Farnborough wrote: ↑20 Sep 2025, 11:07
venkyhere wrote: ↑19 Sep 2025, 16:26
Didn't watch FP1 & FP2 , so have no idea which car(s) 'looked stable/on rails' and which ones were 'at the teetering edge'. Requesting someone who actually watched the sessions to kindly shed some 'qualitative info' about this....
Can't glean anything just by looking at data alone, as fuel loads, engine modes etc come into play.
However, from the fastest laps of the top players from FP2, saw something strange :
https://i.ibb.co/j9ZSxS53/Max-delaying- ... 2-Baku.png
Not sure whether I should read something into this (hiding pace by delaying/not-doing upshifts w.r.t others)
Perhaps slightly "longer" ratios 7/8th to give overspeed with rear wing open and not be quite so limited as others in drs overtake scenario. Could get them past, relatively, rev limited competitors on this long straight.
Yes, perhaps. But if you look at the screengrab in my post, we can see this 'delayed upshift from driver' even from 4th,5th gears, all the way to 7th,8th. Will they design a gearbox that has 'longer ratios' - period ; rather than longer in only the higher gears ? It all looks a bit strange, TBH. This is what, 10th, 11th year of this engine/powertain cycle ? I expected everyone to have converged (except Renault) on the same kind of ratios and torque outputs atleast in the majority of the operational zone. I can understand if there are differences in lower gears 1st,2nd,3rd (traction out of slow hairpins, race start etc), but didn't expect to see something like this. Scanned the plots from FP3 as well. Even there, the difference exists (even Tsunoda doing the same 'delayed w.r.t competition' upshifts).