Upgrading cars

[NathanOlder]

Over the last 5 months all 12 teams have been trying to squeez every ounce of performance from their 2012 cars.
Every time a team brings upgrades they say they are looking for a tenth , 2 tenths, 3tenths and so on. No one can really tell as weather is never the same, and the other 11 teams are constantly upgrading their cars too.

What my question is, how much faster would todays Mclaren be than the Mclaren that rolled out in Melbourne in March. If both cars were raced at Silverstone for a grand prix simulation by the same driver with the same weather. Bearing in mind the car will be faster over a single lap and possibly better at managing tyre ect... Are we talking 10 seconds faster over a race or a minute ? or even a lap ???

Any views would be good

[beelsebob]

Over the last 5 months all 12 teams have been trying to squeez every ounce of performance from their 2012 cars.
Every time a team brings upgrades they say they are looking for a tenth , 2 tenths, 3tenths and so on. No one can really tell as weather is never the same, and the other 11 teams are constantly upgrading their cars too.

What my question is, how much faster would todays Mclaren be than the Mclaren that rolled out in Melbourne in March. If both cars were raced at Silverstone for a grand prix simulation by the same driver with the same weather. Bearing in mind the car will be faster over a single lap and possibly better at managing tyre ect... Are we talking 10 seconds faster over a race or a minute ? or even a lap ???

Any views would be good

My bet personally is that they gained maybe only about 0.2 seconds in raw pace with their upgrade, but that their tyre management was such a huge leap forward that for hamilton they may have gained a full minute over a race distance, for button, I have a feeling it may be closer to 5 minutes over a race distance.

[adrianjordan]

I've often thought that it would be really interesting for a team, at the end of the season, to run their season end spec car head to head with their launch spec car at the same track with the same driver and see which is better.

As has been shown a couple of times in recent seasons, it is possible to gain performance without upgrades - simply through a better understanding of how to set the car up - and I think it would be an interesting way of seeing how much time was really gained through the upgrades and how much through a better understanding of the car...

[ESPImperium]

First post back after a self inposed F1 two week Olympic shut down for me!

Looking at my data, the teams have gained or lost the following percentage in lap time on average since the first event in Melbourne:

Red Bull-Renault 0.716
McLaren-Mercedes 0.652
Scuderia Ferrari 0.385
Mercedes AMG F1 Team 0.431
Lotus F1-Renault 0.179
Force India-Mercedes -0.497
Sauber-Ferrari -0.135
Scuderia Toro Rosso-Ferrari 0.403
Williams-Renault -0.286
Caterham F1-Renault 0.923
Hispania-Cosworth -1.854
Marussia F1-Cosworth -0.917

1% is a score of 0.758 for those who ask. A positive figure shows gain and a negitive shows the car is going down the grid now.

Ive done the math for you, and the teams have gained or lost the the following time a lap:

Red Bull-Renault 0.944
McLaren-Mercedes 0.860
Scuderia Ferrari 0.508
Mercedes AMG F1 Team 0.569
Lotus F1-Renault 0.236
Force India-Mercedes -0.656
Sauber-Ferrari -0.179
Scuderia Toro Rosso-Ferrari 0.531
Williams-Renault -0.377
Caterham F1-Renault 1.217
Hispania-Cosworth -2.445
Marussia F1-Cosworth -1.209

Those times are from the teams performance from Melbourne in March to Hungary arround 2 weeks ago.

[marcush.]

with the regs stability it mmaybe worth to compare the gains and losses vs 2011 ? Certainly Mercedes has retained the china strength and was much improved in valencia and monaco but lost edge in canada comaring to last year ....

I ´m surprised they look on average better than in results ...

Maybe someone is prepared to wade through the times on a different strategy:

HRT sems to be the one team that is gaining time more from experience with running the car and tyre understanding than development of bits and uprfades.So it seems fair to say HRT is a good baseline what is the gains you achieve without pouring money into uprgrades...maybe one would omit the first two races as HRT was not really ready but i think this´is a valid approach to gauge the strengths and weaknesses.
Also it´s more than obvious that relative strengths of cars vary from track to track so maybe it would be fair to gauge strengths on comparable tracks.

[beelsebob]

First post back after a self inposed F1 two week Olympic shut down for me!

Looking at my data, the teams have gained or lost the following percentage in lap time on average since the first event in Melbourne:

Red Bull-Renault 0.716
McLaren-Mercedes 0.652
Scuderia Ferrari 0.385
Mercedes AMG F1 Team 0.431
Lotus F1-Renault 0.179
Force India-Mercedes -0.497
Sauber-Ferrari -0.135
Scuderia Toro Rosso-Ferrari 0.403
Williams-Renault -0.286
Caterham F1-Renault 0.923
Hispania-Cosworth -1.854
Marussia F1-Cosworth -0.917

1% is a score of 0.758 for those who ask. A positive figure shows gain and a negitive shows the car is going down the grid now.

Ive done the math for you, and the teams have gained or lost the the following time a lap:

Red Bull-Renault 0.944
McLaren-Mercedes 0.860
Scuderia Ferrari 0.508
Mercedes AMG F1 Team 0.569
Lotus F1-Renault 0.236
Force India-Mercedes -0.656
Sauber-Ferrari -0.179
Scuderia Toro Rosso-Ferrari 0.531
Williams-Renault -0.377
Caterham F1-Renault 1.217
Hispania-Cosworth -2.445
Marussia F1-Cosworth -1.209

Those times are from the teams performance from Melbourne in March to Hungary arround 2 weeks ago.

How is this calculated?

I struggle to believe some of the figures that have come out of your method, for several reasons:
1) It shows teams losing time. No team reasonably will lose time from their original car, only lose out relative to other cars that are gaining.
2) It shows Ferrari gaining very little, despite now being at the front of the grid, and early on being midfielders
3) It shows Red Bull gaining enormous amounts, despite not being anywhere near McLaren of late
4) It shows Lotus gaining --- all, despite being pretty front-running now.
5) You have arbitrary scores that you haven't explained the meaning of, which somehow map 0.758 to 1% lap time.

[Javert]

Well on Melbourne 2012 cars were 1,5 slower than their 2011 counterparts

In Hungaroring that gap is reduced to 8-9 tenths, showing they have gained at least 6-7 tenths in lap time.
However, this is done assuming that 2011 cars had fixed performance, which isn't true
Assuming at least 1 sec to be gained from Melbourne 2011 to Hungary 2011,

we can say that Hungary 2012 cars have more downforce than Melbourne 2011 cars