Everyone is going yea yea yea.
Without actually thinking about what really happened during the race.
Lap times are worth looking at for a couple of things, qualifying, tire life, and when in the races you need to show your cards.
Stradivarius wrote:Vettel didn't have over a second on all other cars. I am surprised by how many how jumps right on this conclusion without checking the facts. In the first stint, Vettel opened up an 8.275 s gap during the first 14 laps. That's an average of less than 0.6 s per lap and there was no reason why Vettel wouldn't push to the maximum at the beginning to get a comfortable gap, enabling him to respond to different strategies.
I did check the facts. The average is there because Vettel backed of the pace he initially set (which everyone did)
You think Rosberg was having a sunday cruise? No he pushed like crazy to keep up only to realize it´s for nothing since Vettel pulled away with over a second per lap in the opening stages.
Basically you pull away showing your cards, back off, run at either Rosberg´s pace or slightly better to keep extending your gap.
Stradivarius wrote:It can also be added to this, that the first couple of seconds will come automatically, without having a faster car, because of the disadvantage of following another car closely.
Not true, we saw several cars staying close to each other at several points during the race.
There´s one high speed corner on the track, the rest has a minute effect on the bad wake left behind because the speeds are too slow to have any real impact. I´m amazed you get upvotes for saying that, unbelievable.
Stradivarius wrote:On the first two laps, Vettel opened up a gap of 4.136 s to Rosberg.
Yea exactly, 2,1 and 1,9.
So you theory of Rosberg always being at a disadvantage in the first lap is rendered useless since he´s over 2 seconds away from Vettel on the second lap. Or are you saying he´s still affected by Vettel? Come on now.
With that in mind, Vettel despite being 2 seconds ahead and not having any effect on Rosberg,
still managed to pull out 1,9 seconds on pure pace from nowhere. You see what you want to see this is obvious.
If this was the Michelin era he would have lapped the whole field!
Stradivarius wrote:After that, the average difference in lap time was only 0.345 s for the next 12 laps. Vettel's fastest lap on the first stint was 1:52.756, set on lap 13. Rosberg's fastest lap in the first stint was 1:52.972 on lap 11, i.e. the difference was only 0.216 s. Alonso even did a 1:52.849 on lap 11, only 0.093 s slower than Vettel's best lap on the first stint.
Yea this is called taking it easy, making sure the options last to your designated pit lap.
The fastest laps mean nothing because Vettel is in cruise mode at this point. He´s on a sunday drive.
Fastest laps today are meaningless. They are affected by tire life and when you made your pit stop.
You should know this.
Stradivarius wrote:After their first pitstops, Vettel was 8.042 s ahead of Rosberg, after 18 laps. This gap grew with 2.925 s in 6 laps, so that Vettel was 10.967 s ahead of Rosberg after lap 24, which was the final lap they completed before piting under safety car. This means that Vettel pulled away from Rosberg with less than half a second per lap after the first pitstops. In total, having pited once, Vettel had gained 10.967s in 24 laps, which is equivalent to 0.457 s per lap from the start of the race. If we exclude the first two laps, he only pulled away with 0.31 s per lap from lap 3 to lap 24.
Again, taking it easy. You forgot to mention that Vettel was faster on his worn options then Rosberg on completely fresh tires!
Stradivarius wrote:The impression of dominance only appeared after the safety car came in and Rosberg was struggling with rubber in his front wing and was holding up the field. But if you take a deeper look, you will see that Vettel's lap times were following the same trend as before, dropping around 0.08 s - 0.09 s per lap. But Rosberg's lap times had a step up at lap 31. Until then, Rosberg's lap times had dropped at almost the same rate as Vettel's. The conclusion of this lap time analysis is that Vettel's performance was consistent through the race (he relaxed somewhat on his final stint). Vettel didn't suddenly get much faster after safety car, it was Rosberg that got slower. And we know that he had some problems that explains this.
He showed his pace at the start of the race and after the safety car.
The fact that Rosberg had stuff in his front wing is meaningless because he obliterated everyone, not just Rosberg.
And listening to Hamilton on press conference he said after safety car comes in, everyone is going
flat out.
Stradivarius wrote:What facts do we have that suggests the speed difference was more than one second? How do people reach this conclusion?
The two most important points during the race. The start and when safety car came in.
That´s where Red Bull shows it´s true pace in the race. The rest is merely tire management while still pulling away every lap from everyone.
So you see the recurring factor here is tire management. With Michelin´s Red Bull would be able to show their true pace.
Just like the switch from the ----tires we had in the beginning of the season hampered them and when the better compounds came they started being on par with Mercedes in Qualifying as well.
The better tires allowed them to show more of their true pace. It´s very simple stuff.
Better tires = unlocks the true nature of the Red Bull machine.
Stradivarius wrote:Another point I would like to repeat (I think it has been mentioned before) is that the difference in lap time will naturally be greater on a track where the lap times are around 110 seconds, when comparing to tracks where the lap times are only around 80 s. So if you use lap time as a measure of performance without thinking about this, you will automatically think that the differences are greater at a track like Singapore. Also, when the track has few long straights and many corners, the advantage of more downforce will count for more than when the track has few corners and many long straights. So I don't see anything special about the performance in Singapore when comparing to Monza. Vettel pulled away from Alonso by 6.435 s during the first 15 laps at Monza. As far as I know, that could be an even more impressive speed difference than what we saw in Singapore. Just to give an example of what I mean, at Monza, the 16 best drivers were within 2 seconds of the fastest lap of the race. In Singapore there were only 7 drivers within 2 seconds of the fastest lap. I realize that maybe Vettel's fastest lap on super softs late in the race isn't representative, so let's look at the second fastest driver: At Monza, Rosberg had the second fastest lap and there were 14 drivers (including Rosberg himself) who had a fastest lap witing one second of that time. In Singapore, Sutil had the second fastest lap, and only 7 drivers were within 1 second of that time. The 14th fastest driver was more than 2 seconds off that time. So lap time differences is definitely a relative measure of speed and cannot be compared directly between tracks. In other words, one second in lap time corresponds to a smaller performance difference in Singapore than at Monza and many other tracks.
That´s great and all that but the fact is it was 1,2,3 tenths in quali but seconds in the race when Red Bull was force to show their cards.
"If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then brother that person is a piece of sh*t"
Do you really think soo??? Oh boy 