The 2021 F1 Season.
- Thread starter Tony Lockhart
- Start date
Bananahead
pfm Member
Except that, after the first stops, the Mercedes couldn't stay with the Red Bull.
Yes, great job Checo.
Red Bull's strategy was spot on today. The second stop for Max killed off any chance of the Mercedes undercut or doing what they did in Spain. It's a credit to Hamilton that he only got passed on the penultimate lap, but full praise to Verstappen who drove brilliantly after losing the lead on lap 1. If anyone thinks Hamilton is going to waltz to championship number 8 I think they are mistaken. The cars are very close on the big tracks like this, but Mercedes are dropping the ball strategy wise and Max is driving out of his skin. Couple that to RB's advantage on tight circuits and it's not looking great for Lewis.
Great news for the championship as it should be a close fight throughout the season.
Lewis and BOT made their race more difficult by sitting behind Max after their pitstop.
When driving that close you damage the front tyres more than you would by staying a few seconds behind. And this on a circuit where they were already seeing front graining, which they made more severe.
Lewis and BOT made their race more difficult by sitting behind Max after their pitstop.
When driving that close you damage the front tyres more than you would by staying a few seconds behind. And this on a circuit where they were already seeing front graining, which they made more severe.
Tony Lockhart
Avoiding Stress, at Every Opportunity
If they’d stayed say five seconds behind Max, they could well have had a Mercedes first and second, but boy oh boy it would’ve been boring.
windhoek
The Phoolosopher
Great out-lap by Max to jump Lewis there. It would have been an incredible achievement if Lewis had held on considering how hard he pushed after pitting, but it is what it is. For some reason I thought this track would have been action-lite but it turned out okay - even Vettel was overtaking!
Looking forward to next week.
Looking forward to next week.
flutteringwow
She called me baby, like an old romantic
It's all gone down hill for Mercedes since their strategist Rosie left on maternity leave...
Sad times today.
Sad times today.
When their car has been 1 sec a lap faster (as it has been for much of the hybrid era) than their opposition the race strategy has been easy. Even when it looked close than 1 sec a lap that was often due to Merc backing off the powerplant and then winding it up if thy needed to do so during a race.
Whenever the competitors got close in terms fo flat out performance, then they have started to make mistakes (happened when Ferrari were close in the hybrid era and is happening this season) . Today was a series of mistakes.
RBR made some strategy mistakes earlier this season so it has not been all Merc!
Even with all the analytical tools they have available, making the call live, under pressure, is pretty challenging. And is not something that I could do. Many people think that they can but under pressure it is a lot more difficult than people think.
Rack Kit
pfm Member
It's great watching two WC drivers at the top of their game and going head to head but one was let down by his team on strategy. Max was robbed of victory last time out so really should have an even bigger lead. I think this seasons title is heading his way. Lewis really needed that race win he was handed last time out to keep Max & RB at bay for a few races - his mistake is starting to look decisive now.
I think what we can all agree is that Max is on Hamilton's level right now and overall the Red Bull seems slightly the better car as it goes well on all circuits whereas the Merc is difficult to get into the right operating window on some. To compensate for that Merc and Lewis need to be on top of their games everywhere from now on whereas Max can afford the odd mistake.
Trouble is when a team is under pressure having rarely been under pressure for a few seasons they are not used to it and it's a different game altogether. It's easy to criticise them yesterday, but like Ian says making decision in the heat of the moment is as easy from the pitwall as it is from our armchairs, but I do think the first pitstop was a mistake. Merc clearly missed the undercut effect that had already been evident, it would have been a different race had they got Lewis out in front of Max. One thing I am noticing this season is that the Merc (at least in Hamilton's hands) seems to be able to follow cars much more closely than we are used to these days. Is this a car trait or something Lewis is doing?
Trouble is when a team is under pressure having rarely been under pressure for a few seasons they are not used to it and it's a different game altogether. It's easy to criticise them yesterday, but like Ian says making decision in the heat of the moment is as easy from the pitwall as it is from our armchairs, but I do think the first pitstop was a mistake. Merc clearly missed the undercut effect that had already been evident, it would have been a different race had they got Lewis out in front of Max. One thing I am noticing this season is that the Merc (at least in Hamilton's hands) seems to be able to follow cars much more closely than we are used to these days. Is this a car trait or something Lewis is doing?
cutting42
Arrived at B4 Hacker Ergo
Toto mentioned that BOT had a very bad tyre vibration that could have damaged the suspension which triggered the early pitstop and HAM also made reference to "early" pitstops so I suspect they were pushed to that decision rather thanb it being a poor tactic.
I agree about the close following, it is something I had noticed as well.
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Eyebroughty
JohnC
Different sport but Ian is correct, you only have to have watched the US Open Golf yesterday to see the pressure get to Louis Oosthuizen on the last hole.
Both him and his caddie must have gone into brain fade as the second shot to the 18th was something not even an amateur golfer would had played.
In general the rules have gradually been tweaked to allow cars to drive closer to the car in front, but there has been no dramatic change in this area and so I was also surprised at how close they were, for lap after lap.
What was interesting for me was seeing on the TV (and on the timing page) that BOT was closer to Lewis than Lewis was to VER (varying from 0.5 secs to 1.1 secs gap for around 8 to 10 laps). At that point in the race there was no point being that close (as I explained in a previous post) and would have damaged his front tyres even more.
It's been prevalent at some of the other races too this season, but very noticeable yesterday. I assume that the plan was for Lewis to push the RB into a second stop in the hope that they could either undercut at a second stop (undone by RB stopping so early for their second stop) or run to the end with enough tyre left to hold off Verstappen (undone possibly by running so close to the RB for 10 laps) although it nearly worked.
The real answer of course was to pit Hamilton a lap before his first stop on the same lap as Max and then they wouldn't' have been in the position, but as you say easy to say from the benefit of sitting in your armchair watching it all unfold although it did seem Merc hadn't seen the power of the undercut.
Eyebroughty
JohnC
Has anyone else thought that the way Bottas is reacting to things and how he is driving is a sign he knows what the future holds already?
Mercedes strategy has not been up to scratch of late and to me they seem to be too computer simulation based on their thinking , no real gut feeling . If Max does not drive as per the simulation ,ie faster the strategy is wrecked ! I wonder if they have race drivers on the strategy team or is it all boffins ?
The area that caused the greatest problems for predicting the best race strategy at the French GP and actually pretty much all GPs is the tyre degradation. In earlier sessions on Friday the cars will have conducted long runs to provide data for the race strategy models. This data has the greatest variance and causes the greatest problems for the strategists. So they look at what their competitors have done and their own data and populate their mathematical model of the race with tyre degradation data with some variance, along with other relevant data.
During the race the core race model is used with live data being fed into it and a subset of simulations run to predict the race outcome and suggest alternative strategies to change the race outcome in your favour. As the live data is more accurate than the pre race data, it quickly becomes clearer what is more likely to happen. This data is used with input from the tyre engineers to help the strategists make decisions.
I am not aware of any team using an ex-driver to help with race strategy decisions live during a race and I would not want them involved. The race strategists have far more experience of how races are predicted to turn out and actually turn out. And with more accurate tyre data from the tyre engineers and the mathematical predictions they will make better predictions over the whole season. An ex race driver will be doing pattern matching from a much smaller subset, without all the additional info, i.e. creating their own race model in their head. Whereas the race strategists create far more accurate models and hence over the season will make better decisions.
Some historical info to put this all into perspective.
A good friend of mine developed the first stochastic pre race strategy model in 1997 - 98 whist at McLaren. That was used very effectively for many years. In 2004 (I had left McLaren in 98 but he stayed there for many years) he had taken the core race model and linked it to the live data to make live predictions of what would happen. He then left and went to RBR and then Ferrari, developing better solutions each time. He now works as an Operational Research consultant for the odd motorsports team but also for companies outside of F1. Prior to the French GP he sent me a correct prediction of the top 3...
In 2009 James Vowles (I employed him in 2004 to develop the BAR Honda race strategy toolset and apply it during race events) was in charge of strategy at Brawn GP. Throughout the season the decisions were spot on. Whilst we had the fastest car for the first 4 races, with no money to develop the car, other teams caught up and overtook Brawn. So much so that by the second half the Brawn was on average 4th fastest. But very good reliability, poor decisions by other teams, Jenson starting well and then recovering his loss of form near the end of the season and very good strategic decisions, resulted in Brawn winning both championships.
Back to now:
James Vowles is the strategic director at Mercedes and so the same person is making the big calls on the pitwall. There were logical reasons for everything that they did but mistakes were made. The 1 stop should have won them the race, but as I have stated already, killing your front tyres, which already had graining problems, by driving too close to VER, meant that both BOT and Lewis were not able to defend at the end of the race, and they should have been able to keep VER behind them.
So as I have stated, the biggest mistakes were made by the tyre engineers at Merc and the drivers, who destroyed their tyres far too early in their long stint.
Copperjacket
pfm Member
Good to see you posting again and thank you for your insights.
So in essence, without the strategists reining them in, Lewis and Bot cooked their own geese?
So in essence, without the strategists reining them in, Lewis and Bot cooked their own geese?