2024 Japanese Grand Prix - Suzuka, April 05 - 07

[Dunlay]

Why is there such a negative tone in the forum? Is it truly essential to diminish one driver by comparing them to another? What gratification does this provide? It's evident that drivers experience fluctuations in performance from race to race, unless they have a dominant car and capitalize on it, particularly when their teammate is not performing at the same level. Russell, Hamilton, Carlos, and Charles have earned their places in F1 through their talent and consistent performance. It's disheartening to encounter such unrefined commentary about them.

[PlatinumZealot]

Ferrari now have 1/2 a second in hand of race pace against RedBull - it's a juicy prospect for a proper fight tomorrow.

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He [Alonso] qualified well today, but that car's race oace will be crap tomorrow.

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Longruns VT3: Alonso on the Hard and the others on the Medium.
All drove the same number of laps on those tires at the start of the longrun.
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https://imgur.com/Wq1SkSC.jpg ..... https://imgur.com/xqpjNgm.jpg

Weak analysis. Very weak. Expert analysis says Aston's race pace will not be good. He is not considered a threat in the race by RedBull and neither Mercedes.

[Sedaxel]

Ferrari now have 1/2 a second in hand of race pace against RedBull - it's a juicy prospect for a proper fight tomorrow.

.

He [Alonso] qualified well today, but that car's race oace will be crap tomorrow.

.
Longruns VT3: Alonso on the Hard and the others on the Medium.
All drove the same number of laps on those tires at the start of the longrun.
.
https://imgur.com/Wq1SkSC.jpg ..... https://imgur.com/xqpjNgm.jpg

Weak analysis. Very weak. Expert analysis says Aston's race pace will not be good. He is not considered a threat in the race by RedBull and neither Mercedes.

What expert analysis?

I think the same, but honestly, all "expert analysis" I've found are based on "if previous races were what they were, the most probable is that it stays the same". Actually, all analysis I've seen just state that long run laptimes are just confusing and that there must be a sandbaging factor. But apart from that (which I agree, by the way), there's no analysis based on current info.

What in trying to say is that, yeah, this is a "weak, very weak" analysis... But not weaker than those "expert analysis"... Which I've just not seen apart from the "I believe it's going to be the same as before" ones.

[PlatinumZealot]

The teams can estimate the fuel weight of their rivals with reasonable accuracy. This is how Helmut Marko was singleing out Charles leclerc's long run pace.

[Sedaxel]

An estimation is not an analysis. I think that everyone thinks RB and Ferrari will be ahead, but not based on any analysis. It's just because it's not probable that the rest of the teams could improve so much to revert previous races tendency.

But long runs of FP3 just say different things, and that's why they are somehow confusing. No one knows fuel loads or motor settings. That's why they say "We think they have something else" .

Nothing to do with analysis based on long run laptimes.

[Sieper]

We missed FP2, that is why it is both harder for the teams to get the set-up right and for us to guess at how right they got it.

[Luscion]

[AR3-GP]

Interesting:

Hamilton said on the radio after his final Q3 run: "The track dropped below temperature at the end".
Bono responds: "affirm, down at 25.0 (C) at the end"

Russell said to his engineer after his final run: "It just went downhill from T11"

Verstappen's engineer said the exact same thing: "Wasn't the greatest lap from T11, otherwise good job"

It sounds like the track lost some temperature quite sharply at the end of Q3.

This would better explain the lack of improvement on the second runs across the board.

[venkyhere]

Race day is expected to be warmer than all estimates prevalent on Thursday/Friday ; so teams like RedBull & Ferrari who bet on M rather than H tyres, might be in for some difficulty. Not just that, RedBull even reduced their brake cooling, inorder to 'maintain' tyre temps. Might just come back to bite them and result in overshooting tyre temps and call for 'lift n coast'. The 1 second 'advantage' that Ferrari seemed to have in race pace over Redbull, I hope is atleast 0.2 to 0.3 in reality (if not as big as 0.5, after discounting for all the fuel-load, engine-mode corrections).

What I like most about this race is that tyre strategy is completely open. If the front guys start on the softs, and make it last for 10-15 laps, will they come back with M or H into clean air or will they walk into a Sauber-Visa-Haas-Williams melee ? If they start on the M, how many places will they end up losing to S starters in the first 3 laps ? One thing is certain, undercut will be massive here. Moreover, the new age Latifi, Mr.Sargeant, can throw a spanner into the works at any moment with an untimely safety car.

This is a track where the strategists earn their money.

[atanatizante]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GKhHQTuWwAA ... ame=medium

It's weird they mist starting on hards strategy based on the fact that most of the drivers could do that knowing that: 1.track temperature will be hotter playing into hards optimal working window and 2.there's a high chance of a VSC/SC in the first stint of the race. The only downside is that they are slower of the line at the start of the race but just see what ALO did in Australia a couple of weeks ago and not to mention that in Bahrain, on the same temperature and the same rough asphalt track the C3 tyre was the main tyre race ...

[AR3-GP]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GKhHQTuWwAA ... ame=medium

It's weird they mist starting on hards strategy based on the fact that most of the drivers could do that knowing that: 1.track temperature will be hotter playing into hards optimal working window and 2.there's a high chance of a VSC/SC in the first stint of the race. The only downside is that they are slower of the line at the start of the race but just see what ALO did in Australia a couple of weeks ago and not to mention that in Bahrain, on the same temperature and the same rough asphalt track the C3 tyre was the main tyre race ...

Having an early safetycar and even a VSC ruins any strategy where you start on hards. If you start on hards, you need to run long.

[ispano6]

As expected, warm again like last week and no wind. Med hard hard looks to be the best option.

[AMG.Tzan]

Yesterday 22C, today 40C temperature??

Yeah ok Mercedes won’t even make it in the top 10 with these temps today!

[DiogoBrand]

Is there time for Albon to hop onto Sargeant's car?

[maseboogie]

Jeez. DRic and Williams REALLY going through it.