kfrantzios wrote: ↑03 Nov 2019, 17:18
SmallSoldier wrote:kfrantzios wrote:As much as I loved it, I think everyone at the top midfield could do that. Just use q3 settings and u are more or less topping q1.
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Not really... Go plug the best times of the midfield in Q2-Q3 in Q1 and you won’t have that happen often.
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If sainz did his q3 time in q1 would be P2 in Mexico, P1 in Japan, P2 in Russia and p3 in Singapore. So that sums it up..
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You are forgetting something. Midfield teams push falt-out if they have to do second runs in Q1. Because if you had to do a second run in Q1, that means your initial time was not safe. No team will risk getting knocked out in Q1 so they push as hard as they can. What you forget to factor here is track evolution. In some circuits, track evolution can be worth over half a second. And in the U.S the track was evolving rapidly. Midfield cars were finding up to 0.6 to 0.7 seconds on their second lap. Some of that is driver ability of course, but most of it is track evolution.
Long story short. None of the midfield teams hold anything up in Q1 (if they have to do a second run) and in Q2. The reason why you see better times from the same team as qualifying progresses is track evolution (and drivers occasionally completely nailing their laps). This is only true for midfield teams though. Top 3 have such a big pace advantage that they don't find the need to go flat out in the early sessions because they can save power unit life by not doing so.
To get back to your initial point. It is indeed very rare in the current Formula to see a midfield team lead a Q1 session in normal conditions because of their big deficit to the top teams. If Norris was able to do it, then you can take that as a sign that they are closing the gap to those top teams because no other "midfielder" could manage it. (The closest was Gasly, but he still was 0.2 seconds shy of Lando).
