2016 Monaco Grand Prix - Monte Carlo, Thu 26 – Sun 29 May

[dren]

Ahhh Crash Verstappen. That will not be the last time we see such a weekend performance from him. Hindsight says Sainz should have gotten the promotion. Max needs another year or two to 'mature.'

Exciting Monaco race for once. Enjoy it; they don't happen very often!

Nonsense, his pace is showing he deserves it, he doesn't need to mature, Kimi's crash was far more ridiculous in a car he was far far more experienced in.

The majority of drivers going into Monaco know every inch of that car, have driven it on multiple tracks, different levels of tire wear, different grip from the track, different tires at different tracks and in testing. Most drivers are extremely comfortable and can predict how the car will react. Max on the other hand has had very very little time in that car, at one track. Monaco is literally a track of inches, experience with a car gives you the feel to make the right turn within inches lap after lap.

he's also at a point where having not started the year in the car, RBR not being in the fight for the construction title, he wasn't going for points here but pushing for max speed. Had RBR been in with a real chance of hte constructors this year he should have gone a little slower, safer and gone for any points possible but RBR aren't in that situation and Max has to learn how to get every inch out of that car as quickly as possible.

This would be a difficult weekend for the second race regardless, then it was in changing conditions as well. Judging him on this weekend is ridiculous.

He's been prone to crashing, just not into people, mainly into walls. Pace is one thing, ultimate pace i.e. a full race time means a lot more. Qualifying does as well. Maldonado was very quick at times, but he crashed lots. Yes, it was a bit premature to promote Max. You're frankly wrong if you think Max wasn't fighting for points in the TR. In the end, who scored points for their teams at Monaco? Max didn't. Sainz would have likely stood on the podium in a Red Bull.

It was inevitable. He is promoted prematurely into the senior team and wins his first race. You can guarantee he thinks he is better than he is. I called both crashes this weekend. Let's see if he learns from them.

[dans79]

But the softer compounds warm up faster, don´t they?

Nope, that's why some times on the softer compound tires teams do two flying laps before a hot lap during qualifying.

Basically the softer the compound the:
1. Higher operating temperature
2. Narrower operating temperature window
3. More grip
4. Shorter life span (normally)

[skoop]

i haven't read through the whole topic. if this question has been answered already, please fogive me
i thought the teams aren't allowed to talk about other things then safety. how come they are allowed to talk about team orders?

[BanMeToo]

But the softer compounds warm up faster, don´t they?

Nope, that's why some times on the softer compound tires teams do two flying laps before a hot lap during qualifying.

Basically the softer the compound the:
1. Higher operating temperature

You're wrong man

https://www.pirelli.com/tires/en-us/mot ... tire-range

H: 'High' operating temp
M: 'Low' operating temp
S: 'High' operating temp
SS: 'Low' operating temp
US: ?? probably the same as SS, according to Pirelli it has 'very rapid warm-up'.

It has been like this for at least 3 years with the Pirelli tires. "some teams do two flying laps before a hot lap during qualifying" because of the circuit they're on, and weather conditions. And their car characteristics.

We'll learn more pragmatically about the US in Canada.


edit: Also I'm curious what makes you say this?

Basically the softer the compound the:
2. Narrower operating temperature window

[Nuvolari]

There is a difference between the working range of the tyre and the temperature at which that working range is specified. I suspect this is what dans79 was getting at. So a tyre could have a high operating temp, but a low operating window (i.e the temperature range at which it works). So hypothetically, a Super Soft would have a operating temp of 90 C and a operating window of 5 C which means the tyre will work from 87.5 C to 92.5 C but will not give grip if it falls either side of it. If the same tyre had a high operating temp range (say 10 C), it will work over a wider window of 85 C to 95 C. This is my understanding.

The Softs are a wider operating range tyre, which is why it was the best tyre to be on in the drying conditions of this race. But did Mercedes evaluate this tyre in the FP sessions? Maybe Mercedes threw the dice on the Ultra Softs because they actually evaluated it in the FP sessions the most.

[BanMeToo]

Ok, I get that. But he specifically said softer tire = higher temp. It's not a direct relationship like that with the current Pirelli tires.

The 'operating window' thing is a separate question, I'm just wondering what proof we have that operating window gets smaller as compound gets softer.

[Gettingonabit]

::
::
Rosberg on top of undriveable car and team orders got 2x2=4 s slower pitstops than Vettel, and thus "fantastic championship comeback " continues that started with crashing in Barcelona and preventing Rosberg's win (+7 points). As Toto Wolff said " relief" at Mercedes.

Can anyone else decipher this or is it just me?

Just another 'hater' comment maybe.

[Nuvolari]

@BanMeToo

Ok, that I have no idea, it's a valid question.

[dans79]

Ok, I get that. But he specifically said softer tire = higher temp. It's not a direct relationship like that with the current Pirelli tires.

I'll see if I can find it when I get home this evening, but I've seen several references from technical pundits that showed what was considered by various teams as the viable temperature ranges.

Simplistically speaking, it has to work this way because the tires are designed to produce faster laps. When you put in a faster lap time you put more energy into the tire in the form of heat.

The 'operating window' thing is a separate question, I'm just wondering what proof we have that operating window gets smaller as compound gets softer.

It's been a couple years since I've seen it directly referred to but I remember the American commentators showing some tables and graphs maybe in 2012 or 13 that showed as you went softer the operating window got smaller. From what I can recall, they where engineered that way. basically the price you had to pay for more speed was you had to be more consistent.

[drunkf1fan]

There is a difference between the working range of the tyre and the temperature at which that working range is specified. I suspect this is what dans79 was getting at. So a tyre could have a high operating temp, but a low operating window (i.e the temperature range at which it works). So hypothetically, a Super Soft would have a operating temp of 90 C and a operating window of 5 C which means the tyre will work from 87.5 C to 92.5 C but will not give grip if it falls either side of it. If the same tyre had a high operating temp range (say 10 C), it will work over a wider window of 85 C to 95 C. This is my understanding.

The Softs are a wider operating range tyre, which is why it was the best tyre to be on in the drying conditions of this race. But did Mercedes evaluate this tyre in the FP sessions? Maybe Mercedes threw the dice on the Ultra Softs because they actually evaluated it in the FP sessions the most.

But the simple thing is they didn't need to. If it rained again, Soft was the superior choice as it would last longer due to wider operating window, it would get to operating window quicker thus give the fastest first lap, which frankly was the sole concern at Monaco, other tracks is a different question but Hamilton needed one outlap then do whatever pace he wants to the end. Ultras may have theoretically had the performance to do the fastest stint... but that is questionable based on tire life and stint length they wanted. They guessed and had no actual experience that ultras would last that long and they should have been able to see that tires with lower/wider operating windows in those conditions was the ludicrously better choice.

If Ricciardo didn't have a bad stop ultra's over softs or even supersofts would have cost him a win with a pretty much 10 second slower outlap than he should have achieved. It was also worse as Rosberg suffered from inability to get tires into working window the entire race at that stage, so they should have questioned why and how to improve the situation there and the obvious answer is a tire with a wider and/or lower operating temp.

[Nuvolari]

The Softs are a wider operating range tyre, which is why it was the best tyre to be on in the drying conditions of this race. But did Mercedes evaluate this tyre in the FP sessions? Maybe Mercedes threw the dice on the Ultra Softs because they actually evaluated it in the FP sessions the most.

But the simple thing is they didn't need to. If it rained again, Soft was the superior choice as it would last longer due to wider operating window, it would get to operating window quicker thus give the fastest first lap, which frankly was the sole concern at Monaco, other tracks is a different question but Hamilton needed one outlap then do whatever pace he wants to the end. Ultras may have theoretically had the performance to do the fastest stint... but that is questionable based on tire life and stint length they wanted. They guessed and had no actual experience that ultras would last that long and they should have been able to see that tires with lower/wider operating windows in those conditions was the ludicrously better choice.

I think there might be a small problem with your argument...Pirelli say that the softer the tyre, the quicker it gets to it's operating window, so the US was the best tyre to do an undercut, which is what Merc were aiming to do. But, the changing conditions would have meant that it will be harder to keep the tyre in that narrow operating window (temperature range). Where Merc rolled the dice is in trusting their drivers to keep the tyre within that window in the drying conditions...it nearly didn't work for Hamilton and it certainly didn't work for Rosberg.

Merc were risking both their drivers falling off the circuit in a bid to gain track position. Track position is king in Monaco but they were nonetheless very brave calls.

If Ricciardo didn't have a bad stop ultra's over softs or even supersofts would have cost him a win with a pretty much 10 second slower outlap than he should have achieved. It was also worse as Rosberg suffered from inability to get tires into working window the entire race at that stage, so they should have questioned why and how to improve the situation there and the obvious answer is a tire with a wider and/or lower operating temp.

If Ricciardo didn't have a bad stop, he would have been 10 seconds down the road at least. Don't know how that could have cost him a win? Ric's in lap was 2.5s faster. Hamilton's out lap on the US was 8s slower than Ric's out lap on the SS.

The Red Bull car didn't have any issues with tyre warm up. It would have meant that Ric would've been able to keep the pressure on Hamilton till the end of the race and not backing off for the last 7-8 laps. Anyway, this is history now.

[NYGIANTS]

Onboards Monaco: https://vimeo.com/169182298 - Must watch.

[PlatinumZealot]

I´ve only said that statement from Lewis made me think, and that might be the reason Mercedes chose US tires, they might be afraid with that cold and wet conditions they could have problems to put harder tires on its operating window, so they decided to go with US even if that meant Hamilton was forced to drive extremely carefully to make them last 47 laps

You have this backwards, if Mercedes was worried about turning on the tires in the cold and wet, they would not have fitted the ultra. The softer the tire the higher the operating temperature.

This is not the case though. Just because the tyre is softer doesn't mean it's operating window is lower. The compounds differ quite a lot in the tyres so you cannot make such generalizations.

From my memory this is the order of minimum operating temperatures:
1. Super-soft
2. Medium
3. Soft
4. Ultrasoft
5. Hard

Someone can correct me, if I made a mistake... but I recall the medium warm up temp lower than the soft.

Edit... I just saw the post above with the link to Pirreli website.. I maybe wrong on the order for real. haha. but the website only states "warm up times" for some of the tyres and "operating range" for some.. so it is still not clear what exactly are the operating temperatures from the page. I think Pirreli once released a table showing the operating ranges but that was for a previous year.

[basti313]

From a Pirelli article explaining the unusually long life of the US and the W.

Prior to the race Hamilton had declared the ultra-soft tyre to be nothing more than "a super-soft with purple paint". Taking Hamilton's remarks on board, Hembery said: "I'm sure he is happy about it now.

Having a hard time now finding the original source, but it was basically Pirelli saying that due to the wet testing they had last year they were able to push the W toward a direction they were shooting for, making the difference between it and the I much less severe and another similar comment about the introduction of the US being a race tire not just a qualy tire hence it's ability to last.

Hmmmm...sounds a bit like making gold out of --- for PR. Why should you want a W tire which is like a I tire or a US tire which is like the SS tire??? They should make a W tire which can be driven in the wet and not a W tire which is nearly as fast and durable as a I tire on a drying track. The same for the purple nonsense...I thought the aim was to spice things up with a super fast Q tire and not just a tire which is more or less the same like the SS (Ric time in Q2 plus lifetime during the race).

[Andres125sx]

But the softer compounds warm up faster, don´t they?

Nope, that's why some times on the softer compound tires teams do two flying laps before a hot lap during qualifying.

Basically the softer the compound the:
1. Higher operating temperature
2. Narrower operating temperature window
3. More grip
4. Shorter life span (normally)

This article seems to contradict what you said about soft rubber has higher operating temperature...

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/analy ... es-774870/

Ideal operating temperature window (in C°) of each compound:

Hard High working range 105-135°
Medium Low working range 90-120°
Soft high High working range 100-125°
Supersoft Low working range 85-115°
Ultrasoft Low working range 85-115°