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I don't post much, as you can see, but I was reading through all of this and I am wondering how many people on this board have been in a racing situation that requires a quick strategy call. I realize that this is F1 and these guys should be the best, but sometimes strategy calls don't go to plan. You can go through as many scenarios as possible and sometimes its not clear that your option was so risky until after the fact.
Before people jump all over me, I am a race engineer, and last year I was working in the Pro Formula Mazda championship, and my team and I made a disastrous call in qualifying for our St. Petersburg race by changing tires during our session. A red flag came out right as we went to new tires and our previous times were disallowed. Needless to say our drivers did not start up front and had a long race ahead of them.
Is this the same as F1 with a lot of strategists? No, but I'm just saying it is very easy to get the call right after the situation when you know what actually happened.
@ Dave, the one time Hamilton uses his own strategy in china he wins! He gives the reigns back to the engineers in Barcelona and Monaco and guess what? they make a mess of it. with that said the race engineers are the ones that decided on a single lap for Hamilton. It is not usually the case that Hamilton makes the strategic decisions. we should not turn a blind eye to the mess that macca is making right now, because they are the ones getting paid for this stuff, and anythying the driver says towards strategy is a shot in the dark anyway and you know it.
Having done some 60 street races (more than half,very successful) in my career, the decisions for qualifying and racing are very different than for race tracks.
For set up from the beginning to the end of the race weekend is a race in it's self, as the grip of the track is in constant change. It is so easy to take a perfectly handling car in an early non grip situation and end up with a slow car for the race, merely by chasing the track. The driver/data/engineer have to have perfect information, experience with street courses and have certain realizations about a street course.
Example one- cleaning up an off course excursion, takes double to triple the time to clean up and blocks the track, almost always resulting in a stoppage (red flag)/or full course yellow. With a race track, an incident rarely stops the session
Secondly, the driver has more influence on lap time than the setup does (if your close with the setup that is). So to say that Mclaren (a highly successful team) is making the decisions for Hamilton, on a street course that favors the driver's talent over the cars, is not saying much for either the team or the driver.
With the scenario at Monaco, my best guess would be that both Hamilton and management decided on gambling a one run qualifying to conserve tires, knowing full well an incident causing red flag could prevent the scenario from working. It worked for them in China, so somebody made a convincing argument that they should try it here. They gambled, they lost. Hind sight being still 20/20 leads to comments as to what should have been done.
A championship team learns from their mistakes and doesn't repeat them, a driver vs the team, will never win a championship or chase down anyone leading one.
Hamilton is still second (barely) and with just under 2/3 the season remaining.
Mclaren has a history of winning, and the last "versus" on their team, lasted one year on a three contract and had his own team racing against him for the remainder of that season....the thread is wrongly named, should be Mclaren AND Hamilton, as it will be till the end of the season, otherwise Button will be number one starting in Montreal and Mclaren will start racing Hamilton as well...
If it is a "versus" situation, why not Hamilton for Webber, just to find out whats going on at Red Bull, an easy answer to a driver vs a team senario. IMHO.
"Driving a car as fast as possible (in a race) is all about maintaining the highest possible acceleration level in the appropriate direction." Peter Wright,Techical Director, Team Lotus
sAx wrote:
How uniquely different is that to any other driver who has driven an F1 car?
Williams made Damon Hill,
Brabham made Piquet Senior
Toleman made Senna
Colin Chapman made Mansell
Benetton made Schumacher
Mclaren made Hakkinen and Coulthard
Enzo made Villeneuve
Renault made Prost
sAx
From the age of 13?
How about from the age of 10, as in the case of Vettel?
I guess LH should keep his mouth shut as we have not heard any -ve comments from MW on his 5 visits to the stewards from 6 races.
I am quiet sure there are other topics LH can talk about in interviews than diss his team who quiet honestly have been backing him more than any other driver.
speedsense wrote:Having done some 60 street races (more than half,very successful) in my career, the decisions for qualifying and racing are very different than for race tracks.
For set up from the beginning to the end of the race weekend is a race in it's self, as the grip of the track is in constant change. It is so easy to take a perfectly handling car in an early non grip situation and end up with a slow car for the race, merely by chasing the track. The driver/data/engineer have to have perfect information, experience with street courses and have certain realizations about a street course.
Example one- cleaning up an off course excursion, takes double to triple the time to clean up and blocks the track, almost always resulting in a stoppage (red flag)/or full course yellow. With a race track, an incident rarely stops the session
Secondly, the driver has more influence on lap time than the setup does (if your close with the setup that is). So to say that Mclaren (a highly successful team) is making the decisions for Hamilton, on a street course that favors the driver's talent over the cars, is not saying much for either the team or the driver.
With the scenario at Monaco, my best guess would be that both Hamilton and management decided on gambling a one run qualifying to conserve tires, knowing full well an incident causing red flag could prevent the scenario from working. It worked for them in China, so somebody made a convincing argument that they should try it here. They gambled, they lost. Hind sight being still 20/20 leads to comments as to what should have been done.
A championship team learns from their mistakes and doesn't repeat them, a driver vs the team, will never win a championship or chase down anyone leading one.
Hamilton is still second (barely) and with just under 2/3 the season remaining.
Mclaren has a history of winning, and the last "versus" on their team, lasted one year on a three contract and had his own team racing against him for the remainder of that season....the thread is wrongly named, should be Mclaren AND Hamilton, as it will be till the end of the season, otherwise Button will be number one starting in Montreal and Mclaren will start racing Hamilton as well...
If it is a "versus" situation, why not Hamilton for Webber, just to find out whats going on at Red Bull, an easy answer to a driver vs a team senario. IMHO.
The feedback from FP1 and FP2 suggested that the super fast option was not degrading anything like feared. Alonso and Massa did long runs on the option and kept posting strong lap times. Pirelli's view was a 2 stop max and that they expected to see many teams opt to make it through on 1 stop. With this information in hand and Lewis' pace in Q1 and Q2, there was no need to save tyres. Monaco is about track position and getting on the front row had to be a must. My analyis is that McLaren tried to be too clever. In truth Lewis must bear some responsibility on the strategy call, as he has shown a single minded determination from his rookie year to stay resolute to any path he feels to be correct. If being in the most relaxed frame of mind is a pre-requisite to maximise performance, then he must have felt a little uncomfortable standing beside his car with half of Q3 practice gone. Coulthard and Brundle made this point on the Q3 in commentary feed. I cannot understand why the quickest car in Q1 and Q2 would all of a sudden think they needed to play 'safe' and save tyres for the race.
JohnsonsEvilTwin wrote:So Vettel was sponsored throughout his career by a single entity, and landed a peachy drive on debut?
Correct, the Sauber BMW was the worst car on the grid at the Us GP 2008.
sAx
He was third driver replacing the injured Kubica after his horrendous crash in Canada(and it was 2007). How is that the same as landing a winning GP car for an entire season?
JohnsonsEvilTwin wrote:So Vettel was sponsored throughout his career by a single entity, and landed a peachy drive on debut?
Correct, the Sauber BMW was the worst car on the grid at the Us GP 2008.
sAx
He was third driver replacing the injured Kubica after his horrendous crash in Canada(and it was 2007). How is that the same as landing a winning GP car for an entire season?
I stand corrected (finger twitch). You are in the best position to determine the peachy-ness of an F1 debut in a Sauber BMW and the protective arms of Dieter Mateschitz from the age of 10!
