedes given the option of the tyre that gets on very well with their car being available it every track! Then look at the fact that Ferrari have chosen to ignore 1 tyre type during a few weekends to their detriment. To say that teams would converge is just ignoring what actually happened in this last season.

Mercedes car is long and has a habit of eating the softest tyres Ferrari tried to copy but didn’t eat them so much RedBull won’t go there and are very easy of their tyres. That would lead to different tyre choices right off the bat.

Mercedes would obviously love to be able perfect their car around the best tyres for it. Remember how much running they did on that tyre during winter testing? That’s even before we start on teams making mistakes on picking the wrong pair of compounds for their car.

[Sierra117]

I can't wait to talk about tyres next season! It's going to be so simple! All we have to do is figure out how to differentiate between each type used per race compared to thr last time the same tyre was used, but now we won't have a complicated name for the compounds! /s

[Harvester]

Nothing would change. All teams would converge on the same strategy, just like they do now.

To make the race a little more interesting for the casual viewer, simply mandate a minimum of 2 stops. At the Mexico GP, a one-stopper implies a stop around lap 20, followed by 50 laps driving in circles. With 2 stops, the casual viewer still has something to look forward to after lap 20.

I also thought that minimum 2 stops would make things more interesting. However, everyone would then be on 2 stopper and we would always have the same strategies. Now at least from time to time we have drivers on different strategies.

[komninosm]

Nothing would change. All teams would converge on the same strategy, just like they do now.

To make the race a little more interesting for the casual viewer, simply mandate a minimum of 2 stops. At the Mexico GP, a one-stopper implies a stop around lap 20, followed by 50 laps driving in circles. With 2 stops, the casual viewer still has something to look forward to after lap 20.

I also thought that minimum 2 stops would make things more interesting. However, everyone would then be on 2 stopper and we would always have the same strategies. Now at least from time to time we have drivers on different strategies.

No mandatory stops, that's silly.
The solution is refueling and less time lost in pits entry and pit exit. Make the race line longer or the pit line shorter.
And refueling will add more incentive to pit as you'll be lighter and faster than others.

[Just_a_fan]

And refueling will add more incentive to pit as you'll be lighter and faster than others.

Did you watch F1 during the refuelling era? The most boring episode in motor racing. No thanks.

[NathanOlder]

Yeah I agree, refuelling was not good. They will all be running to save fuel still as its simply faster to run a little lighter and haveto fuel save for a bit or get lucky with a SC or VSC.

A tyre war will add some spice, but I'd hate to see someone lose a title because their tyres let them down in certain conditions/circumstances.

[komninosm]

And refueling will add more incentive to pit as you'll be lighter and faster than others.

Did you watch F1 during the refuelling era? The most boring episode in motor racing. No thanks.

It was far from boring wth are you talking about?

Yeah I agree, refuelling was not good. They will all be running to save fuel still as its simply faster to run a little lighter and haveto fuel save for a bit or get lucky with a SC or VSC.

A tyre war will add some spice, but I'd hate to see someone lose a title because their tyres let them down in certain conditions/circumstances.

That's another choice that you'll have to make. Sometimes it won't be the best. Are you saying that right now they aren't fuel limited too?
It's not about tire war. It's about tire and fuel strategy, but most of all it's about making the pit stops cause you to go "more" faster and/or cause you to lose less time doing them (with redesigned pit entry/exit proposal).