Brought to you by TheJudge13 contributor Mattpt55
Shanghai Tyre Choices
Last year’s GP in Shanghai saw the teams rocking Soft and Medium Tyres on a track that is particularly brutal on the front left corner. Delightfully, there are some discrepancies at the top and the over/under for how long it takes to shred the Supers is getting a lot of action. Another top 6 for Haas or is it a compound too far? Plus a 5 spot penalty for Lewis taking a new gearbox should liven things up a bit.
And don’t forget, with the return of 2015 Quali, the tyre calculus for all the teams will change in terms of saving sets for the race…
Discuss!!
that 5 place penalty for Lewis could signal the death knell for the last 5 mins of Q3 (Rosberg easily beating the Ferraris and not pushed that Lewis will get bragging rights by being 0.5 s quicker when he has to start P6). Hopefully not, or we’ll be back to grid bingo again.
does anyone else find the merc drivers have diff tyre choices every week seems like an attempt to fake a championship competition somewhat. Merc were known for being a tad conservative last year what with having such a performance advantage, if anyone would need to gamble and split strategies in the hope of pressuring an opponent or simply striking lucky, that surely would be Ferrari, but they seem to go with what’s optimal is optimal?
There was talk that we might see some really early pit-stops this weekend if the main runners used the supersoft tyres in qualifying as graining is likely to be problem (apparently). Maybe Mercedes will try and qualify Hamilton using a slower more durable tyre, as the points are awarded on a Sunday afternoon…
There we go. Not sure if he could make Q3 on the Soft tho. FP might have some stories to tell.
Well generally its not a huge difference anyway on any team. Really what needs to happen is knowing sets left for the race. But is interesting that the Medium tyre was a dog in Bahrain. Might do better here if temps are higher.
one report says cracks were found on Lulu’s gearbox casing as a result of the coming together with Bottas, how is that going to be explained when it was said that Mercedes uses a gearbox placed inside a carbon fibre casing on which all suspension parts are attached?
Given where Bottas made contact, I’d be surprised if that had indeed caused the issue as the rear wheel wasn’t touched by Bottas directly. Merc clearly said that wasn’t the cause and I see no reason they’d lie about that.
Paul, see my reply post to “Bruzinc” on the Jennie “failing to make the turn” article,
I find it interesting how differences exist between the teams with such a large contrast on the Medium tires. Haas only taking one or two, while Mercedes taking 3 or 4 and Sauber even taking 5. Sadly, I feel like how the situation plays out, this mostly describes the strategy for practice and not really for the race. Generally by the time of the race, everyone has about the same number of tires. I feel that they should allocate the race tires separately so we can see clear race strategies, but I guess that would be too limiting with no practice and no ability to make a change.
I also want more tyre info that’s easy to access and up to date. It seems ridiculous that it’s taken until this season for FOM graphics to differentiate between new and used tyres, on the display used to show the current compound each driver is on.
The new rules do allocate two specific sets of tyres that can only be used in the race – out of the 13 dry sets, only 11 are chosen by the teams. For the first 4 races Pirelli have nominated the soft and medium sets that make up the 12th and 13th set, as tyres that can only be used in the race. Of those 2 sets, at least one must be used in the race. However I think we should get more up to date tyre information – as you say, it would let us see what strategy options are available during both quali and the race, allowing the interested viewer to more easily make sense of tyre/strategy choices made by each team as they make them.
If Mercedes find they have superior pace on the mediums again this weekend, it would have been interesting if Lewis had been able to choose his starting tyre having engineered P4, taking him to a P9 grid position with his penalty – possibly allowing him to do just 1 stop. Unfortunately he’d still be obliged to start on his Q2 tyres in that circumstance, but if he got through Q2 on softs, then he may still have an interesting strategy option – assuming he still had plenty of life in that set, and could work in the mandatory Pirelli-nominated mediums to his advantage.
If the BBC were still covering F1, I could see them adding real-time strategy screens for tablets or phones as part of the multi platform content they are so good at. Unfortunately C4 seem to think a few Twatter hashtags makes for an innovative multi media approach. Sadly even their website and catch-up service is terrible in comparison, and again they seem to think including banal posts from Twits equates to a social media strategy!
I agree that previously it was very frustrating to hear a commentator make casual reference to a particular driver only having x number of y tyres left and only a scrub set of tyre z available.
There was no consistency in when and how this information came out, but it seemed apparent they had access to more information than even the most enthusiastic viewer – which was very frustrating when we couldn’t predict if the TV folks would share this precious knowledge or not.
Still we only have a graphic that shows the current tyre each driver’s using. The “used” designation doesn’t reflect the state of the tyre – it may just be a scrub set from a gentle out lap, or a knackered set from a hot qualifying lap that then were flat spotted … I guess most times the used tyres will inevitably be scrub sets, but what would be great is a proper F1 strategy app for phones. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy, just a collection of the information obviously already provided to TV commentators, in some format where we can drill down to look at specific drivers or choose a full display of the state of each team at any chosen point in time. I don’t care if it looks pretty, I just want some collation of information that’s already being presented to a privileged few, for that to also be available to me.
I expect lots of fans that follow F1 closely would appreciate this as an option for when they use a second screen as part of their viewing process? It doesn’t matter if it’s complicated and difficult to use, as folks who’d suffer there wouldn’t be interested anyways. Also I really hate any attempt to dumb down a complicated sport!