2022 Miami Grand Prix - Miami Gardens, May 06 - 08

[CRazyLemon]

For a race which was relatively closely contested, and included a battle for the lead, I was oddly bored. Unsure if it was the track's fault or simply a lack of interest on my part, but the entire event seemed a bit dull despite being hyped to the moon.

It’s just a very dull venue. A concrete channel that could be absolutely anywhere. Sochi, Valencia…

I thought the race was decent and the track worked better than expected. Casual F1 watching family members were totally bored after 20 minutes though which wasn’t the case at Melbourne, Imola, even Bahrain…

Potentially the camera work plays a part as well. I mean I was watching the gap time from Max to Leclerc drop to under a second all the way to 4 tenths before they switched to the lead two right before Max overtook.

[MattWellsyWells]

For a race which was relatively closely contested, and included a battle for the lead, I was oddly bored. Unsure if it was the track's fault or simply a lack of interest on my part, but the entire event seemed a bit dull despite being hyped to the moon.

It’s just a very dull venue. A concrete channel that could be absolutely anywhere. Sochi, Valencia…

I thought the race was decent and the track worked better than expected. Casual F1 watching family members were totally bored after 20 minutes though which wasn’t the case at Melbourne, Imola, even Bahrain…

Potentially the camera work plays a part as well. I mean I was watching the gap time from Max to Leclerc drop to under a second all the way to 4 tenths before they switched to the lead two right before Max overtook.

Yeah I think with better camera work this is a more entertaining race. They kept showing the wrong battles or cutting away from the right battles, lots of shots of the crowd during the racing (why?) and what was with that overhead shot into turn 4 they kept using where the cars disappeared behind a grandstand for a couple of corners??

[Mogster]

I’m not sure how different camera angles can stop the feeling that the racing is happening in a generic concrete channel. The waterfront proposal would have had more scope for this.

I’m sure Liberty will be monitoring audience reaction and it’d be interesting to know how positive or otherwise it is. Assuming a lot of US viewers may be watching F1 for the first time, I don’t think this race was a particularly good advert for F1.

[Tvetovnato]

Going back to Brazil last year I remember Horner and Marko whining about the Merc being unracable with a few kph top speed advantage. Wonder what they call this.

That was 30kph without DRS ...

Yeah right. And Verstappen was a whopping 60 kph faster than anyone on the straights in this race.

At least be serious…

[Seanspeed]

More telemetry including Verstappen:
47: https://i.imgur.com/dLhhiPX.jpeg
48: https://i.imgur.com/Wm1jTWF.jpeg
49: https://i.imgur.com/l9QGoEf.jpeg

Perez is respectively:
47: equal to sainz (both have tow, no DRS), Max 3kph faster
48: 8kph faster than sainz, 6kph faster than Verstappen
49: 20kph faster than sainz, 23kph faster than Verstappen

Now explain to me how you get to those top speeds while missing 30hp.

Slipstream(especially with DRS) is more impactful for top speed than 20hp(20hp is what I remember them saying). Doesn't seem that inconceivable, no?

[214270]

[dialtone]

More telemetry including Verstappen:
47: https://i.imgur.com/dLhhiPX.jpeg
48: https://i.imgur.com/Wm1jTWF.jpeg
49: https://i.imgur.com/l9QGoEf.jpeg

Perez is respectively:
47: equal to sainz (both have tow, no DRS), Max 3kph faster
48: 8kph faster than sainz, 6kph faster than Verstappen
49: 20kph faster than sainz, 23kph faster than Verstappen

Now explain to me how you get to those top speeds while missing 30hp.

Slipstream(especially with DRS) is more impactful for top speed than 20hp(20hp is what I remember them saying). Doesn't seem that inconceivable, no?

I think Horner said 20kW, which is about 26hp. Yes, it's totally true that slipstream and DRS are more impactful at those speeds, but I still contend it was 20kW.



Seriously last graph (and I think I posted this before already): fastest lap of the race for Verstappen, fastest lap for Perez, sub 1.32, Perez is over 2 secs behind Sainz at this point so some slipstream but nothing earth shattering. Perez acceleration curve before 300kph looks kind of the same. Verstappen has healthy engine, Perez has maybe some issue, he loses his time however in fast corners in S1 and the T11-16 section where he is simply much slower than VER. I'll give him that he had some issue, but I think that 20kW was perhaps the high range from an engineer and Horner went with it. I would believe it more if Horner said even 10kW, 20kW is 0.5s a lap and I just don't see how Perez would make up 0.5 in this lap with S3 (2 straights and 1 corner) he's making VER pay 0.066 on the fastest lap of the race.

[dialtone]

Different topic here but, VER built his pass over Leclerc over the whole lap, while LEC really cooked tyres, pretty impressive driving:

Lap 5:

This is Leclerc's biggest advantage before he started losing. He's braking later and he's managing to be faster in T11-16 than VER. He's going to quickly learn than he's taken too much out of this tyres.

Lap 8:

Without late braking and fast T11-16, Verstappen can just stay very close to Leclerc in between the 2 straights, he gets right inside DRS range for the second straight. On the second straight he has a good speed advantage of 24kmh but still no passing, and then gets good traction, better than the Ferrari, out of T17 and managed to complete into T1.

One attempt is all that VER needed, was very good.

[langedweil]

Going back to Brazil last year I remember Horner and Marko whining about the Merc being unracable with a few kph top speed advantage. Wonder what they call this.

That was 30kph without DRS ...

Prove it...

That speed difference was well discussed, Google is your friend ..
Must admit, it wasn't 30 but 27 as I recall ..

[langedweil]

Going back to Brazil last year I remember Horner and Marko whining about the Merc being unracable with a few kph top speed advantage. Wonder what they call this.

That was 30kph without DRS ...

Yeah right. And Verstappen was a whopping 60 kph faster than anyone on the straights in this race.
At least be serious…

Look, it was 27kph in the overtake on Norris without DRS, 20+ to Ver ...
That's data, not an opinion, and therefore serious I guess ?

[dtro]

I’m not sure how different camera angles can stop the feeling that the racing is happening in a generic concrete channel. The waterfront proposal would have had more scope for this.

I’m sure Liberty will be monitoring audience reaction and it’d be interesting to know how positive or otherwise it is. Assuming a lot of US viewers may be watching F1 for the first time, I don’t think this race was a particularly good advert for F1.

Anecdotal: A climber friend of mine watched the race, first GP he's watched and he's coming from the DTS generation, he thought it was awesome.

Didn't come into this weekend with a ton of expectations, but came out of it with the impression that between Monaco and Miami, I'd pick the latter. I'll take the flak for that happily.

[Tvetovnato]

That was 30kph without DRS ...

Yeah right. And Verstappen was a whopping 60 kph faster than anyone on the straights in this race.
At least be serious…

Look, it was 27kph in the overtake on Norris without DRS, 20+ to Ver ...
That's data, not an opinion, and therefore serious I guess ?

That is in a massive tow nonetheless. In qualifying it was around the same amount as the advantage Red Bull are currently having.

[AriaanGert]

Fun race, great drive by Max and great car. Yeah the Safety Car gave a chance to Ferrari to win it, but without better behavior out of the technical section it wasn't going to happen.

Race Gap analysis
https://i.imgur.com/gY6mbuj.png

So this graph represents the race gap to the winner over the race, It's very easy to see that with Medium tyre there was no story, RedBull was simply better, Ferrari was graining and damaging tyres like in Imola. On the Hard tyre instead the race was fairly even, both when the 2 of them were further apart, and when they were closer, until Leclerc fell off DRS and then realized it wasn't going to happen.

But how exactly did RBR pull this off? A few of the laps post SC restart are insightful:

Lap 47:
https://i.imgur.com/GLUtDiD.jpeg

There's no DRS here, you can see the top speed isn't a big differentiator, Leclerc is really close to Max in S1 and he struggles with grip there. S2 however starts to give us some hints, that would be the technical section T11-16. Max is really strong there, and despite the speed deficit, his S2 time is slightly better than LEC. S3 is unremarkable.



Lap 49:
https://i.imgur.com/lxlwDCw.jpeg

There is DRS here, you can see Charles way faster than Max in any significant straight, by up to 15kph. Same as before, Leclerc struggles for grip in S1, massive speed advantage into T11 and then the technical section happens and you can see that Verstappen is on average 1kmh faster through it all, despite the lower speed from the braking point which raises Leclerc's average.

And then Lap 55:
https://i.imgur.com/fyaq8yt.jpeg

Out of DRS range again. Here it's pretty evident now, Leclerc manages to get a slightly better S1, despite some sliding out of T8 that he maybe took too fast. However the speed advantage is gone again now, and from the start of S2 time the speed is almost the same, but Verstappen manages to gain 0.27s over Leclerc in basically just the technical section, equally Verstappen managed a better exit out of T17.

So what happened? It's pretty impressive of course that the car with less wing manages to handle the technical section so much better. While looking at the video I was noticing that redbull jumped around a bit more (nothing out of ordinary) into T17, and I think Ferrari had to run harder suspension to avoid porpoising, which of course reduced their mechanical grip, and here, unlike in quali, Leclerc can't afford the same impressive braking performance he had Saturday.

Top speed without DRS wasn't very different so I think overall the aero load on the cars wasn't actually all that different, a bit less for RedBull for sure, however that RedBull is very slippery with DRS open unlike the Ferrari. But even with a large top speed difference as with DRS open, or for the matter was the case with PER against SAI in the closing laps with DRS, it simply wasn't easy to pass, unless you had bad traction out of T8 or T16 or T17, which Leclerc had during the bad tyre degradation he had on the Mediums compared to Verstappen.

I think porpoising is punishing the balance of the car more than Ferrari has been talking about and RBR is certainly a strong machine.

Cheers, hope you liked reading this longer telemetry post.

I like those graphs. So thanks a lot for the telemetry. But I don't get it. I watched the race with several onboards and what I saw doesn't match the telemetry you show. I saw the RB gaining time on the backstraight each time. But the telemetry shows a slight advantage for Leclerc. Even when Leclerc had DRS he didn't gain, according to the live timing. The telemetry however shows a much higher topspeed. That seems logical, but how come that Max didn't lose time?
And when I look at the telemetry graphs without DRS I would think that Leclerc is much faster, but he isn't so where does he lose it?

[dialtone]

I like those graphs. So thanks a lot for the telemetry. But I don't get it. I watched the race with several onboards and what I saw doesn't match the telemetry you show. I saw the RB gaining time on the backstraight each time. But the telemetry shows a slight advantage for Leclerc. Even when Leclerc had DRS he didn't gain, according to the live timing. The telemetry however shows a much higher topspeed. That seems logical, but how come that Max didn't lose time?
And when I look at the telemetry graphs without DRS I would think that Leclerc is much faster, but he isn't so where does he lose it?

Happy to check any video about the live timing, I was watching that too and I think VER was losing time, about 0.2s in some laps, but he was gaining a ton before T16.

Checking lap 51 from F1TV, Leclerc is 0.724 behind Verstappen at the apex of T16, 0.865 by the S2 timing (which just goes to show how bad traction was on Ferrari), 0.699s by the end of the straight. So taking from 0.865 to 0.699 that's 0.166 made up in just straight to T17.

Lap 52, after T8 Leclerc is 0.693s, 0.381 at entry of T11 (0.3s gained), 0.618 at apex of T16, 0.816 at S2, 0.619s at end of straight to T17, so another 0.2s gained in that straight.

I'm not going to check the other laps, but at least to my eye the live timing from the video on F1TV (~1h 33min and onwards on that feed for laps 51 and 52) looks like what I would expect, Leclerc gains, but can't keep it close through T11-16 and loses so much time between T16 and S2 that he needs the rest of the straight to keep up. Verstappen could keep it close through T11-16 and get close to T17 and make the move to T1.

Funnily I think Perez is kind of the same but inverted (inverted as he's the one chasing and being slow in T11-16) despite a bigger speed delta (+32) than Verstappen had when he passed Leclerc (+24).

[Aesop]

George is a step ahead of Lewis. Dont know whats happened with him this year (lewis)

Was there something Lewis could have done to stop Russel getting a lucky free stop?

Yeah, start on hards and wait until a SC happens

He could have pitted before Russel. Hè was the lead driver at that point.