2019 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix - Yas Marina Circuit, 29 - 1 November/December

[LM10]

I don’t know why. But PU performance would be one of the last things I would think about when talking about cornering.

If you lost power for one reason or another the simplest and most feasible way to compensate for that this late into the season is to remove downforce and thus reduce drag. That will have a very direct impact on the car's cornering ability.

Does it make sense to reduce downforce and be that slower in the corners and at the same time have a 5 km/h higher top speed than both Rebull and Mercedes? I mean, reducing downforce to at least match the others on the straights would make sense, but what would be the benefit of being 5 km/h faster on the straights and lose like a midfield team in the corners?

[izzy]

Occam's Razor: The simpler explanation is the most likely.
Tifosi Razor: The most complex explanation is the most likely.

lol. but I do think it's quite likely there've been several things, not just one, various shades of edgy, clever and dodgy, that they've notched back or stopped or kept. But the smart thing imo is to embrace uncertainty, another life lesson from F1

Meanwhile personally I'm pretty sure that if they could have had more downforce here they'd have put it on

[izzy]

Does it make sense to reduce downforce and be that slower in the corners and at the same time have a 5 km/h higher top speed than both Rebull and Mercedes? I mean, reducing downforce to at least match the others on the straights would make sense, but what would be the benefit of being 5 km/h faster on the straights and lose like a midfield team in the corners?

This is how i see it too. Always in F1 downforce is king, the midfield cars always have more top speed but longer laptimes, and Ferrari will have this track modelled and have known pretty exactly what was coming

[dans79]

I don’t know why. But PU performance would be one of the last things I would think about when talking about cornering.

If you lost power for one reason or another the simplest and most feasible way to compensate for that this late into the season is to remove downforce and thus reduce drag. That will have a very direct impact on the car's cornering ability.

Does it make sense to reduce downforce and be that slower in the corners and at the same time have a 5 km/h higher top speed than both Rebull and Mercedes? I mean, reducing downforce to at least match the others on the straights would make sense, but what would be the benefit of being 5 km/h faster on the straights and lose like a midfield team in the corners?

It's not quite that simple, as other factors are still relevant.

No matter what, you must have enough downforce on the car to keep the tires in the optimal temperature window. This will be track, temperature, and team suspension geometry specific.

Secondly, you can only remove so much downforce from a given aerodynamic concept before you start to induce an aero in-balance.

It's always a balancing act to maximize lap time, while still keeping all the other parameters within bounds.

[Morteza]

https://twitter.com/AlbertFabrega/statu ... 1634891777

[NathanOlder]

I don’t know why. But PU performance would be one of the last things I would think about when talking about cornering.

If you lost power for one reason or another the simplest and most feasible way to compensate for that this late into the season is to remove downforce and thus reduce drag. That will have a very direct impact on the car's cornering ability.

Does it make sense to reduce downforce and be that slower in the corners and at the same time have a 5 km/h higher top speed than both Rebull and Mercedes? I mean, reducing downforce to at least match the others on the straights would make sense, but what would be the benefit of being 5 km/h faster on the straights and lose like a midfield team in the corners?

Keeping the car balanced, Keeping tyres in ideal operating windows and how about they did all their sim work and worked out that the current setup is quicker for them in terms of laptime. They could add the downforce to make them equal on the straights but still be 4 tenths down in S3. Just a few things that could be at play here.

[NathanOlder]

Does it make sense to reduce downforce and be that slower in the corners and at the same time have a 5 km/h higher top speed than both Rebull and Mercedes? I mean, reducing downforce to at least match the others on the straights would make sense, but what would be the benefit of being 5 km/h faster on the straights and lose like a midfield team in the corners?

This is how i see it too. Always in F1 downforce is king, the midfield cars always have more top speed but longer laptimes, and Ferrari will have this track modelled and have known pretty exactly what was coming

Downforce is king yes, but not to the extent you are suggesting. As an example, cars. dont run Maximum downforce at Silverstone or Catalunya. If being slower on the straights (Mercedes compared to Racing Point) is faster in laptime, then Bottas should add some wing and be down 5kmh on the straights but quicker overall. But its not quite true as you already know.

[izzy]

Downforce is king yes, but not to the extent you are suggesting. As an example, cars. dont run Maximum downforce at Silverstone or Catalunya. If being slower on the straights (Mercedes compared to Racing Point) is faster in laptime, then Bottas should add some wing and be down 5kmh on the straights but quicker overall. But its not quite true as you already know.

well they have a setup window don't they, that basically is the range each car concept has to be tuned for each circuit they go to. For each circuit they have scans of the track and all that, loaded into the sim, and they try to find the best compromise. Downforce/drag/efficiency. And all year long Ferrari have been trying to develop their front end to have more downforce to switch the front tyres on, and we thought they'd pretty much done it, or i did.

So now the conspiracy theory apparently is that they've lost power with the TD's and so they've had to take downforce off to compensate, and this is why twisty S3 is such a fail.

Well, i just doubt that is a choice they would make, because it's such a huge loss. If they have to adjust their compromise then I think they'd lose less time on the lap overall if they lost some top speed instead and kept the front working through S3

So I'm beginning to believe they've lost some power, but i don't think S3 is an item of evidence for it. I think it's more likely to be just the very slow, tight corners, that they still lack front downforce for fundamentally, and their super complicated suspension and overheating the rears. Losing 20kW or whatever isn't why they decided to ruin their car for that sector. The Merc and the Red Bull both have a lovely strong front end and that's the difference, not power. If it was power Ferrari wouldn't bother hanging on to +7kph at that price would they?

Oh and i'm wondering if driveability might be a factor as well, one small part of it, as the other Ferrari-powered cars aren't great there either

[sosic2121]

https://twitter.com/AlbertFabrega/statu ... 1634891777

For some forum members it's best to ignore this video. Nothing interesting here

[Capharol]

https://twitter.com/AlbertFabrega/statu ... 1634891777

For some forum members it's best to ignore this video. Nothing interesting here

exactly if you don't wanna see hiw much time is lost in S3 and the gain on the straight is not so significant anymore

[MtthsMlw]

https://twitter.com/AlbertFabrega/statu ... 1634891777

For some forum members it's best to ignore this video. Nothing interesting here

exactly if you don't wanna see hiw much time is lost in S3 and the gain on the straight is not so significant anymore

It's pretty much the same if you compare it to other mini sector videos.

[sosic2121]

For some forum members it's best to ignore this video. Nothing interesting here

exactly if you don't wanna see hiw much time is lost in S3 and the gain on the straight is not so significant anymore

It's pretty much the same if you compare it to other mini sector videos.

care to guess how big is the gain on the straights?

[Juzh]

Thanks for sharing. Nice to see.

But only gaining a tenth and a half on a straight instead of 5 tenths is what's making the difference.

The biggest straight on the track Leclerc was 1 tenth up on the exit of the hairpin, and never made it to 3 tenths up. so 0.180 maybe. With that performance on the straight, they would never ever get anywhere near merc in Singapore. but.....

I see half a tenth on finish line to turn one, 1 tenth through the flat out turn 2,3, and 4, around 3.8 tenths on the two long straights combined. Overall ~5.3 tenths.

In Singapore we have >0.25 tenths on the pit straight, 1.25 on Raffles Boulevard, 0.5 from turn 9 to 10, then actually loosing 0.5 on the second DRS straight - overall we are at >2 tenths gained there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u--yM2UY4tQ

Leclerc was on Pole in Singapore because he was faster in many corners as well, whereas here he's only really faster in the hairpin. That's simply not enough.
I don't see any drop of in straight line performance.

I get the same results with some crude analysis. Only exception really was russia where ferrari really was just miles ahead, but their lower drag concept really played into their strenghts on that track.

[sosic2121]

But only gaining a tenth and a half on a straight instead of 5 tenths is what's making the difference.

The biggest straight on the track Leclerc was 1 tenth up on the exit of the hairpin, and never made it to 3 tenths up. so 0.180 maybe. With that performance on the straight, they would never ever get anywhere near merc in Singapore. but.....

I see half a tenth on finish line to turn one, 1 tenth through the flat out turn 2,3, and 4, around 3.8 tenths on the two long straights combined. Overall ~5.3 tenths.

In Singapore we have >0.25 tenths on the pit straight, 1.25 on Raffles Boulevard, 0.5 from turn 9 to 10, then actually loosing 0.5 on the second DRS straight - overall we are at >2 tenths gained there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u--yM2UY4tQ

Leclerc was on Pole in Singapore because he was faster in many corners as well, whereas here he's only really faster in the hairpin. That's simply not enough.
I don't see any drop of in straight line performance.

I get the same results with some crude analysis. Only exception really was russia where ferrari really was just miles ahead, but their lower drag concept really played into their strenghts on that track.

I agree.
Sochi track has very little tire degradation.

Also, neither Ferrari had a proper 2nd attempt in Q3

[MtthsMlw]

exactly if you don't wanna see hiw much time is lost in S3 and the gain on the straight is not so significant anymore

It's pretty much the same if you compare it to other mini sector videos.

care to guess how big is the gain on the straights?

See my post on page 14. I compared it to Singapore there.
Here is Spain:
https://youtu.be/FQHsKnrOCQw
Sochi:
https://youtu.be/EE2VmGLqYCE
Canada:
https://youtu.be/0RBuENbhs4I

In Sochi they seemingly gain the most, I guess because of the high full throttle percentage and they were using a spoon wing while Merc used a normal one.