Mandrake wrote: ↑Tue Mar 28, 2017 10:23 am
I think it's clear that Mercedes could and would have won with a little more experience with the tires and less panicking with regards to the PitStop. Melbourne being a track particularly hard to overtake on helps massively in this.
Looking in detail at the laptimes...I do not see how. Ham was a sitting duck:
- Ham's tires were done. Overheated on the slip in lap 14. The fuel corrected laptimes show a nice cliff for lap 15 and 16. Clear trigger for a pitstop by the way.
- The delta to Ves was 0.8 and 0.6sec in lap 15 and 16. At this rate it would have needed at least 5 more laps.
- The delta to Rai was similar, if they would have waited to clear Ves, they would have ended up behind Rai.
- The gap between Rai and Ves was 2.5sec, too much for an undercut. So Ferari could have used Rai for stopping Ham for one lap in any case. The pace difference was large enough to give Vet the overcut in any case.
- Vet was behind Ham, so he could have simply done the opposite. Either go to the pit after Ves pitted for the undercut or stay out to let Ham pit behind Rai.