PlatinumZealot wrote: ↑10 May 2022, 17:26
GhostF1 wrote: ↑08 May 2022, 08:42
djones wrote: ↑07 May 2022, 09:37
Any speed trap data for FP2?
Presumably the ‘dog of an engine’ is no longer looking so bad now they are starting to get better aero.
Qualifying Team Average Speed Trap (FIA):
RBR: 334.5kmh
MER: 326.0kmh
FEZ: 324.8kmh
Mix that with what looks to be a clear lack of downforce comparatively to RBR and Ferrari, the fact McLaren are the slowest on the grid here with Aston also bottom half and this trend looks very much the same since the start of the season... You start to run out of good arguments against the fact they must be a little down on power at the moment.
That's just cherry picking.
The car passed an alpine and an alpha tauri, no complaints from the drivers about power.
The ground effect cars make finding the engine pecking order even more difficult so best to make a hypothesis of which track you think would give you a good reading and why.
Cherry picking?
Ok, the averages I posted were from Miami but they were mentioned because that was the most recent race. Far from cherry picking. I'm not skewing anything either.
But I'm a bit perplexed.. there's a very obvious pattern emerging here. They, as a manufacturer, are globally down and have been for all 5 rounds which have also been different styles of tracks. This isn't a shot, it's just commentary on something that's pretty obvious. Most respected media outlets have put articles out about it, Toto initially mentioned in Bahrain he "wasn't sure how much they were losing on the engine side", he's now dropped back to a company morale line of "there will be no internal finger pointing, and we are 8 time world champs.. etc etc" (translation, both engine and chassis are lacking a bit, so we'll keep it an internal discussion, not a media stood witch hunt), Lando Norris has been critical of the engine this year saying it isn't helping at the moment, but he thinks it's reliable so that's good.
Let's talk FIA Qualifying speed traps.. (as these are generally set with no tow, no traffic, all DRS enabled). Below is the average speed of every driver combined into a manufacturer representation for every round. It doesn't include weird outliers who are 40kph down or those who didn't qualify. It also includes a Mercedes without McLaren option as a few people are blaming McLaren for poor averages... in reality, McLaren even with their issues only lowers the average in Australia.
And while I realise this is only one snapshot.. it's fairly a damning one when the lack of top speed and time to V-Max can't be traded for outright laptime (see Ferrari). And this also takes onboard Williams who are punching above their weight a lot at several tracks with their low downforce configurations and honestly, the situation sort of looks to be improving in the later races, but I think the low DF Williams and Merc's lower drag upgrades helped at Miami. Again this is merely a conversation point. I'm only responding to some pretty loaded comments I got for literally harmlessly mentioning "they seem a little down on power at the moment"