2022 Australian Grand Prix - Melbourne, April 08 - 10

[Sevach]

[/quote]

leclerc fp2 1.18.978 - porposing like mad on back straight from 270+ kmh. Probably the worst I've seen from ferrari so far. Curiously it doesn't seem to be affecting them much on main straight.

Downforce pushing the car down and the lateral load(it's easy flat but it's still a turn) pushing it further down perhaps? And once the bouncing starts it's hard to stop.
On the rest of the track the car seems right on the edge, a couple of hard grounding moments but no bouncing motion.

The car has a terrific balance and grip for cornering right now, in a league of it's own today, let's see tommorow if they change the setup minimize the bouncing.

Downforce pushing the car down and the lateral load(it's easy flat but it's still a turn) pushing it further down perhaps? And once the bouncing starts it's hard to stop.

That sounds very plausible.

Check this out, porposing starts almost immediately after he turns the wheel:

Shocking to see how little he needs to turn the wheel to trigger it.

Or it was clean air?

Charles didn't have much/any porpoising at that part of the track in clear air so i'm gonna say no.

[Vanja #66]

Check this out, porposing starts almost immediately after he turns the wheel:

Yes, happened to Leclerc at second restart as well, at the same spot. Not sure if there is a bump on the road there somewhere. The road between 8 and new 9 is surely bumpy at places too, who knows...To me it looked like they took a bit of a risk with bouncing this race and ran a bit softer suspension, there were no situations like this in Jeddah, at least not this "dramatic".

[dialtone]

This sort of math is senseless. The leader as in most of the times, would be cruising without showing full potential of the car. When Verstappen retired, it became so easy for Leclerc to simply manage the race. So the difference between Leclerc and others cars in terms of where they finished, is not a clear indication of the gap.

I don't know if I agree. Verstappen was clear that he knew from the start he couldn't race Leclerc, right before retiring he was managing the gap to those behind rather than attempting to race Leclerc.

Leclerc was never in any danger aside from the second SC restart where he had understeer through T15, but RBR had no top speed advantage here and once side by side VER couldn't capitalize.

For long chunks of the race, everyone of the top 4 was in free air driving with at least 2-3 seconds in front and behind. If there's a race where race pace is indicative it's this one. The reason of the big gaps is just that RBR couldn't manage the tyres, the rest of the field managed them well enough, see Albon.

You mention albon, but it was easy to manage hard compound tyre and red bull did so too. Perez' PB lap was on the last lap and it was a pretty fast lap. Yes, 8 tenths slower than leclec but leclerc had 3 DRS uses on his fastest lap, so he gained loads just with that. And this is Perez we're talking about, lets not pretend for a second he's faster than verstappen.

Many people struggled on mediums, I'd say nearly entire field apart from leclerc who had zero problems and mercedes who had less but still present. Singling out red bull as being the only ones unable to do good pace on mediums just doesn't hold water. Alonso dropped like a stone at the end when he switched from hard to med and even had to make another pitstop. Magnussen was similar.

Went to pick up telemetry and wrote the simple code to draw how laptimes evolved:



LEC v VER and HAM and you can clearly see after lap 10 that VER has significant degradation of his tyres, nothing of the sort is visible on the Merc. LEC spent the 2nd half of this stints managing gaps.



This is LEC v PER v RUS and even here you can easily see that PER degradation on mediums was very bad, even on Hards there were parts, after lap 50/51, where Russell was actually faster than PER. At the end Perez certainly got a fast lap, but his tyres probably went through the graining phase and regained some lap time.

So yeah, overall Red Bull struggled with tyres more than the others.

EDIT:
another interesting aspect is that VER had big degradation on the Mediums after lap 10, but Perez was quite stable until lap 16, my guess is that to try and keep up with Leclerc, Max took out a ton of life out of his tyres.

[Sevach]

Check this out, porposing starts almost immediately after he turns the wheel:

Yes, happened to Leclerc at second restart as well, at the same spot. Not sure if there is a bump on the road there somewhere. The road between 8 and new 9 is surely bumpy at places too, who knows...To me it looked like they took a bit of a risk with bouncing this race and ran a bit softer suspension, there were no situations like this in Jeddah, at least not this "dramatic".

In Jeddah they were pretty under control, they had a couple of moments in practice but heading to qualy and the race they ironed it out.
In Melbourne oh boy every time i saw Leclerc getting near T10 the car was bouncing like crazy.
The loss in terms of top speed seems rather minute and doesn't seem to justify raising the car, at least in terms of performance.

Red Bull has those limiters near the edge of the floor, i wonder if they would be worth it for Ferrari and Mercedes.

[zeph]

So, five failures for RBR powertrains in three races. Gonna keep an eye on that.

Miraculous how Mercedes manages damage limitation, they're frigging second in the WCC with a car that is way off the pace.

Ferrari, just wow. Kudos to them. Hope Sainz gets it together in San Marino, because I see a big fat #2 status coming at him if he doesn't.

[f1316]

I’d love to know the data on % of folks on this forum who think 2022 cars are slow or ponderous or [insert thing I suddenly don’t like but apparently was fine last year] and which driver they support… [it’s interesting that 2007/08 are cited as the golden age, as opposed to 2006…]

What I do think is actually interesting is that Pirelli have now made tyres (in the hard compound) that are durable and can be pushed for the duration of gp (something they were accused of not being capable of). There is now no longer “bubble gum” tyres or an attempt to manufacture a certain volume of stops - both of which are things people criticised Pirelli for. The result can therefore sometimes be something more akin to what we had pre-Pirelli - ie on days where one team has a race pace advantage, they run and hide; today was almost akin to an MSC race win. For the purist, I think that’s pretty ok - it’s what happens when a race is run as a meritocracy and we don’t happen upon two cars/packages that end up extremely close on performance. But if you want whiz bangs and bumper cars constantly, then you’re better off with the bubble gum.

[Big Tea]

I’d love to know the data on % of folks on this forum who think 2022 cars are slow or ponderous or [insert thing I suddenly don’t like but apparently was fine last year] and which driver they support… [it’s interesting that 2007/08 are cited as the golden age, as opposed to 2006…]

What I do think is actually interesting is that Pirelli have now made tyres (in the hard compound) that are durable and can be pushed for the duration of gp (something they were accused of not being capable of). There is now no longer “bubble gum” tyres or an attempt to manufacture a certain volume of stops - both of which are things people criticised Pirelli for. The result can therefore sometimes be something more akin to what we had pre-Pirelli - ie on days where one team has a race pace advantage, they run and hide; today was almost akin to an MSC race win. For the purist, I think that’s pretty ok - it’s what happens when a race is run as a meritocracy and we don’t happen upon two cars/packages that end up extremely close on performance. But if you want whiz bangs and bumper cars constantly, then you’re better off with the bubble gum.

I think the cars look cumbersome. As for slow, without the digital speed on the screen 95% of watchers would not know within 40mph how fast they were going, it is only comparison with other cars that matters, but smaller more nimble cars always look like they are going faster and cornering quicker.
You can race at walking speed (but it would look stupid)

I support several drivers and teams, not all in the top half, and like to see racing not a walk in for any driver.
I do not like the personal Lewis v Max or any other combination of 'My guy v your guy' and my favourite changes from time to time. So no axe to grind here.

[Alonsismo]

for me the cars are very ugly.

2003-2008 cars were the top, especially 2004 and 2005.

[dialtone]

Love these cars, their simplicity bring me back to the F2004 or the 90s.

[chrstphrln]

(...) today was almost akin to an MSC race win. For the purist, I think that’s pretty ok - it’s what happens when a race is run as a meritocracy and we don’t happen upon two cars/packages that end up extremely close on performance. (...)

Think the same.
And we should not forget that the other two races were extremely close.
I am quite happy with the results of the new regulations. Especially when keeping in mind that it is the third race in the first year of the new regulations.
Needless to say, the cars will equalize in performance in the coming seasons.

[johnny comelately]

Charles Marc Hervé Perceval Leclerc is like a breath of fresh air after all the dirty tactics of last year.
And being such a technical arm of the sport all accolades to the Ferrari team.

[PlatinumZealot]

I see a trend.
And the trend is that the Hard tyre is the new Medium.
Remember a few years back when the Mediums where the best race tyre?

I think the shards are now the best race tyre.

That Hard tyre was the C2 in the range of C1 to C5. It can be a medium tyre at high energy tracks like Silverstone.

The Albert Park caused graining problems for the mediums(C3) today. Surface temperature of the tyre rising too fast versus the bulk temperatures and causes the surface to degrade and "grain". It's obviously track specific.

[kptaylor]

So, what penalty would Albon have picked up if he didn't change tires at the end of the race? Didn't use two different compounds? Would he, after penalty, have placed higher than the P10 he got by complying?

[ringo]

Check this out, porposing starts almost immediately after he turns the wheel:

Yes, happened to Leclerc at second restart as well, at the same spot. Not sure if there is a bump on the road there somewhere. The road between 8 and new 9 is surely bumpy at places too, who knows...To me it looked like they took a bit of a risk with bouncing this race and ran a bit softer suspension, there were no situations like this in Jeddah, at least not this "dramatic".

In Jeddah they were pretty under control, they had a couple of moments in practice but heading to qualy and the race they ironed it out.
In Melbourne oh boy every time i saw Leclerc getting near T10 the car was bouncing like crazy.
The loss in terms of top speed seems rather minute and doesn't seem to justify raising the car, at least in terms of performance.

Red Bull has those limiters near the edge of the floor, i wonder if they would be worth it for Ferrari and Mercedes.

They set it up nicely to only bounce over 300kph and its spot on. Its not the wheel turning. Its the velocity of the car.
They running the car low enough to get as much downforce but only bounce at a speed that they would likely only experience on the straight.

[ringo]

As for the cars i like them. They are slow and dont look fast at all.
But the look of the cars is nice.
They need to increase fuel flow to get 300 more horsepower with these heavy machines.

Looking at it now also.. the 18 inch wheels were not necessary.

The racing is good. Its nice and close. The street track is making things seem worse than they are.

We should have better racing on the more natural tracks.