Regardless of which lap is it, the difference in car behaviour does ring true vs what Seb has been saying - I.e. he doesn’t have the confidence in the car to wring the extra performance out of it; his point was that this confidence (re Lewis’ lap) makes all the difference in lap time.Juzh wrote: ↑Tue Apr 03, 2018 6:54 pmQuite clearly 2018 lap is not his final Q3 lap (fastest one) because the lights are not red at the end of it.zac510 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 31, 2018 8:02 pmGreat video, Vettel looks like he's on an in-lap (2018)!LM10 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 31, 2018 1:36 pmI see. Thank you for the answer.
I've watched a lap comparison of Vettel's qualification this year and last year. What I find interesting is that this year's lap seemed way smoother (just by looking at the steering wheel) besides them still struggling with the car. On the other hand, as we all know the SF70H was a quite smooth and driveable car from the beginning on, but in the video Vettel looked like he fought much more.
Does this mean that Vettel was on and even over the limit last year and this year not because he maybe lacks trust as he has told? Or the basis of this year's car might be good so it is that smooth on the track, but still not there where they want it to be?
Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rYn7eytgW8
When thinking about the top speed/drag of the Ferrari, I’m suddenly reminded of something Marchionne said pre-season: that they’re confident they’ll have the car to win 51% of the races this year. In retrospect this is particularly interesting - last season the Ferrari was particularly good in high downforce configuration but had a marked disadvantage at low downforce tracks; dividing the races up (in a very superficial way), the results show that there are more low than high downforce tracks on the calendar.
So as has been noted by Vanja in the car thread, it seems Ferrari have done a great job at reducing drag, but Marchionne’s comments suggest they’ve consciously sacrificed the ‘49%’ to achieve this. So whilst it seems likely that they’re not getting what they were expecting from the diffuser, explaining much of the 3-4 tenths to Mercedes, it may well be that Melbourne was never likely to be one of ‘their’ tracks anyway.
We may get a better idea this weekend.