Thanks, was really interested in that info.
It's funny, everybody talked about how Hards would be useless and etc(not aimed at you Juzh
but at Perez and Ricciardo who have more data and should have known a little better), and it's the only tyres that seemed remotely consistent.Even the Mediums are massively degrading. People could only do 1 fast lap, then it was already 0.3-0.5s slower. Sainz was losing 1.4s on his Softs after just 6 laps and Vettel 1.1s on his Mediums, after 9.
I really don't get why people make it sound as if the current Pirellis are the most durable tyres F1 has ever had. That is so far from reality. It's like people don't remember what durable tyres really are after Pirelli entered this sport.
On 2005 Spanish GP, Fisichella made the fastest lap of the race(on over 67 laps old tyres) with a time of 1.15.641 and he was lapping at 1.16.294, on lap 28, with empty tanks before his first pit(for fuel as tyres had to last the whole race.)
On 2006 Spanish GP, Alonso started the race lapping on low 1.18s. Before his first pit, on lap 17, he was doing 1.16.8. As fuel was being burnt, all the cars would always get faster unlike on Pirelli era.
Final example, 2010 Spanish GP, Webber's only pit was on lap 17. He then returned lapping at low 1.27s. Towards the end of the race, at lap 62, he did 1.24.8 on ~35 laps old tyres.
Not even the Hard Pirelli tyre will give that sort of consistency and lap times will increase, instead of decrease, as the stints progresses.
About the race pace of the 2017 cars, Mercedes is like 1.2s faster than Red Bull and Ferrari(this one is very difficult to read anything into it because Kimi's laps were very inconsistent and Vettel was on Mediums). It really seems that Mercedes new PU(if they already used it on Friday) allowed them to stretch their legs.
I don't know where you guys got your race pace info from, but I quickly looked into FIA's .pdf for my comment. I can be wrong, though, as I didn't took much time looking into it
