2017 Monaco Grand Prix, Monte Carlo, 26-28 May

[giantfan10]

Actually, you could undercut. Thats what Verstappen went for and almost pulled it off had it not been for very, very slow pit stop.

Basically, at 34th lap, new SS were faster for big majority of drivers (including Kimi)

I dont get what the entire faux outrage is about.... if Ferrari wants to they can manipulate the race however they chose between their 2 drivers.It is entirely legal.Based on the race that i saw Kimi was just flat out slower than vettel just like in every other race so far this year.
Why was there no faux outrage When mercedes asked Bottas to move over twice in the same race?
Why are the known Mercedes fans so concerned about what Ferrari did or didnt do? I suspect its those 25 points that Vettel leads the world championship by that is the root of the faux outrage.

[ferkan]

Actually, you could undercut. Thats what Verstappen went for and almost pulled it off had it not been for very, very slow pit stop.

Basically, at 34th lap, new SS were faster for big majority of drivers (including Kimi)

...apparently not fast enough.

Well they were much faster for him then US. Had they pitted Vettel, Vettel with SS would make 1+s on Kimi who would continue on his old US.

Kimis pace was the problem, nothing else. Make 3-4s gap in clear, pit literally whenever, win the race. Easy, if you have speed.

If not, then you will run into backmarker and your race will be over.

[Manoah2u]

Verstappen's race was ruined not rather due to the moment of the pitstop itself, but rather that it took too long relatively speaking and therefor the window of opportunity was too small and that raises the question whether they had to do that stop at all at that moment.

if i'm not mistaken it was almost a full second slow for no apparant reason but simply not doing the job fast enough. If it was atleast 8 tenths faster - entirely reasonable - then he would have come out in front of Bottas and we would have seen an entirely different result.

btw, i do want to mention though; Max needs to understand too that you 'cant have it all' always. Look at Lewis.
It's the first time Max actually finishes the weekend, and managed to keep his car in 1 piece during both Qually and Race, last 2 Monaco GP's he trashed them, so i think he shouldn't be too critical on his team.

[sosic2121]

@ferkan

+1
To me, it's very simple.
I predicted laps of both Ferrari pitstops.
They had to wait for Bottas's pitstop to commit to cover him. They chose Kimi(logical move as he was in front) and (and in my eyes at that moment) they compromised Vettel's position.
After that Ferrari had(!) to wait for Ricciardo to pit to cover all possibilities. As soon as he pitted, Vettel followed.
If there was SC during those 5 laps, God knows where Vettel would end, but Ferrari's victory was secured!

Right call by Ferrari! And I'm a Kimi fan...

[Sieper]

Even jamesallen doesn't full outright dare to say it. He first sort a does, then sort of comes back on it and then confirms it again whilst not doing so. Moehahah, nobody wants to be persona non grata.

[TwanV]

Verstappen's race was ruined not rather due to the moment of the pitstop itself, but rather that it took too long relatively speaking and therefor the window of opportunity was too small and that raises the question whether they had to do that stop at all at that moment.

if i'm not mistaken it was almost a full second slow for no apparant reason but simply not doing the job fast enough. If it was atleast 8 tenths faster - entirely reasonable - then he would have come out in front of Bottas and we would have seen an entirely different result.

btw, i do want to mention though; Max needs to understand too that you 'cant have it all' always. Look at Lewis.
It's the first time Max actually finishes the weekend, and managed to keep his car in 1 piece during both Qually and Race, last 2 Monaco GP's he trashed them, so i think he shouldn't be too critical on his team.

Hi Manoah, yep he was stationary for 3.4secs (front right slow), vs 2.5 for BOT. So anyway, Merc would've gone after RIC as well according to Toto. I think he has a reason to be a little angry. Small beer anyway.

[FW17]

MV came in too hit and missed his marks.

[WaikeCU]

Did Merc miss the window with Bottas when the Ferrari's were hitting a large group of backmarkers or was it just too early to pit? That gap came down big time and Bottas was almost on Seb's gearbox.

[Big Mangalhit]

Did Merc miss the window with Bottas when the Ferrari's were hitting a large group of backmarkers or was it just too early to pit? That gap came down big time and Bottas was almost on Seb's gearbox.

The closest gap between Bot and Vet which you refer was 1.6s, that was maybe enough to try somethings, except that at that point Bot would come out behind Sainz JR and probably lose the time per lap he needed to make the undercut, also Ferrari after cleaning those cars had quite the free track to cover it

[Phil]

Again: They called Rai in a lap before his pitstop. Not a second before he entered the pits, but a full lap before.
At this time they had a very fast S2 from Ver on the screen. Not more. I do not know why you want to discuss 5 laps, you need to discuss what triggered the pitstop.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I think that pit call came rather short notice. You don't get that kind of luxury around Monaco to inform your drivers too far ahead about the strategy at hand, especially when you are about to attempt an undercut on the car you are trying to pass. Hard to say if it was a full lap or less, but i.e. VER pit call seemed extremely short notice given he was instructed to do the opposite of BOT just in case.

This is simply not true. Ver posted a very strong S2 and a pink S3 on his outlap. The S3 time of Ver during his outlap was the second fastest S3, it was only beaten by the fastest lap of Perez.
Rai and Bot did not get to grip, the rest did not have to push.

Okay, you are right. I checked the times again and although I stand behind my argument that the SS tires did require a few laps to get into their ideal range (my numbers prove that consistently over various drivers), I do have to admit that the outlap by VER was extremely good, compared to BOT and RAI (especially when you consider his subpar pit stop).

As I said what happened after shows less than stelar times:

VER31: 1:17.242 - RAI31: 1:17.074
VER32: 1:35.170 - RAI32: 1:17.663 (Verstappen pits)
VER33: 1:18.341 - RAI33: 1:17.034 (Verstappen outlap)
VER34: 1:17.774 - RAI34: 1:34.039 (Raikoennen pits)
VER35: 1:16.863 - RAI35: 1:19.518 (Raikoennen outlap)

So whatever he did on his S2 and S3 on his outlap - it wasn't there on his next lap.

Even so, you have to admit it's weird, no? Kimi just did a great lap on the lap before he pitted. It was a 1:17.034. This shows that there was still performance in those tires. The least I would have expected from Ferrari was his engineer informing him what is going on; e.g. "Kimi, VER just pitted - push now".

We may not like it, but managing tires is part of F1. It's crucial for Monaco because here more so than anywhere else, you have to react to what is happening around you. If there is a VSC car, you pit. In Monaco, as the leading car, you NEVER pit first as that will always likely put you into traffic. So without having a clear idea of when you are going to pit, you will always be pacing yourself to some degree. This also means that there is likely always some tire performance to be extracted. If Kimi had been informed over what is going around him and that he is about to pit, I'm sure he would have been able to extract more than what he was doing on the laps before.

Vettel and Ricciardo show this: Once in clean air and knowing that they were attempting to do overcuts, they gave it everything and according to both, were surprised how much more performance they could extract. Kimi never got that chance. He asked about what was happening on the pits and was immediately called in.

I also find it a tad bit weird given how we can all look back in this very topic before the race to see various posters and "armchair experts" predicting that an undercut is less likely to work at Monaco, hence pitting 2nd would be quicker. If you look at the numbers I posted, you can see why. And these numbers, no matter what sector times VER posted for a brief instance, are pretty consistent across various drivers.

Did Ferrari do it knowingly? Maybe not. But from what I am seeing, they handled their leading driver less optimally than they could have.

[turbof1]

It's truly tiresome to have this kind of discussion. Things like strategic mistakes happen each weekend. Look at Red Bull, where on saturday the team ob-vi-ous-ly made Verstappen numero uno driver by disadvantaging Ricciardo so heavily you could hear the booing all the way from Australia, while on Sunday you just saw Horner mentally picking a flower's leafs "he's my number one, he's not my number one, he's my number one, he's not my number one". He ended up "he's not my number one", pitted Verstappen to obviously disadvantage him in favour of Ricciardo, with now no questions asked Ricciardo standing on Verstappen's broken corpse (figure of speech) as the one and only, uncontested number one driver, with the Australians now screaming "ya want some whinge with that cheese, dutchie?".

Or you know, how things can truly be blown out of proportion.

[Big Mangalhit]

Did Ferrari do it knowingly? Maybe not. But from what I am seeing, they handled their leading driver less optimally than they could have.

They are very much used to handle their leading driver less optimally from last year. And their second driver for that matter. Just that having a faster car can be more forgiving on sub par strategy

[giantfan10]

Wolff's take on the whole "controversy":

"I think we need to give them credit. It wasn't clear how the tire would perform. They needed to pit one of the two drivers and put one on the supersoft and how it all panned out, the supersoft was not quick enough and Sebastian was able to pull out some stunning laps on the used ultrasoft and that gave him the advantage over Kimi. I don't think they saw that coming.
"At the end of the day, it was the right result for the team and for the driver championship but I do not think it was orchestrated."

Wolff points to messages made by Vettel during the first half of the race – which told Mercedes it couldn't match the Ferrari performance and had to try and defend Valtteri Bottas' third place from Red Bull – as further proof the German had pace in hand to jump Raikkonen.

"We were too far away from the Ferrari. It wasn't an overall lack of pace. Sebastian was on the radio all the time – they asked him to go on engine mode five which he said was not necessary. He was just cruising along, he was even slower than that – he was just cruising and waiting for the opportunity.

Aaand a funny one liner from the comments section of the article on racer.com:

Wolff's level headed and data oriented comments goes directly against Lewis's "Vettel is Ferrari's #1 driver comment"

[basti313]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I think that pit call came rather short notice.

No, you try to radio your driver only on the main straight, especially in Monaco. The radio was broadcasted before Rai entered the pits and the broadcast is delayed by at least one minute. This matches the call on the main straight.
Furthermore Rai pushed S1 on his inlap as good as possible, well visible in the sector times. In S3 he lost it, tires gone I would say.

So whatever he did on his S2 and S3 on his outlap - it wasn't there on his next lap.

Because he was stuck behind Bottas. And at this point the damage was done...Rai already pushed a half lap and had his tired done. No way to not pit him.

Kimi never got that chance. He asked about what was happening on the pits and was immediately called in.

We do not even have part of the picture about what was discussed on the radio. I would rather assume, that Rai gave a feedback on his tires, it would be nonsense not to do it. And as we can see in the timing, they were done.

And these numbers, no matter what sector times VER posted for a brief instance, are pretty consistent across various drivers.

Because no one had to push after his pitstop? Also Vet time in S2 after his stop was good, then he had enough gap.

Did Ferrari do it knowingly? Maybe not. But from what I am seeing, they handled their leading driver less optimally than they could have.

I think Ferrari showed quite often, that they do not have a good strategy team at all. We are talking about 0.5sec that Vet came out ahead after 5 blisteringly fast laps. The Ferrari team just screwed up in the last race and now people claim that their strategy team is so good that they can predict a completely unknown tire on its pace with a certainty of 0.1sec per lap?????

I think Ferrari was happy not to screw up completely and put one of the drivers of the podium by a bad call.

[basti313]

It's truly tiresome to have this kind of discussion. Things like strategic mistakes happen each weekend. Look at Red Bull,.....

You nailed it. =D>

Wolff's take on the whole "controversy":

Wolff also nailed it. Ferrari had easy and clear pit stop triggers.