Seanspeed wrote: ↑22 May 2024, 22:49
Doesn't really hold up to scrutiny, though.
Leclerc made his mistake on lap 47, but then
47 1:21.313
48 1:21.513
49 1:20.798
50 1:20.414
51 1:20.364
52 1:20.358
53 1:20.889
54 1:20.398
55 1:20.636
56 1:20.415
It took him another lap to get the tires back up, but he absolutely did, as he went right back to doing lower-mid 1:20's again, which genuinely seemed to be the pace in the car as it was as fast as ever, and Sainz was only capable of doing upper 1:20's around the same time without any mistake.
The Mclaren simply had a second wind and plenty tire enough to start doing proper low 1:20's and Leclerc couldn't keep up.
Basically, it wasn't that Leclerc got slower, Norris simply got faster. The mistake ultimately cost Leclerc nothing except a bit of pride.
Maybe the tyre temperature issues were masked by fuel burning off, meaning that any temperature-induced loss of performance was simply offset by the fuel? Falling out of the operating window doesn't necessarily mean you become slower outright, it could just mean that you're slower than you otherwise would have been.
Like yeah if your ideal operating temperature is 100 c and you end up at 80 c (numbers are just examples, I have no clue how hot they should be), you will obviously have a severe loss of grip and performance, but if your core temperature drops to say 97 c because you're forced to slow down, and you can't get it back up without bringing the surface temperature waaaaay above what is ideal, you may just have to live with a minor loss of performance and higher deg than you otherwise would have if the tyre never fell out of the window to begin with.
Matching the same pace after running for 2 extra laps, means you have burned off like 4kg of fuel to reach the same pace, meaning you've lost like a tenth of raw pace due to tyre temps, with another few hundreds due to deg.
Obviously I have no way to tell if this is the case, but I see no reason not to take their word for it. The Ferrari has been insanely consistent on the tyres all season, for the pace to just fall off a cliff compared to Norris like this is completely out of character. The SF24 is usually fastest towards the end of a stint, which wasn't the case here. My guess is that it was a mix of the track cooling towards the later stages of the race, which is bad for a car that struggles with tyre warmup, as well going over the grass leading to a slight core temperature drop that couldn't be rectified without causing the tyres to grain up.
Now I don't think Leclerc was going to keep up with Norris anyway, but I do think the mistake and track temperature dropping did somewhat inhibit his pace, and that th gap might have been 2 or 3 seconds rather than ~7 if he never went off.