2015 Malaysian Grand Prix - Sepang

[WaikeCU]

- Verstappen looks like a visually tidy driver (which means little and marketing works on everybody) but hype is annoying. He finished just in front of his rookie team-mate that started 9 places behind, was a mess at the start, for a quarter of the race and before pitstop (normal and happens) but they only talk about record points. In Melbourne he would have finished way behind Sainz. I bet Magnussen, not worthy of F1 because he had a benchmark in Button could do better than either. Why can't they wait until something spectacular?

One doesn't simply qualify 6th in his 2nd F1 race at 17 years of age and under extreme conditions like Malaysia can offer. But yeah I believe Monaco is the next where he can showcase his raw speed.

[Godius]

I also disagree with iotar__ regarding the Melbourne race. Verstappen's pace was really good in his first stint on the prime tires (he could match the pace of the drivers in front of him on the options) and it looked as if he could gain several of places on the option tires in his second stint. Too bad of that mechanical failure.

[andartop]

In the first stint Lewis was in clear air, and couldn't shake Vettel off, on the same tires.
In the final stint, Lewis was 10sec behind Vettel, in clear air, on the same tires, and couldn't really close the gap.
Even if he had closed the gap, I doubt he would have been able to overtake on track.
What happened in between, one can put down to track position and strategic decisions, or mistakes, but as far as I am concerned Ferrari/Vettel had equal, if not better, pace this weekend based on these facts.
Why is everyone trying to explain what Mercedes did wrong? Maybe they didn't do anything wrong. Maybe this was just the best they could achieve on this track, under these conditions, and that's all there is to it.
In which case, they did a really good job of securing 2nd and 3rd on a track they could have lost a lot more than 1st place.
Would have been very interesting to see what the result would be if Kimi had qualified 4th or 5th and had not received the puncture..
I strongly suspect he might have finished 2nd or 3rd.

Regarding Alonso @ McLaren move, I totally agree he is thinking about a title and doesn't care much about GP wins. Sadly we'll never know if he made the right decision, because based on his performance in the poor Ferraris of the last few years, with this car he might have actually been able to challenge for a WDC!!! Don't forget the 6 tenths that he always brings along!

[alexx_88]

It's not the same as it was in the past. I see many pundits being in awe of rookie drivers getting up to speed so quickly. Sometimes they throw in the lack of testing as another argument for their point. In my opinion, the quality of the simulators they have these days, more than makes up for the lack of testing when talking about driver development.

It's not like Verstapen was the only rookie doing well from the start, we've seen this quite a few number of times before. Think Magnussen, Kvyat, Sainz, Perez, etc.

[Vasconia]

how come alonso keep making wrong career decisions at very apt time ?. that guy will be wearing a smirk but deep down the heart he knows . he is not going to win soon unless honda is hiding something behind their reliability woes. i still feel mercedes complacency cost them a win, they did nt see it coming and from next race onwards they will not look silly but boy feeling so sorry for fernando , he leaves and that index figure with yesss rises again..

I feel the same, poor Alonso ! Sadly I myself have no expectation or hope whatsoever that Honda is hiding anything. They just got it all wrong. McL is showing their best, fighting with Manor

Come on, I am sure that this car has much more potential than the current one. Give them a litlle bit of time, the improvement has been clear in only two weeks. I am sure that in Barcelona they will be in Q3 as an usual thing.

2015 is a year to prepare the next season, Alonso knows it, it will be probably his last oportunity to win championship.

[Artur Craft]

Oh and call me a fool, but I was impressed by McLaren... they even overtake!

Seriously, after Melbourne I didn´t expect such a big step forward, they still need some more even if they´re this big, but before retiring there was some chances for them to get some points.... Obviously without finishing that will be dificult, but I didn´t expect that step forward in perfomance

Hope to see they continue with that curve.... and finish the races

They improved but when I saw Button, using DRS, getting caught on the back straigth by Perez, who didn't have DRS, it just made me go like : and

and I'm not that sure that they will be regular Q3 participants, by Barcelona.

If someone in every racing thread was bringing how Monaco laps from the 90s (perfect selective fact with Senna or Schumacher) were slow compared to 2014 Rosberg's it would be weird but clinging to 2004 as a benchmark of displeasure with current F1 race is considered good manners here.

Not a good analogy because Monaco was a lot different back in the 90s. T1, Swimming pool complex(both chicanes, the fast and the slow one) and Rascasse were quite tighter back then.

Cars are quicker, on straights now, than in the 90s but are slower through cornering and that's where driving really occurs



Both pics displays the max speed reached on the pit straight. Benneton 94 and Mercedes 2014


Screenshots displaying the min speed of each car at Massenet. This is Rosberg's pole versus Schumacher's best thrusday qualifying lap(1,7s slower than his pole lap)

Fully agree with you about Verstappen, though. But then, I'm a kind of person that can't stand any sort of hype

[Vasconia]

- Verstappen looks like a visually tidy driver (which means little and marketing works on everybody) but hype is annoying. He finished just in front of his rookie team-mate that started 9 places behind, was a mess at the start, for a quarter of the race and before pitstop (normal and happens) but they only talk about record points. In Melbourne he would have finished way behind Sainz. I bet Magnussen, not worthy of F1 because he had a benchmark in Button could do better than either. Why can't they wait until something spectacular?

One doesn't simply qualify 6th in his 2nd F1 race at 17 years of age and under extreme conditions like Malaysia can offer. But yeah I believe Monaco is the next where he can showcase his raw speed.

I agree that he did a great job, but he is not doing a better job than Saiz who deserves more credite for what he is doing so far.

Toro Rosso has the best line up of its history.

[PlatinumZealot]

- Verstappen looks like a visually tidy driver (which means little and marketing works on everybody) but hype is annoying. He finished just in front of his rookie team-mate that started 9 places behind, was a mess at the start, for a quarter of the race and before pitstop (normal and happens) but they only talk about record points. In Melbourne he would have finished way behind Sainz. I bet Magnussen, not worthy of F1 because he had a benchmark in Button could do better than either. Why can't they wait until something spectacular?

One doesn't simply qualify 6th in his 2nd F1 race at 17 years of age and under extreme conditions like Malaysia can offer. But yeah I believe Monaco is the next where he can showcase his raw speed.

Sainz seems to have the edge by around 2 tenths in qualifying and Sainz seems to be cleaner in the race. Max seemed very dangerous making those overtakes. He almost shunted Ricciardo. Still impressive for only one year in cars and a few practice sessions in an F1 car. At the end of the day experience will even out between the two and by the end of the season we can make some conclusions.

[AnthonyG]

My take (assuming anyone cares) is that Mercedes gifted the race to Ferrari through poor strategy calls. In the end, they made one more pit stop than Ferrari. The pit stop delta at Sepang is about 23 seconds.

That's all she wrote.

Putting Lewis back out on hards for the end of the race just showed the team recognized they had blown it and were content to have Lewis come second. Can you imagine having all those smart types manning all those computers and crunching all those numbers and STILL getting your sums wrong? How embarrassing.......

There was a lot of errors in radio traffic too. On lap 42, we hear his race engineer telling him the following:

Lewis you are scheduled to catch Vettel with five laps remaining.

Lap 42? There was still more than 10 laps to go. I really didn't understand why they told Lewis, there's only 5 laps remaining.

5 laps before the end, as in you can attack him for five laps.

I also think that message was delayed quite a bit, since Hamilton was nowhere on target to do so at that moment.

[ChrisF1]

- Verstappen looks like a visually tidy driver (which means little and marketing works on everybody) but hype is annoying. He finished just in front of his rookie team-mate that started 9 places behind, was a mess at the start, for a quarter of the race and before pitstop (normal and happens) but they only talk about record points. In Melbourne he would have finished way behind Sainz. I bet Magnussen, not worthy of F1 because he had a benchmark in Button could do better than either. Why can't they wait until something spectacular?

One doesn't simply qualify 6th in his 2nd F1 race at 17 years of age and under extreme conditions like Malaysia can offer. But yeah I believe Monaco is the next where he can showcase his raw speed.

Sainz seems to have the edge by around 2 tenths in qualifying and Sainz seems to be cleaner in the race. Max seemed very dangerous making those overtakes. He almost shunted Ricciardo. Still impressive for only one year in cars and a few practice sessions in an F1 car. At the end of the day experience will even out between the two and by the end of the season we can make some conclusions.

Wasn't there a full second between their best lap times? I'm unsure if they were set on different tyres, so if somebody could confirm I would appreciate that.

I did not expect a great deal from Sainz this season, I thought that if Verstappen was all he;s cracked up to be then he would beat Sainz.

At the moment it looks like it'll be a close battle, certainly one of the most interesting points of the season to come.

[Phil]

Why is everyone trying to explain what Mercedes did wrong?

Because we are trying to determine if Mercedes could have won this race or not. And we can only do that if the assumption is that that first pitstop was wrong in the sense that it 1.) gave up track position and 2.) put them ~11 seconds behind Vettel due to traffic and 3.) possibly pushed them from the planed 2-stop race, into a 3-stop race.

Those are interesting variables to play with right there. But I for one still think Vettel would have had the pace thanks to tyre deg and performance on the prime tyre to have won the race.

PS: Just to nitpick, but Lewis was initially closing the gap on the last stint. But we can't say for certain how much Seb was maintaining the gap at that point. IMO Seb perhaps didn't have a pace advantage, but he certainly did have a tyre-deg advantage (which results in pace advantage given he could extract more performance from the same tyre).

[Moose]

Why is everyone trying to explain what Mercedes did wrong?

Because we are trying to determine if Mercedes could have won this race or not. And we can only do that if the assumption is that that first pitstop was wrong in the sense that it 1.) gave up track position and 2.) put them ~11 seconds behind Vettel due to traffic and 3.) possibly pushed them from the planed 2-stop race, into a 3-stop race.

Those are interesting variables to play with right there. But I for one still think Vettel would have had the pace thanks to tyre deg and performance on the prime tyre to have won the race.

I think it's quite obvious that Mercedes absolutely did have the pace to win. They were a second a lap faster than Ferrari on the options, if they could make them last. If they had waited for lap 12 to pit for primes, they would have pushed everything further back, and would have shortened the final stint to 10 laps, making it also an options run (even though the options they had were worn). The result is that they would have been a second faster than Ferrari for 22 more of the laps they ran. That 22 seconds, plus the 11 seconds they lost in traffic would have caused Hamilton to finish about 20 seconds clear of Vettel.

Even if you assume Vettel could push a bit harder, that seems like Ferrari probably didn't have the pace to match that.

[Andres125sx]

Wasn't there a full second between their best lap times? I'm unsure if they were set on different tyres, so if somebody could confirm I would appreciate that.

I did not expect a great deal from Sainz this season, I thought that if Verstappen was all he;s cracked up to be then he would beat Sainz.

At the moment it looks like it'll be a close battle, certainly one of the most interesting points of the season to come.

I did this comparison after qualifying, in race you can´t compare as that will always depend on your last stint, and they did very different strategies. Sainz did 2 stops with a very long final stint (23 laps) vs Max 3 stops with a last stint of 15 laps, so when the car was light, Sainz was on conservative mode while Max was pushing hard

I´m the only one impressed by that 39.8 Sainz Jr. did on Q1?

I´ve been comparing and....

Fastest laps for Ferrari:
FP1 Kimi: 40.497
FP1 Seb: 40.985
FP2 Kimi: 40.163
FP2 Seb: 40.652
FP3 Kimi: 40.245
FP3 Seb: 40.266
Q1 Seb: 39.814
Q1 Kimi: 40.415
Q2 Seb: 39.632
Q2 Kimi: 42.173

Fastest laps for STR:

FP1 Sainz: 41.596
FP1 Max: 41.803
FP2 Max: 41.220
FP2 Sainz: 42.291
FP3 Sainz: 40.601
FP3 Max: 40.989
Q1 Sainz: 39.814
Q1 Max: 40.793
Q2 Max: 41.430
Q2 Sainz: 43.701

Faster than Kimi´s fastest lap!! And only .182 slower than Seb´s fastest lap, matching exactly second fastest lap for Seb, both 39.814 in Q1. For these four drivers only three laps under 40, two for Seb and one for Sainz

Then he ruined the qualifying with that mistake when it started raining in Q2, but impressive for a rookie anycase

[andartop]

But since they could not make the options last for so long, all these calculations are irrelevant, no?
Surely, the 1sec per lap faster than Ferrari could not be maintained over so many laps, so, as others have hinted, it is likely that Vettel would have still won regardless of Merc's strategy.

[AnthonyG]

I had the impression Rosberg was actually faster than Hamilton during the race, is this correct?