Gigantic thanks to Mikeerfol for that perfect video. Even 1st gears are easy to extract.
On a more annoyed note, 2015 gears prove to be very uninteresting, as all teams seem to have converged to a common optimum. I'd make the usual graphs, but if you've seen the Mercedes one above... you've pretty much seen them all!
Instead, since folks here like gear ratios, I've graphed that.
There are some differences in 1st, 2nd and 3rd, but since in those all cars are traction limited anyways, it matters little. And then by the time they hit 4th, the largest difference between teams is a mind numbing 3%, the equivalent of 6km/h. In 8th, the largest difference is just 2%, again
a huge 6km/h, with Ferrari having an off trend (slightly) longer gear, probably to look good in monza! Other than a slightly longer 6th for Red Bull and Toro Rosso, I cannot see anything of interest there.
These are the calculated gear ratios:
Gear Merced. Willia. Lotus F.India T.Rosso R.Bull McLaren Ferrari Sauber
1st 13.58 14.74 14.67 13.58 14.55 14.52 13.36
2nd 11.86 11.46 11.13 11.62 12.22 12.35 11.97 10.79 11.02
3rd 9.56 9.35 9.03 9.43 9.87 9.56 9.34 9.15 9.22
4th 7.89 7.80 7.80 7.80 7.91 7.80 7.67 7.72 7.77
5th 6.58 6.67 6.74 6.55 6.48 6.49 6.55 6.66 6.71
6th 5.69 5.72 5.79 5.70 5.50 5.48 5.63 5.76 5.81
7th 4.98 4.97 4.97 5.00 4.90 4.89 4.91 5.00 5.04
8th 4.41 4.42 4.43 4.44 4.43 4.39 4.35 4.38
And just to prove how they all seem to have found the optimum, these are the ratios between each two consecutive ratios:
Up from Merced. Willia. Lotus F.India T.Rosso R.Bull McLaren Ferrari Sauber
1.00 1.15 1.29 1.32 1.17 1.19 1.21 1.24
2.00 1.24 1.22 1.23 1.23 1.24 1.29 1.28 1.18 1.20
3.00 1.21 1.20 1.16 1.21 1.25 1.22 1.22 1.19 1.19
4.00 1.20 1.17 1.16 1.19 1.22 1.20 1.17 1.16 1.16
5.00 1.16 1.17 1.16 1.15 1.18 1.19 1.16 1.16 1.15
6.00 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.14 1.12 1.12 1.15 1.15 1.15
7.00 1.13 1.13 1.13 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.15 1.15
They seem to have gone for something very close to maximum overlap. Funny how they tried to be clever last year, when the best solution is, apparently, to employ math and physics to give the driver flexibility and let the human interface chose the best option in any given moment.
