I'm pretty sure that vettel was aiming at costant laptimes in this stintwhatthefat wrote:I'll just add a thought to this. If we assume the Mercedes was running at 7 laps of fuel for their 7-lap stint and the Ferrari was carrying 14 laps of fuel for their 14-lap stint, then these are the overlaid fuel-corrected times I get for the two stints, using my approximated times for Vettel from those reports.Mr.G wrote:Not the result I wanted to hear, but still thanks for the effortwhatthefat wrote:
Aha, thank you! So then it does sound like some slight degradation occurring across the stint.
He started the stint with a 1:21.1 and 1:21.4 (reported at 12:42 and 12:43) then 1:21.6 (reported at 12:44), then went into low 1:22s (reported at 12:47) and apparently was consistently doing 1:22.3s (last 6 laps within a couple of tenths reported at 12:52). Don't know what happened after that, but it was later reported as a stint with "14 flying laps" at 13:12.
So, piecing that together, I think the stint looked something like this in the first 11 laps:
21.1, 21.4, 21.6, 21.9, 22.1, 22.2, 22.3, 22.2, 22.3, 22.4, 22.3, ...
Fitting those data, I get the following.
Base time = 81.3 sec
Fuel-corrected deg rate = 0.17 sec/lap
Compare this to the Mercedes stint at:
Base time = 81.3 sec
Fuel-corrected deg rate = 0.08 sec/lap
Again, we don't know the true fuel loads, so it's hard to make a direct comparison here, but the Mercedes stint remains very impressive.
http://i.imgur.com/7ekZSiM.png