2013 Australian GP - Albert Park

[Mandrake]

Stucliff is just missing the fact in his equation, that Kimi started way behind Alonso, had to make his way up to Alonso, got held up by Alonso (and the others in Front of Alonso) only to cruise to victory as soon as he had passed Alonso.

Somewhere in the above, KR lost more than 13 seconds, so in the end Kimi won by 8 seconds, lost let's say 15 seconds in between and alonso lost 21 seconds from his pitstop. That still makes Kimi the fastest. Credit where credit is due, I hope Lotus keeps up that performance

[beelsebob]

Reading the last pages I can't but wonder why nobody splits the "faster" aspect into its two logical parts - faster on a single lap and faster on full race distance.

For obvious reasons – it's impossible to make any judgement on faster on a single lap, because people were pushing the tyres to a different extent.

Definitely Kimi was the fastest on race distance. And fast enough on a single lap to overtake when necessary compared to Red Bull cars which are fast where others are not - corner entry and exit - to have the best lap time but were not able to overtake and gain positions once the car is not leading.

I'm not convinced that was what was going on at all – yes they failed to overtake (even a ForceIndia), but they also couldn't then keep up with the ForceIndia, and Ferrari clearly had faster pace than them at that stage in the race. We have no good reason to suspect that during the short period that Vettel was lapping faster than anyone that no one else could lap that fast – It's entirely plausible that the Ferrari, Lotus and even the Merc could lap faster at that point, but were choosing not to in order to make the tyres last more.

It's a matter of setup balance and compromises and Lotus have hit the spot for the conditions in Australia.

Sure, but what we don't know that the RedBull, Ferrari and Merc weren't set up perfectly for Australia too... They may well have been, and were simply not as fast.

That's why I wrote in the RB9 thread that RBR need to increase a bit their top speed. For the next races things may vary significantly.

Yes they may, but at Australia, Lotus were the fastest. We don't know who was the fastest over one lap, as we don't know when everyone was pushing as hard as they could.

All teams will be adjusting to the current Pirelli tyres specifics as testing, apart from being limited, does not compare to real race conditions.

Sure, and teams may well figure out ways to be faster by either simply improving their car (as RBR and Merc are rumored to be doing before next race), or by using the tyres better.

[raymondu999]

<--And I hate Mclaren more than anything

They are, in fact, my favorite team. Having a specific avatar does not mean you support that driver. It may *imply* it, but it does not *mean* it.

Thats fine if you were merely observing similarities,

I was.

you are implying this is a one-off like merc in chnia last year.

If it seemed to you that I was - I now categorically tell you I was not.

They drove a great race

The best of anyone.

[Dragonfly]

@beelsebob
I am not going to dissect your post as you have dissected mine

Here we just share our own points of view based in assumptions, as you rightly point that we don't know any details and can't be sure. Personally I am not willing to go into word by word analysis and arguing.
Just to be a bit more clear, when speaking about faster on a single lap, I had in mind the qualification. Because during that time we can assume with greater confidence that everyone is pushing hard under equal fuel loads and relatively equal conditions.

[beelsebob]

@beelsebob
I am not going to dissect your post as you have dissected mine

Here we just share our own points of view based in assumptions, as you rightly point that we don't know any details and can't be sure. Personally I am not willing to go into word by word analysis and arguing.
Just to be a bit more clear, when speaking about faster on a single lap, I had in mind the qualification. Because during that time we can assume with greater confidence that everyone is pushing hard under equal fuel loads and relatively equal conditions.

Okay, then I think we're at the point of...

Fastest with a qualifying fuel load over a single lap: RB9
Fastest over a race distance: E21
Fastest instantaneously: STR8
Fastest over a lap at an arbitrary point in the race: unknown. Personally I'd say the E21 is likely to be faster than the RB9. I suspect the F138 is faster too.

[lukeaar]

Fastest with a qualifying fuel load over a single lap: RB9
Fastest over a race distance: E21
Fastest instantaneously: STR8
Fastest over a lap at an arbitrary point in the race: unknown. Personally I'd say the E21 is likely to be faster than the RB9. I suspect the F138 is faster too.

Logic.

Not trying to imply anything with the following, but I think it's very interesting that STR also bagged the fastest sector 3 time (Vergne, 35.653).

[dayzer]

Have to say that it was an interesting race. We know a little bit of the running order but we need to see a few more rounds before we can say who has the best car.

Bring on Malaysia!

[Ral]

@beelsebob
I am not going to dissect your post as you have dissected mine

Here we just share our own points of view based in assumptions, as you rightly point that we don't know any details and can't be sure. Personally I am not willing to go into word by word analysis and arguing.
Just to be a bit more clear, when speaking about faster on a single lap, I had in mind the qualification. Because during that time we can assume with greater confidence that everyone is pushing hard under equal fuel loads and relatively equal conditions.

Okay, then I think we're at the point of...

Fastest with a qualifying fuel load over a single lap: RB9
Fastest over a race distance: E21
Fastest instantaneously: STR8
Fastest over a lap at an arbitrary point in the race: unknown. Personally I'd say the E21 is likely to be faster than the RB9. I suspect the F138 is faster too.

I don't think the "Fastest instantaneously" is something you can conclude from what happened, because that doesn't take into account at what point in the tyre life+fuel load cycle that speed was set. It's as useless a metric as "fastest lap of the race" is to judge relative performance, as shown by Jules Bianchi's 10th(? 11th?) fastest lap of the race. Both, in context, can only be taken as additional circumstantial evidence so to speak.

The only firm conclusion we can draw from this race, especially because of the weather conditions, was that the fastest way to get from start to finish over 1 lap was to give Vettel or Webber an RB9 and if you wanted to cover 58 laps your best bet was to have a Lotus E21 and put it in the hands of Kimi Räikkönen.

[Vasconia]

About the race in general, it was quite intensive and interesting, Pirelli is playing a major role in this "new" F1, which is not good but at least races are interesting. Lotus confirmed its excellent use of the tyres and tremendous pace, I was expecting to see RB struggling a little bit but the problems were bigger than expected, which is good for the battle.

This is hardly 'new' for F1. Actually, it's brilliant and a throw back to the 80's (minus the unreliability of cars) when the great tyre preservers like Prost would just keep in touch with the fast chargers initially and then get ahead in the final part of the race.

I thought 80s fight was more related to fuel consume than tyres(though it was important too).

[Vasconia]

Raikkonen did 2 pitstops, made the fastest lap of the race with 23 laps old mediums and won the race. What more should he have done to be the fastest, travel in time and wave the checkered flag to himself?

hahaha, comment of the day! =D>

When a guy like Kimi says it was an easy victory and that his car was the fastest one, its true and thats all. Kimi is the sort of guy who says the things ignoring others reaction.

And obviously the pace of the car can be seen taking a look to the data and the tyre behaviour. If the tyrse use of the Lotus is similar in Malaysia you can a expect a dominant victory if the storm doesnt bring a little bit of chaos.

[Nando]

Red Bull had the quickest car, Lotus had the best car. Simple.

By what definition of Quickest? As I said above – I call bullshit, until you can give me a definition of quickest that actually makes this true, and is not just bullshit.

For reference – quickest if you ignore pitstops is bullshit too...
1) The ferrari was quicker by that metric
2) That equates to "the team with the car that's vaguely close to the front, and made the most pit stops is quickest", simply because that team would run the fastest on the tyres they had because they could extract life from them as fast as possible. This is a bullshit definition for obvious reasons.

Quickest over a lap. The Red Bull is the quickest car of the field.
Even if the Lotus won the race and completed the distance quickest doesn´t mean the car is the fastest on the grid.

Pound for Pound the Red Bull is the fastest machine bar none.

With race you introduce things like Pit stops, tire management, time delta etc etc.
In Quali you have one goal. Take your car and do the quickest lap the car can do.

Quali = quickest machine take pole.
Race = best machine/team wins.

[Nando]

Otherwise you would have to say Raikkonen had the quickest car in Abu Dhabi last year and that Hamilton had one of the slowest cars because he never finished the race.
(or alternatively say it was the 4th quickest car based on where Button ended the race)

[GrizzleBoy]

I just watched the 40 minutes Mercedes onboard feed that I recorded on my phone and I just realised that about four minutes into the video (although I'm sure a few laps were lost somewhere), the innermost part of Lewis' front right tyres is literally showing canvas.



Did anyone else notice this with any of the other cars?

What does it say about tyre deg?

[Sonic]

First time here. One question : why the W04 was 12km/h slower (top speed) during the race than during quali ? I can't find the solution. Could a front wing clic (even a 3 points) alterate the top speed that much ?

[rejeesh]

Raikkonen did 2 pitstops, made the fastest lap of the race with 23 laps old mediums and won the race. What more should he have done to be the fastest, travel in time and wave the checkered flag to himself?

hahaha, comment of the day! =D>

When a guy like Kimi says it was an easy victory and that his car was the fastest one, its true and thats all. Kimi is the sort of guy who says the things ignoring others reaction.

And obviously the pace of the car can be seen taking a look to the data and the tyre behaviour. If the tyrse use of the Lotus is similar in Malaysia you can a expect a dominant victory if the storm doesnt bring a little bit of chaos.

I don't think there will be a dominant victory. The tyre advantage of E21 translates to 3-4 seconds over a race distance. It depends on whether redbull/ ferrari can overcome this through their outright pace. it also depends on how the race pans out. If redbull/ ferrari can run in clear air, they will have advantage.