2019 Australian Grand Prix - Melbourne, March 15-17

[Ringleheim]

I see Ferrari only 2 tenths faster in FP2 than FP1, does that make sense?I'd like to think they where using FP2 to evaluate things that just don't lend itself to quick times.

They did that a lot last year. They were often not very fast at the end of Friday practice, only to be closely scrapping for the pole on Saturday. It's part of their approach.

[Ringleheim]

Is it because Albert Park is a street circuit that it's considered not a representative track for the rest of the calendar? In my mind that is the reason.

I am a bit surprised with Ferrari though I think during the race and during qualifying they will definitely be closer.

I am very happy to see Red Bull finally get a decent engine in the back of their car. I am very curious to see Max being a thorn in the side of Mercedes and Ferrari. I don't hold Gasly in much high regard from my armchair. I think Daniel Ricciardo will regret moving to Renault especially since Cyril is already groaning about B teams. All in all so very happy F1 is back.

No, it is not representative because of its unusual layout. It is similar to Montreal, which doesn't have a real corner on the entire lap. It's all hard braking points, slow corners, and straights.

The Waite ultra fast chicane is really the only fast cornering the cars do on the entire lap.

[bonjon1979]

It takes 4 races to get a true picture. Aus is always weird. Remember 2009 when Mclaren did well with a dog of a car. I also think that everyone can read too much into testing on tracks that are nowhere near the same temperature and all sorts of testing programmes being run. I think Ferrari will come back tomorrow and we’ll have a tight qualifying session

[bonjon1979]

People saying mercedes is twitchy but I just don't see it. On the onboards their car was planted on all the usual oversteer corner exits in S1 and had no understeer in S3 even on medium (yellow) tire. Compared to ferrari which didn't necessarily oversteer but instead understeered like a van. From telemetry it's apparent they had good high speed corner performance, but fell behind in medium and low speed stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qWWqyggLOI

Straight line performance almost equal between all three. So far...

On Sky, Martin Brundle was consistently commenting on the twitchy nature of the Mercedes at various points around the track, as he was onlooking from just a short distance away.

He did clarify that the Mercedes seemed "just as fast" as the Ferrari, but not nearly as planted and stable. He seemed convinced that the Ferrari was the best looking car of all all around the track.

So then what to make of FP2 times? Has Ferrari just not yet optimized its setup? Are they sandbagging? Running a tire degradation assessment program and not really concerned with outright pace?

We don't know! And none of us will know until about the last 3 minutes of Q3! Then we will find out how fast the Ferrari can go and how fast the Mercedes can go.

So in that sense, at least this is still a riveting and suspenseful start to the season.

I cannot wait for Quali to get here!

Interesting to see how Hamilton took turn 14 compared to Seb. Hamilton lifted to half throttle and then got on it, Seb had to brake. Could be a difference in fuel or Ferrari genuinely struggling for grip

[SiLo]

I think we would do well to remember that Hamilton has always been good around here too. Going for his 7th pole I believe?

[LeClerc]

Here's to hoping that there will be 3 teams close at the front, and that the midfield will be within a few tenths.

Should be a good year!

[digitalrurouni]

Here's to hoping that there will be 3 teams close at the front, and that the midfield will be within a few tenths.

Should be a good year!

Agreed on the good year part but I think Merc Ferrari will be close Red Bull a bit of a gap then a bigger gap to the midfields and they will all be super close to each other. Red Bull will then catch up by mid season. That's my prediction. I am really excited to see Honda doing well and hope they keep on doing well. Always had a soft spot for that company.

[HPD]

https://www.racefans.net/2019/03/15/are ... y-all-are/

[Mr.G]

I'm sure Ferrari will be closer, but I'm just not seeing anything here that suggests Mercedes are doing glory runs or Ferrari are sandbagging with something that would point to a hidden performance advantage.

It was posted earlier, but all you have to do is look at their tires, to see the Ferrari are having set-up issues. The real question is how much performance will they have to sacrifice to maintain proper tire temps, and have a well balanced car.

https://twitter.com/AlbertFabrega/statu ... 6475668480

Was this actually wear though?

I suspect it was damage from the Leclerc spin.

it looks like the scrapes that pirelly does after...

[Big Tea]

I was thinking of the Ferrari 'lack of performance'. This track is known for changing over the race weekend, so have they maybe just decided they will gain nothing by pushing on practice days and have been running development and collation until they think the track comes into the window?

Sensible if they are, but would they then lose anything due to not exploring the limits for 2 days?

[foxmulder_ms]

Did anyone watch f1tv.? It was terribly lagy for me. lag lag and more lag.

lag was fine for me, and knowing more about how this works than most people, I'd bet the issue isn't with the streaming, but who ever was doing the live shooting/directing/editing/cutting.

I mean, the cdn they are using isn't some random bottom of the barrel company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tata_Communications

Dude even the replay sucks. I realized it is not actually lag per se, it just keep dropping frames. It is spectacular bad. I was planning to buy it but it is not watchable. Anyone has experience???


About P2, I am really happy with Kimi. I think Ferrai will pick up the pace. However my favorites has changed. Merc really looks very strong.

[langedweil]

I have it since introduction (Spain last year), and aside from the startup issues during the first 2 races, the rest of the season was very steady and good response.
And in addition to that: I live on a small caribbean island with pretty crappy internet connectivity from time to time, but quality and availability didn’t really suffer from it.
Apart from the shitty free-/illegal streams, it’s the only way I can get to watch the races .. however, yesterday I had to fall back to a free stream because a probable stampede of new members were screwing the systems ?

[Brenton]

Betting oddsmakers after FP2 have changed from Vettel being moderately favored to win this GP to now Hamilton being a slight favorite to win. And the WDC has gone from 50/50 to a slight edge for Hamilton. So FP2 apparently can be at least a little bit suggestive of where the teams are at. I've been hopeful to see Mercedes not the fastest for once but it's hard to believe that with all of their resources & $$$ that they'd go from ahead to behind in the development race over the offseason. After FP2 Vettel sounds genuinely upset and expecting Mercedes to dominate this weekend.

[atanatizante]

... Could be a difference in fuel or Ferrari genuinely struggling for grip

Yeah, knowing that sector 3 tells us about the amount of fuel and Vettel was loosing almost 3 tenths compared to Lewis gives us the thought that Ferrari had either more fuel on board or just overheat the tyres hence sliding more, as we saw in Albert Fabregas picture of their front tyre ...

Now according to these tyres data:



and bearing in mind that track temp in Barcelona test 2 was around 26 degrees Celsius and here we`ve got some 41 which is almost 15 more, seems to me they struggled mostly on the soft tyre (at one stage Leclerc in FP2 on his race sim was doing faster laps on medium tyres than Vettel on softer ones) ...

Anyway, after a busy and frantically night at their simulator back in Maranello, it`ll be interesting to know had they got a solution to this problem in FP3 tomorrow ... had not then they`ve got a small operation window more towards the lower track temps which is unfortunately bad news for them knowing the majority of races would be held on summer temps ...

In contrast, Merc is having a sweet spot which is more towards the higher track temp and in conjunction to their stiff setup suspension gives them a stable aero platform, hence stable downforce levels which give them a better grip level on all types of tyres here ... (Don`t figure out yet how a stiff setup suspension could make a car to be kinder to the tyres ... maybe someone with some better knowledge could enlight me ...)

And indeed, it`ll be interesting to see had their twitching car appearance could sustain tyre management into the race ...

At last, I`m disappointed about F1TV Pro performances for having no access to the driver`s camera but most of all for the poor live timing options (no speed trap, no delta times between drivers, lagging pull drop menu and so on)

[Just_a_fan]

I think we would do well to remember that Hamilton has always been good around here too. Going for his 7th pole I believe?

If he gets it, it'll be his 8th pole in Oz.