The 2023 Formula One Season
- Thread starter Tony Lockhart
- Start date
Tony Lockhart
Avoiding Stress, at Every Opportunity
I don’t agree, and they’re (barring disaster for them) going to finish about where they should. It’s a bit of a lottery out there.
Bananahead
pfm Member
Well done Max
Speaking to Sky Sports F1, Wolff explained: "I think we stayed out catastrophically too long. We got it completely wrong and it is annoying because the car had real pace. From there on, it was just recovering as good as we could. I would rather have a fast race car and a mediocre result even though it hurts. It is bittersweet because the result is just really bad.
"We saw at the end on the inters, George had maximum speed and Lewis was right behind [Carlos] Sainz so we could have been much further ahead, but it's still bittersweet because the result is really bad.
"We saw at the end on the inters, George had maximum speed and Lewis was right behind [Carlos] Sainz so we could have been much further ahead, but it's still bittersweet because the result is really bad.
Tony Lockhart
Avoiding Stress, at Every Opportunity
So if they’d been lucky with decisions made on the hoof in changeable conditions they’d have finished where? One place ahead?
It’s easy to say “If they/we had done y instead of x the result would’ve been better” but when properly analysed, the result is often not much different. It’s a complicated game! And @IanW is usually good with the analysis if he can access the data.
A tough race to analyse as the conditions varied so much.
The best person to comment on the race would @tiggers as from previous discussions I have had with him, he is much better than I am at making good live decisions (as long as he watched the race!).
Post race I can normally do fairly easily from the race trace, but in rapidly varying conditions, it is very difficult to do as the dlaptime vs lap number gradients vary so much. Hence I go back to the golden rule, be on the best tyres for the conditions.
Yes Merc did switch onto inters a lap or 2 later than they should have done and this did cost them a lot of laptime and track position, but by the end of the race ALB (and others)who made a worse decision at that time and stayed out on the softs, finished only slightly behind HAM (2 secs and 2 places for ALB, 3 secs and 3 places for PIA). I.e. the consequences of of one poor decision early on could be recovered as there were many decision points in the race and then the red flag that brought everyone back together.
Whilst from what Ben&Ted has posted, Toto said that "Lewis was right behind [Carlos] Sainz so we could have been much further ahead", the race trace graph suggests that Lewis was held up and one position better was possible. At this point SAI was 1 second a lap slower than GAS for the last 5 laps and yet Lewis could not pass SAI. As Lewis did not pass SAI, we do not know how much faster he could have gone in free air.
I am not sure that all my comments will really help anyone!
Thanks @IanW, and you have compelled me to post 
Yes I did watch the race, but I am not going to judge Mercedes too harshly. If it had stopped raining it would have been deemed a masterstroke and they weren't the only ones to give it a go.
In terms of where they would have ended up had they pitted earlier I think it's a really difficult call to make as there are so many variables in a race like this. The first question is how fast was the W14 at Zandvoort in race trim and in the dry with all other things being equal I think we can see from the FP long runs they were quite competitive, possibly the second fastest car (compared to the RB/Max combo). However we also know the W14 is not great at generating tyre temperature in less than optimal conditions (partly why it can be such a good race car on a 'normal' weekend as it is kinder on its tyres than say Ferrari) and a cooler track with rain is certainly not going to play to its strengths, indeed it is one of the worst cars on the grid in changeable conditions because of the tyre temperature issue. Then we have to factor in the track characteristics as being at the back even with a good car is still not great if the track is difficult to overtake on and Zandvoort falls into that category.
These are the knowns, but the unknowns are if they had pitted earlier, what would the traffic around them have done, how much would other strategies be driven/changed by the W14s in a different place on the track and this is why it is so difficult to predict with any real accuracy what difference them pitting earlier would have made. We do have some clues though and that is their pace at various points in the GP. In the wet they clearly fall into the mid-pack, but in the dry the car was pretty quick, but not quite as quick as they expected I feel. This latter comment is borne out by Russell's tussles with Norris and Hamilton's inability to pass Sainz on a weekend where the Ferrari was clearly not great. However I think the greatest blight to their progress was that track position in the early part of the race as it put them behind other cars on a circuit where, as said, overtaking is challenging and this also has a knock on effect on tyre degradation. For these reasons I do feel that if they had pitted early at the start of the race a podium and a top 5 would have been possible for them respectively, possibly a 3/4... all things being equal the RB's should have been 1/2. Anyway just my thoughts.
Finally it is always good to see records matched/broken and Verstappen's nine in a row is some achievement even in these days of uber reliability. I know most people think it's the car, but if we look at Perez's run of results in the last 9 races I think we'd have to agree that Max is making the difference. 1.3 seconds in qualifying to his teammate is a chasm and Perez is a good solid driver, not a 'new to F1 with a lot to learn' rookie.
Yes I did watch the race, but I am not going to judge Mercedes too harshly. If it had stopped raining it would have been deemed a masterstroke and they weren't the only ones to give it a go.In terms of where they would have ended up had they pitted earlier I think it's a really difficult call to make as there are so many variables in a race like this. The first question is how fast was the W14 at Zandvoort in race trim and in the dry with all other things being equal I think we can see from the FP long runs they were quite competitive, possibly the second fastest car (compared to the RB/Max combo). However we also know the W14 is not great at generating tyre temperature in less than optimal conditions (partly why it can be such a good race car on a 'normal' weekend as it is kinder on its tyres than say Ferrari) and a cooler track with rain is certainly not going to play to its strengths, indeed it is one of the worst cars on the grid in changeable conditions because of the tyre temperature issue. Then we have to factor in the track characteristics as being at the back even with a good car is still not great if the track is difficult to overtake on and Zandvoort falls into that category.
These are the knowns, but the unknowns are if they had pitted earlier, what would the traffic around them have done, how much would other strategies be driven/changed by the W14s in a different place on the track and this is why it is so difficult to predict with any real accuracy what difference them pitting earlier would have made. We do have some clues though and that is their pace at various points in the GP. In the wet they clearly fall into the mid-pack, but in the dry the car was pretty quick, but not quite as quick as they expected I feel. This latter comment is borne out by Russell's tussles with Norris and Hamilton's inability to pass Sainz on a weekend where the Ferrari was clearly not great. However I think the greatest blight to their progress was that track position in the early part of the race as it put them behind other cars on a circuit where, as said, overtaking is challenging and this also has a knock on effect on tyre degradation. For these reasons I do feel that if they had pitted early at the start of the race a podium and a top 5 would have been possible for them respectively, possibly a 3/4... all things being equal the RB's should have been 1/2. Anyway just my thoughts.
Finally it is always good to see records matched/broken and Verstappen's nine in a row is some achievement even in these days of uber reliability. I know most people think it's the car, but if we look at Perez's run of results in the last 9 races I think we'd have to agree that Max is making the difference. 1.3 seconds in qualifying to his teammate is a chasm and Perez is a good solid driver, not a 'new to F1 with a lot to learn' rookie.
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@tiggers , thanks for posting again in this thread. Great to see more well thought out analysis.
I have a possibly interesting aside, mostly for @cutting42 as it is a pattern I have seen before.
Earlier in the season Alpine were really struggling and Rossi gave them a big public telling off. The next race they return their best result of the season. Just before shutdown Otmar, Alan Permane and Pat Fry (not sacked but looks like he would have been at some point) left the team and first race back GAS gets a podium and another good result all round for the team.
When I was at Merc our leadership (we were told very little about it which was good as we knew what needed to be done) was given a big telling off by the Merc board and the next race we performed much better. This happened on a few occasions.
So we have a running joke that if you want to improve performance, forget all the things you should do, and either sack senior people or give them a big telling off. As each time you do this, the team does better and hence you reinforce that you need to keep on doing this instead of looking for the root causes and fixing them.
I have a possibly interesting aside, mostly for @cutting42 as it is a pattern I have seen before.
Earlier in the season Alpine were really struggling and Rossi gave them a big public telling off. The next race they return their best result of the season. Just before shutdown Otmar, Alan Permane and Pat Fry (not sacked but looks like he would have been at some point) left the team and first race back GAS gets a podium and another good result all round for the team.
When I was at Merc our leadership (we were told very little about it which was good as we knew what needed to be done) was given a big telling off by the Merc board and the next race we performed much better. This happened on a few occasions.
So we have a running joke that if you want to improve performance, forget all the things you should do, and either sack senior people or give them a big telling off. As each time you do this, the team does better and hence you reinforce that you need to keep on doing this instead of looking for the root causes and fixing them.
A bit like when a football team sacks its manager and then they seem to win the next game comfortably despite having lost the previous 5
**this may or may not be true as I don't really do football, but this is what it seems sometimes from scanning the headlines.
Eyebroughty
JohnC
New contracts for both Hamilton and Russell
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/66673285
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/66674434
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/66673285
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/66674434
wow&flutter
pfm Member
Are all teams using the same wheels this year? They all look like extra wide space savers in the black finish!
Uncle Roach
pfm Member
Great battle between the two Ferraris in the later stages of the race for the entertainment of the home crowd.
tones
Tones deaf
Although, after today's performance, one has to ask - why? Merc seems as lost as is Honda in MotoGP, in which their top rider, Marc Marquez, like Hamilton one of the best ever, seems to spend an inordinate amount of time on his bottom in an effort to make the thing go. In today's MotoGP, he spent his entire race going backwards
SteveS1
I heard that, pardon?
Mercedes finished where they are and have been all season, behind RB and Ferrari. Not really a shock. The contracts indicate some faith that they will sort their car out presumably.