Longtime lurker, first time poster
As a tifosi for about two decades and attending the GP in Montmeló since 2012, our first victory here in 13 years got me totally emotional, moreover being Lewis' first with us and how it unfolded, loved it was through a bold strategy and pure pace, if of course his life (and my heart rate) was made easier thanks to the Alonso-triggered VSC. I've been fortunate to witness some quite historical moments in my home GP (Maldonado's first and only, Alonso's last do date, Verstappen's first...).
Anyway, the actual reason for this post. Reading stuff about the race, I came across this article by Jon Noble in The Race:
https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/hami ... explained/
There's a bit that have kept me intrigued for a couple of days:
Post-race data analysis points to the tyre degradation being pitched at 0.15s per lap.
So in simple terms, if you stopped a lap later than another car, you would then be 0.15s quicker than them from tyres alone. Stop 10 laps later, and you rejoin with a 1.5s pace advantage – every lap!
Based on this data, we are able to tyre correct the pace of the cars to show that the difference between Hamilton and the Mercedes (excluding the rubber) was much smaller than it appears at the end of the race.
Mercedes had, after all, successfully covered Hamilton at the first rounds of stops (Hamilton pitted on lap 11 and Russell on lap 12), and then their strategies diverged at the second stop as Ferrari committed to the three-stop strategy.
After Hamilton pitted on 27, he enjoyed a fresh tyre advantage until lap 36 when Russell came in, one lap ahead of Antonelli.
With there being a nine-lap tyre offset (and don't forget Pirelli's analysis suggested that there was little pace difference between the different compounds) Hamilton was able to peg back what should have been a 1.35s per lap advance from behind to around half that.
From the grandstands I of course was paying close attention to Lewis' race and when he did his second stop on lap 27 to fit his new medium tyre he rejoined about 22 seconds from the Mercedes, then he started his hammertime laps and when Russell stopped on lap 36 Lewis was around 4 seconds behind the Mercs. So he recovered around 18 seconds in those 9 laps, so about 2 seconds per lap. As Russell's first stop was on lap 12 and Lewis' second on lap 27 and Russell kept running on the same tyres until lap 36, wouldn't the tyre offset be 15 laps and not the nine-lap Noble is referring to? That way, the pace advantage should be 2,25s per lap (in line with the 0,15s per lap degradation that is stated at the beginning). Honestly I don't know if I'm just losing something in translation or misunderstanding the thing completely but I think something is wrong on Noble's analysis.
