Formula One - 2018

Great race!

Rain Strategy analysis-

I think instead of chasing interviews in the rain, SkyTV should have just spent the post race showing how each team reacted to the rain with replay footage.  I actually don't have a clue how HAAS fell down the order or where Erricson made up so many places. I wasn't able to give 100% attention to the race but watched it pretty closely.

Vettel! He seems to just not like this off on drizzle rain. I felt sad for him and I don't like him that much.  Still that must have hurt. 

KIMI my second favorite driver of all time! You are hilarious. He just isn't as fast as Vettel and I think he is just banking cash for the eventual forced retirement. But he doesn't have time for BS. Unlike Massa he just wants the team to say. Let Sebastian past in the next two laps. Done. I think Perez or LeClerc would have held Vettel at bay. Heck even Stroll may have done much better in the red cars.

Hamilton got lots of luck. The most important decision was to tell Bottas to hold off. They gave him a lap to make it past Lewis then shut it down. DRS would have made it an easy pass. I would have instructed Bottas to stay in line to gap Kimi then he gets two laps to pass Lewis after DRS is allowed. Then hold positions. That whole pitstop craziness with Hamilton was weird. The team actually can't be too happy leaving today as that pit work on Bottas and the radio calls were just terrible. They didn't deserve the win from merit of that work. 

I think part of the reason for the large gaps from the top 4 in the first half of the race was because everyone was trying to save tires for the mega rain that would never come. The top 3 teams can put more pace in as getting to the front is more important than just staying in the points. I was hoping for HAAS to go full two stop strategy and run max on the first set of tires for a 10 lap stint then switch to a set of softs and run them as hard as possible to the 25-30 laps pit point. Really try to lead the GP for once. Counter the wait for rain startegy. 

oldsaw said:

Hamilton has been called to the stewards office for violating pit lane regulations. I don't know if that means a time-penalty, a grid penalty, exclusion or exoneration.

Others have done it without penalty but like Spa so many years ago the FIA like to punish Hamilton after the race. Rather than giving him a penalty to manage like Kimi got in Silverstone. Nothing Hamilton and MB can do!

Advan046 said:

oldsaw said:

Hamilton has been called to the stewards office for violating pit lane regulations. I don't know if that means a time-penalty, a grid penalty, exclusion or exoneration.

Others have done it without penalty but like Spa so many years ago the FIA like to punish Hamilton after the race. Rather than giving him a penalty to manage like Kimi got in Silverstone. Nothing Hamilton and MB can do!

I think I read that the last time this sort of thing happened was Kimi in 2016 and they gave him a 5-second.

Results are are in: He keeps the win but gets a reprimand, whatever that means in the long run.

Points on his license, probably. Not a big deal if he behaves. 

Mercedes has been getting a lot of crap about their strategy of late, I think they nailed it today. The mayhem after Vettel's crash isn't completely surprising given that it was unexpected and they had to make a snap decision on inters vs ultras. Given the rain that they knew was coming either right before or right after the end of the race, that would have been a tough, tough call. I can't believe Hamilton was able to interpret all that chaos on the radio and baja it out of the pit lane.

Hamilton definitely owes Bottas a win at some point this season. Bottas took it well but that's gotta hurt.

I don't think that big gap was due to strategic reasons. Hamilton was trying to save tires as well. He was the second-last one to pit and was still going fast enough to pass almost the entire field and run down the leaders. We've seen it time and time again where a top six driver can start at the back and be back in the top group after a dozen or two laps. They're just on a different level.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Despite getting the car setup right, making the right call on putting Hamilton on Ultra Soft tires, and bringing Bottas in for new tires; they still almost threw away Hamilton's win with the crazy pitstop radio call. It would have been Bottas' win if the stewards put a big penalty on Hamilton. But the comments on their lack of skill in responding to VSC or SC situations isn't unfounded. 

The top three's pace is always better than the rest but I felt this race there was an added wait for the rain factor.

Yea, on a high level, MB came up with a great plan for Lewis, especially factoring the risk of rain.  And Hamilton did an amazing job with those tires, especially when you see how Kimi and Seb abused the same tires well before Lewis stopped for his fresh tires.  Even without the rain, it would have been interesting.  The rain with that tire strategy really made things interesting.

Where MB has issues is for either a VSC or a full SC- not much to do with the VSC this time, but that odd call for the SC, and seeing how they were totally not ready for Valteri- the crew seem to expect Lewis.  AND they were not ready for Bottas, so the stack (had it happened) would have been a mess.

Things worked out fine, in the end, though.

alfadriver said:

And Hamilton did an amazing job with those tires, especially when you see how Kimi and Seb abused the same tires well before Lewis stopped for his fresh tires. 

Lewis started on softs.  The front 10 we're on super soft, so he could go on supers later, when everyone else had to go to softs or mediums.  Exactly right strategy, made even better by a couple of lucky happenings.

Just watched it again - the Mercedes pit stop fracas was caused by a change in tire choice. They had tires out and ready and were staged for a car, then they went from .... softs? to ultras. Maybe it was a change (or realization) in what order they were coming in and they had to change from Lewis tires to Bottas tires. 

Fastest lap of the race was set by Hamilton on penultimate lap.  People giving the win to Bottas seem to ignore this.  Hamilton held off Bottas, gapped him over a second, and THEN the call to hold came through.

Keith Tanner said:

Just watched it again - the Mercedes pit stop fracas was caused by a change in tire choice. They had tires out and ready and were staged for a car, then they went from .... softs? to ultras. Maybe it was a change (or realization) in what order they were coming in and they had to change from Lewis tires to Bottas tires. 

Am I remembering a rule that tires are driver specific?  So IF they had a set of tires for Lewis, they had to change them for Botta's car?  

alfadriver said:

Keith Tanner said:

Just watched it again - the Mercedes pit stop fracas was caused by a change in tire choice. They had tires out and ready and were staged for a car, then they went from .... softs? to ultras. Maybe it was a change (or realization) in what order they were coming in and they had to change from Lewis tires to Bottas tires. 

Am I remembering a rule that tires are driver specific?  So IF they had a set of tires for Lewis, they had to change them for Botta's car?  

That sounds right.

Advan046 said:

Great race!

KIMI my second favorite driver of all time! You are hilarious. He just isn't as fast as Vettel and I think he is just banking cash for the eventual forced retirement.

I see it as differently.  I feel this year Kimi has been driving better than in the last few years.  There's no doubt that Ferrari strategy has cost him places and points as they use him as a buffer for Seb.  It was obvious from the first radio call that he was being asked to pull over and let Seb past.  I think he kept pushing for them to spell that out knowing perfectly well that a conversation like that would get broadcast.  He wanted them to say to the world, move over.  He wouldn't' have done that in the past, but he knows LeClerc is most likely replacing him, so why play nice?  Let the world know you're being hampered to make the chosen one look good. 

Streetwiseguy said:

alfadriver said:

Keith Tanner said:

Just watched it again - the Mercedes pit stop fracas was caused by a change in tire choice. They had tires out and ready and were staged for a car, then they went from .... softs? to ultras. Maybe it was a change (or realization) in what order they were coming in and they had to change from Lewis tires to Bottas tires. 

Am I remembering a rule that tires are driver specific?  So IF they had a set of tires for Lewis, they had to change them for Botta's car?  

That sounds right.

That's how it works. The tires aren't allocated to the team, they're allocated to the car. It would also explain why there were tires that weren't ultras staged - if Lewis didn't have any left, then they would have had to go with something else. That close to the end of the race, the only reason you wouldn't run ultras would be if you felt intermediates were necessary. Just looked at the video again, there were definitely yellow-walled softs staged and ready to go. Maybe the original plan was for Lewis to come in on the first safety car lap and Bottas on the second?

I didn't see any coverage of the final round of Haas pitstops which resulted in a sure-fire 5/6 (or 6/7) turn into a 6/11, but someone F'd something up badly.  Romain was making excellent progress through the field, and Kevin was perpetually .7 sec behind Hartely for each of the final laps.  No idea what that was about, but he should have been right up there.  As a result, Force India moves ahead of Haas.

I think Seb locked the rears because of harvesting, wondering if they should have a defeat switch for that in the rain...

The drivers have control over brake bias. Harvesting and rear brakes are heavily intertwined. I think he just screwed up. Sounds like there was a lot of variation in the traction from corner to corner and he got caught out. Just like the crazy spinning and off-track excursions that were happening further back in the pack, but he got unlucky with the consequences.

The tricky conditions are why Mercedes gave the team orders - the last thing the team wanted was for one or both cars to go off because the boys were racing hard, especially when they were behind in the championship. If it had been dry and/or they had a big lead in the constructor's championship, I'll bet it wouldn't have happened. The footage of a Mercedes just driving around all the other cars like they were parked as Lewis worked through the field probably made the PR department pretty happy, though.

Vandoorne (sp?) had a terrible weekend. I don't know if he had car problems or what, but he just couldn't get it together. As a plus, the paint on the McLarens looked fantastic in that light.

At the end how can Hamilton be that much faster then Bottas and Kimi on new tires? Bottas probably had team orders, but I am wondering if Kimi just gave up. To put 3 seconds that quickly, was pretty amazing. I still don't think Leclerc will be in a all red car. They can't have two lead drivers and Ferrari does not develop young drivers.

trigun7469 said:

At the end how can Hamilton be that much faster then Bottas and Kimi on new tires? Bottas probably had team orders, but I am wondering if Kimi just gave up. To put 3 seconds that quickly, was pretty amazing. I still don't think Leclerc will be in a all red car. They can't have two lead drivers and Ferrari does not develop young drivers.

Lewis was told to push hard, because Merc was fearful of a time penalty for crossing the grass.  Kimi and Val are totally aware that passing an F1 car is next to impossible without a three second lap time difference, so they both turned down the engines to save them.  Lewis asked to turn down they kept telling him to turn it up and go hard, to build at least five seconds in case of a time penalty.

Also, Hamilton is consistently one of the fastest drivers in mixed wet/dry conditions.

Vettel also had a piece of his front wing missing, that may or may not have played a part.  The thing about Hamilton is that he is pretty complete as a driver.  Some are fast over a single lap, others really good at developing a race and keeping the strategy in play, he's all of those.  I've always wondered if Hamilton had not gone to Mercedes, would Rosberg had been as fast as he was without the challenge.

It was an interesting race.  Would like to have seen the Red Bulls challenge a bit more.

In reply to trigun7469 :

The Ferrari isn't as good in mild wet conditions as the MB or RB. Kimi said as much post race. They were losing seconds per lap to both MBs once the rain started. That was a lot to do with tire age but mostly to do with chassis differences. Bottas just ran down and passed Kimi. Not as easy as that reads though. Then post SC Ham and Bot could control the race easy. I was surprised that Verstappen just fell off at the restart. 

It has been a trend for a few years I think. Somehow the MB and RB do better in the wet compared to Ferrari and Williams. The other teams I am not sure if they trend. 

I think it is also related to the odd colder tracks favor MB trend. 

Also as was stated Hamilton is probably the best in those conditions alnog with Alonso and supposedly Verstappen. Hulk does well too but often doesn't have a car to show it. 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I think the yellow you saw was just on the tire warmers. They resemble the real tires so much that I sometimes have to hit rewind to see what was under the face cover. 

Rumored Ocon to Renault (doesn't hurt to be French) and Sainz goes to ???. If Stroll goes to Force India, that leave Sainz with a Williams or no seat? Williams is dreadful, I wonder if Sainz could ring the neck on it.

trigun7469 said:

Rumored Ocon to Renault (doesn't hurt to be French) and Sainz goes to ???. If Stroll goes to Force India, that leave Sainz with a Williams or no seat? Williams is dreadful, I wonder if Sainz could ring the neck on it.

If Esteban does that, it will be for only one season- as he's still under contract with Mercedes.  And some project him as the logical replacement to Bottas- IF he can't renew his one year contract for 2020.  

Advan046 said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I think the yellow you saw was just on the tire warmers. They resemble the real tires so much that I sometimes have to hit rewind to see what was under the face cover. 

If I was running an F1 team, I'd match the tire warmers to the tires that were inside! I just kinda assumed that's what was going on. Looking back at the video of Bottas' pit stops, you get about a two-frame shot of a yellow cover coming off an ultra - so I guess I was wrong in that. You can see that the band on the warmer around the tread surface is teal on the tires that were first out there. One of the ones that gets carried out has red lettering instead - but a teal one seems to have been put on the right rear.

Watching that pit stop over and over is actually pretty impressive. So much chaos - the correct tires were in the garage when Bottas pulled up, so they had to completely toss out their rehearsed pit stop. There were tires getting torn out of their heaters right beside the car. Even with that, you don't see guys bouncing off each other and it only slows them down by 15 seconds.

BTW, if you do a Google image search for "formula 1 tyre warmer", this pops up. Gave me a laugh.