2018 Spanish Grand Prix - Catalunya, May 11-13

[Sieper]

TwanV, that Ricci lost time during his last stint (on the mediums) whilst setting the fastest lap (2 times, each time with a few laps in between) is I think because he spent the other laps harvesting (thus loosing time) and then fully deploying the battery over 1 lap, he did that twice. I believe RBR pays a 100.000 euro bonus for a fastest race lap. But harvesting and fully deploying is likely much less efficient then deploying a bit all the time.

More telling is that Max had front wing damage, that likely cost him 0,2 / 0,3 per lap (according to Horner).

[Phil]

What is spectacular about these tires? Im completely serious, what is it about them? We pretty much have 1 stop races all the time. Today, Spain, one of the toughest races on tire - 1stop for 90% of the field. 5 years ago? 3-4 stopper.

You clearly forgot or completely missed the new surface at Barcelona, hence why these ‘special tires’ will only be used at 3 tracks, all of them having in common the new tarmac.

There have been quotes linked to the Formula1 website that clearly state what the concerns were, why they made these changes and when these decisions were made to conclude that any finger pointing that Pirelli was acting on Mercedes alone to be utterly absurd.

[Wouter]

Ah, that makes sesne. Thanks.

That was not the reason. He made a mistake during the VSC and made a spin that cost him 7 seconds.

https://twitter.com/F1/status/995751894835343361

+ losing 0.7 secs a lap in the last 10 laps of the soft-run + being slower on average on the medium-stint, even with the fastest laps in between. The RB14.5 seems to be rather hard to drive acc. Dan's comments.

Max Veratappen has no problems at all with driving the RB14.
Ricciardo is always searching for excuses why he isn't as fast as Max Verstappen.
The spin was a huge mistake, but no one is talking about this, because Daniel can do nothing wrong according to a lot of people.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

What is spectacular about these tires? Im completely serious, what is it about them? We pretty much have 1 stop races all the time. Today, Spain, one of the toughest races on tire - 1stop for 90% of the field. 5 years ago? 3-4 stopper.

You clearly forgot or completely missed the new surface at Barcelona, hence why these ‘special tires’ will only be used at 3 tracks, all of them having in common the new tarmac.

There have been quotes linked to the Formula1 website that clearly state what the concerns were, why they made these changes and when these decisions were made to conclude that any finger pointing that Pirelli was acting on Mercedes alone to be utterly absurd.

I pointed out in one of my previous posts that, Pirelli first announced that it is bringing tyres with reduced tread, on 7th of April. At that time, the first race of the season had concluded and Mercedes had a dominant pole and had lead the race comfortably before losing it. Mercedes was also declared as having a dominant car by the end of Winter Testing. So at the point when Pirelli confirmed the changes for the Tyres, If there was any team that should have raised concern, it was Mercedes! Because that change was to the detriment of Mercedes' interests, considering the position they were in at that point of season. People here simply lose sense of things and behave without a bit a common sense, when they blame Pirelli favored Mercedes.

[Bill_Kar]

That was not the reason. He made a mistake during the VSC and made a spin that cost him 7 seconds.

https://twitter.com/F1/status/995751894835343361

+ losing 0.7 secs a lap in the last 10 laps of the soft-run + being slower on average on the medium-stint, even with the fastest laps in between. The RB14.5 seems to be rather hard to drive acc. Dan's comments.

Max Veratappen has no problems at all with driving the RB14.
Ricciardo is always searching for excuses why he isn't as fast as Max Verstappen.
The spin was a huge mistake, but no one is talking about this, because Daniel can do nothing wrong according to a lot of people.

Truth is, no one is talking about this. What if it was Verstappen?

[FrukostScones]

What is spectacular about these tires? Im completely serious, what is it about them? We pretty much have 1 stop races all the time. Today, Spain, one of the toughest races on tire - 1stop for 90% of the field. 5 years ago? 3-4 stopper.

You clearly forgot or completely missed the new surface at Barcelona, hence why these ‘special tires’ will only be used at 3 tracks, all of them having in common the new tarmac.

There have been quotes linked to the Formula1 website that clearly state what the concerns were, why they made these changes and when these decisions were made to conclude that any finger pointing that Pirelli was acting on Mercedes alone to be utterly absurd.

I pointed out in one of my previous posts that, Pirelli first announced that it is bringing tyres with reduced tread, on 7th of April. At that time, the first race of the season had concluded and Mercedes had a dominant pole and had lead the race comfortably before losing it. Mercedes was also declared as having a dominant car by the end of Winter Testing. So at the point when Pirelli confirmed the changes for the Tyres, If there was any team that should have raised concern, it was Mercedes! Because that change was to the detriment of Mercedes' interests, considering the position they were in at that point of season. People here simply lose sense of things and behave without a bit a common sense, when they blame Pirelli favored Mercedes.

Pirelli would have done it anyway they said,
Merc lobbied for it Amus on 06. April said.
denied by smirking Wolff, but also stated by Ted Kravitz, but also denied by Mark Hughes (the guy with the Alonso Mattiaci "fantasy" story).

So what is the truth? We don't know.

But we know those tyres were not really working like intendend for some teams (S faster than SS etc.), but one team was flawless on them and dominated (look at BOt 2nd stint).
So in the end it helped Merc and fit right into the picture that Merc surely was in favor of Pirelli's step to introduce these 0.4mm reduced tyres for three well picked races for safety reasons.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

Pirelli would have done it anyway they said,
Merc lobbied for it Amus on 06. April said.
denied by smirking Wolff, but also stated by Ted Kravitz, but also denied by Mark Hughes (the guy with the Alonso Mattiaci "fantasy" story).

So what is the truth? We don't know.

Ask yourself, what knowledge of upcoming situation that Mercedes would have had, with which they go for lobbying? They were in the driver's seat with the tyres that Pirelli had introduced for the season opener, when Pirelli decided to bring tyres with reduced tread.

Relate it this way. If you were Toto today, would you want to have the tyres that you used in Spain OR the ones that Pirelli says will change for the next few races? That was the situation post Melbourne for Mercedes! So, I don't see why Mercedes needed lobbying, when they were in driver's seat.

If I would have been Toto in Melbourne, I would have resisted Pirelli trying to change the tyre construction.

Mercedes has been playing to the interest of the field from 2014. They could have resisted the Token system change, when they were dominating, but didn't. They could have resisted Honda's engine allocation increase for 2016, but they didn't. They even offered to help Honda. They could have resisted fuel limit change from 100kg to 105kg (while other manufacturers were struggling on fuel front), but didn't. They could have easily created a reliability situation and worked for using more oil, but didn't (remember Red Bull Renault in 2012? Exhaust blowing?). All the while, they were slowly letting their advantage slip. Compare it to Ferrari from 2000 to 2007!

Last year, they had a difficult car, but didn't got anything changed from tyre or regulations front, but worked their bu&&s hard to get their car right. It is baseless to blame them when there is so much of evidence, if you use your common sense to look through it. Unless, you are just sour that Ferrari lost the race.

[Phil]

But we know those tyres were not really working like intendend for some teams (S faster than SS etc.), but one team was flawless on them and dominated (look at BOt 2nd stint).

You are mixing up some things here, that being the 0.4mm and the S faster than the SS. One hasn't got anything to do with the other. The SS is the softest tire, but it has a very narrow operating range. That means there's a smaller sweet spot where the tire operates at its best. The problem at Barcelona, especially during FP2, was the high track surface temperature (40°+). Because the tarmac is so dark, it doesn't reflect sun light much and heats up significantly.

With the high downforce and high speed corners track layout (especially S1 and S2), it heated up the tires significantly and pushed them over the operating range. The result being that the tire overheated towards the end of the lap. This isn't anything new or unheard of - it's just due to many factors playing together. A different track where the layout is different may not have this problem etc. Everyone had issues with the SS tire in FP2. On Saturday, temperatures were overall much cooler (track surface temperature around 30°C) which worked out better for most teams on SS. Even so, I can imagine that teams had to tip toe around on the SS to get the best out of it over the entire lap; i.e perhaps push less in S1 to not overheat them in S3 etc. Some cars got it better, some worse.

In the end, the soft tire was probably the faster tire for pretty much all the teams in qualifying, as it's a harder tire, has a wider operating range and wasn't suspect to overheating as much as the SS. The only reason Mercedes didn't use a soft tire for their second Q3 run is because they already had pole with Hamilton and because the soft tire was the tire to be used for the race, it made more strategic sense to save the extra set for the race. Ferrari was way down the order, even behind both RedBulls, so they had to take a gamble. They used their only remaining set of soft tires and indeed could do a better lap on them and at least ended up on the 2nd row. Mercedes IMO was lucky to retain pole position.

Unfortunately for Ferrari, this also meant that they used up all their soft tires, so for the race, they only had the soft they were already starting on and two new mediums (that they then used for Vettel for stint 2 and 3).


Also, and again, those crying and whinging about Mercedes and the 0.4mm thread change; Mercedes was already dominant in winter-testing. They were dominant in Melbourne. They obviously have a very quick car. In 3 of the last 5 races, they struggled on mainly the Ultra-Soft tire in qualifying, but always had strong pace on the harder tires during the race. With all the data they had from testing, it shouldn't be that surprising that Mercedes was strong here. I would also point out that the intel after winter-testing suggested that Ferrari had to save fuel. It's not that far fetched that Ferrari may have also had to save more fuel than Mercedes again yesterday during the race and that this is part of why the Mercedes seemed so dominant.

The Mercedes already demonstrated a huge dominance in Melbourne this year which shows that the car is very fast in the right conditions and when using the tires correctly (just like that the Ferrari is extremely fast when it hits the tires sweet spot).

[Wynters]

+ losing 0.7 secs a lap in the last 10 laps of the soft-run + being slower on average on the medium-stint, even with the fastest laps in between. The RB14.5 seems to be rather hard to drive acc. Dan's comments.

Max Veratappen has no problems at all with driving the RB14.
Ricciardo is always searching for excuses why he isn't as fast as Max Verstappen.
The spin was a huge mistake, but no one is talking about this, because Daniel can do nothing wrong according to a lot of people.

Truth is, no one is talking about this. What if it was Verstappen?

A bad spin for the other Red Bull, one of RIC's rare off days.

Ricciardo was pretty up front about his lack of pace.

“It was just a bit tricky to drive,” Ricciardo said, despite his Circuit de Catalunya lap records.

“It was fast when you were able to pull it all together, but it wasn’t easy. It was easy to make mistakes. I would describe it as on a knife edge. Probably one in five I was able to, the other four I was sliding and struggling to keep it together.

“The VSC I actually had a spin at the re-start. Struggling to keep these tyres warm and fortunately there was no walls, but it just put me in no-man’s land. Signs of good pace, but a pretty boring race.”

Seemed reasonably modest to me, it's not like he's blaming other people instead he says it's him who wasn't able to keep on top of the car. It makes a nice change from some of the others; 'Ericsson hit us' or 'He locked up and just turned in very sharp', for example.

[FrukostScones]

But we know those tyres were not really working like intendend for some teams (S faster than SS etc.), but one team was flawless on them and dominated (look at BOt 2nd stint).

You are mixing up some things here, that being the 0.4mm and the S faster than the SS. One hasn't got anything to do with the other. The SS is the softest tire, but it has a very narrow operating range. That means there's a smaller sweet spot where the tire operates at its best. The problem at Barcelona, especially during FP2, was the high track surface temperature (40°+). Because the tarmac is so dark, it doesn't reflect sun light much and heats up significantly.

With the high downforce and high speed corners track layout (especially S1 and S2), it heated up the tires significantly and pushed them over the operating range. The result being that the tire overheated towards the end of the lap. This isn't anything new or unheard of - it's just due to many factors playing together. A different track where the layout is different may not have this problem etc. Everyone had issues with the SS tire in FP2. On Saturday, temperatures were overall much cooler (track surface temperature around 30°C) which worked out better for most teams on SS. Even so, I can imagine that teams had to tip toe around on the SS to get the best out of it over the entire lap; i.e perhaps push less in S1 to not overheat them in S3 etc. Some cars got it better, some worse.

In the end, the soft tire was probably the faster tire for pretty much all the teams in qualifying, as it's a harder tire, has a wider operating range and wasn't suspect to overheating as much as the SS. The only reason Mercedes didn't use a soft tire for their second Q3 run is because they already had pole with Hamilton and because the soft tire was the tire to be used for the race, it made more strategic sense to save the extra set for the race. Ferrari was way down the order, even behind both RedBulls, so they had to take a gamble. They used their only remaining set of soft tires and indeed could do a better lap on them and at least ended up on the 2nd row. Mercedes IMO was lucky to retain pole position.

Unfortunately for Ferrari, this also meant that they used up all their soft tires, so for the race, they only had the soft they were already starting on and two new mediums (that they then used for Vettel for stint 2 and 3).


Also, and again, those crying and whinging about Mercedes and the 0.4mm thread change; Mercedes was already dominant in winter-testing. They were dominant in Melbourne. They obviously have a very quick car. In 3 of the last 5 races, they struggled on mainly the Ultra-Soft tire in qualifying, but always had strong pace on the harder tires during the race. With all the data they had from testing, it shouldn't be that surprising that Mercedes was strong here. I would also point out that the intel after winter-testing suggested that Ferrari had to save fuel. It's not that far fetched that Ferrari may have also had to save more fuel than Mercedes again yesterday during the race and that this is part of why the Mercedes seemed so dominant.

The Mercedes already demonstrated a huge dominance in Melbourne this year which shows that the car is very fast in the right conditions and when using the tires correctly (just like that the Ferrari is extremely fast when it hits the tires sweet spot).

not mixing up anything

[FrukostScones]

Pirelli would have done it anyway they said,
Merc lobbied for it Amus on 06. April said.
denied by smirking Wolff, but also stated by Ted Kravitz, but also denied by Mark Hughes (the guy with the Alonso Mattiaci "fantasy" story).

So what is the truth? We don't know.

Ask yourself, what knowledge of upcoming situation that Mercedes would have had, with which they go for lobbying? They were in the driver's seat with the tyres that Pirelli had introduced for the season opener, when Pirelli decided to bring tyres with reduced tread.

Relate it this way. If you were Toto today, would you want to have the tyres that you used in Spain OR the ones that Pirelli says will change for the next few races? That was the situation post Melbourne for Mercedes! So, I don't see why Mercedes needed lobbying, when they were in driver's seat.

If I would have been Toto in Melbourne, I would have resisted Pirelli trying to change the tyre construction.

Mercedes has been playing to the interest of the field from 2014. They could have resisted the Token system change, when they were dominating, but didn't. They could have resisted Honda's engine allocation increase for 2016, but they didn't. They even offered to help Honda. They could have resisted fuel limit change from 100kg to 105kg (while other manufacturers were struggling on fuel front), but didn't. They could have easily created a reliability situation and worked for using more oil, but didn't (remember Red Bull Renault in 2012? Exhaust blowing?). All the while, they were slowly letting their advantage slip. Compare it to Ferrari from 2000 to 2007!

Last year, they had a difficult car, but didn't got anything changed from tyre or regulations front, but worked their bu&&s hard to get their car right. It is baseless to blame them when there is so much of evidence, if you use your common sense to look through it. Unless, you are just sour that Ferrari lost the race.

after, during Winter testing or even before (before would mean it is Pirelli for safety reasons most likely true).
Remember 2018 are softer and different than 2017 tyres.

Do you think Pirelli pulled them out of the hat after Melbourne?
Do you say so only to spin it like it was meant to hurt Mercedes???
That is the nonsense I m reading here a bit (maybe misreading).

Not sour at all that Ferrari lost but only interesting that the predicted occured. Merc having no tyre problems at all on those "tailored" -0.4mm tread tyres.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

Not sour at all that Ferrari lost but only interesting that the predicted occured. Merc having no tyre problems at all on those "tailored" -0.4mm tread tyres.

Can you tell who predicted before Friday that the tyres will suit Mercedes? One official article. Just one. Not the tom, dick and harrys after Saturday qualifying.

[FrukostScones]

Not sour at all that Ferrari lost but only interesting that the predicted occured. Merc having no tyre problems at all on those "tailored" -0.4mm tread tyres.

Can you tell who predicted before Friday that the tyres will suit Mercedes? One official article. Just one. Not the tom, dick and harrys after Saturday qualifying.

Isn't is enough to read that in three races there will be tyres used that allegedly were lobbied by Merc with a thinner tread and thus beavior most likely to benifit Mercedes. AMUS article from 6th April

So, reported tyres were used. And what was the outcome?

[GPR-A duplicate2]

Not sour at all that Ferrari lost but only interesting that the predicted occured. Merc having no tyre problems at all on those "tailored" -0.4mm tread tyres.

Can you tell who predicted before Friday that the tyres will suit Mercedes? One official article. Just one. Not the tom, dick and harrys after Saturday qualifying.

Isn't is enough to read that in three races there will be tyres used that allegedly were lobbied by Merc with a thinner tread and thus beavior most likely to benifit Mercedes. AMUS article from 6th April

So, reported tyres were used. And what was the outcome?

You still did not provide a proof of, who predicted that Mercedes would win on Friday. Just your thoughts? How would anyone know in April, when the decision was made to change the construction, was designed to help Mercedes? When Pirelli decided to change, Bahrain, China and Baku didn't even happen! No one knew at that time that Mercedes was going to struggle. All of this in hindsight, is beautiful co-incidence.

It's like Nostradamus prophesies. No one knows what they are, until they happen and then attribute it to Nostradamus.

[ferkan]

Don't remember reading this much drivel from Hughes ever since "super super super secret Q3 mode" from Mercedes that wasn't used in Melbourne.

What is spectacular about these tires? Im completely serious, what is it about them? We pretty much have 1 stop races all the time. Today, Spain, one of the toughest races on tire - 1stop for 90% of the field. 5 years ago? 3-4 stopper.

You clearly forgot or completely missed the new surface at Barcelona, hence why these ‘special tires’ will only be used at 3 tracks, all of them having in common the new tarmac.

There have been quotes linked to the Formula1 website that clearly state what the concerns were, why they made these changes and when these decisions were made to conclude that any finger pointing that Pirelli was acting on Mercedes alone to be utterly absurd.

Here is my issue. On one hand, we know Merc wanted change, and we know Ferrari didn't. Ok, that we can all agree on.

We can also agree on the fact that Barcelona has new surface so there was "safety risk" argument from Mercedes, and Pirelli surely don't want to leave anything to chance, so tire blowing up is def not in their interest.

Here is where I see an issue. People are saying "Tires are the same, thread is just thinner". First of, that means tires are different. We know 2 Celsius can make these tires not performing, yet thinning them still makes them "pretty much the same".

Other problem is the fact that, if thinner thread makes no difference, why introduce it at all? If certain teams had much easier time running these tires in window, while others couldn't make softest ones work, therefore they qualified on harder compound, how is there "practically no difference"?

How much does placing of Ferrari mirrors bring that RB had to fill complainant to FIA that floor can be seen from up top?

Arrivabene was pretty clear yesterday, as was Vettel during testing, during FPs and after Q/race. They didn't ask for it, and they weren't consulted.

We had Mercedes literally being nowhere in Singapore and that was blamed on tires, yet Ferrari being nowhere in Barcelona, after first tire change in season, has nothing to do with tires and everything to do with what? Magic dust?