Emag wrote: ↑09 Nov 2025, 22:38
Badger wrote: ↑09 Nov 2025, 22:03
He was P18, he passed Stroll on the restart and Ocon pitted at the same time.
It took 6-7 laps of hard pushing on the medium to get back where he was before the puncture. The disadvantage came at the end of the race when he didn't have enough tyre life to stay out until the end. If you eat all your sweets early you have nothing left for the end of the night.
I think you're just overstating your case. I will obviously concede that the puncture wasn't race ruining because of the VSC and going onto a medium which was a good tyre. But that doesn't mean it helped his race, doing more stops than you need to rarely does. Regardless he would have taken advantage of those great mediums, just with one less stop.
Check again, he was P16. Ocon pitted and he overtook Stroll at T1.
https://ibb.co/0pfdcdK3
Other than this, I don't have much more to say about the topic. The hards were horrible and they would have made his race harder if he continued on with them (pun intended). I am not saying he was lucky to get a puncture. You're never lucky to get a puncture. He was "lucky" it happened under VSC while the field was still bunched up from the previous safety car as well. On normal race conditions, getting a slow puncture would have destroyed his race no matter what pace and advantages he had after.
My take is :
1) no matter what could be tried, without SC, there was no way to get to P1. Norris was too fast, and he was managing throughout the race, never went full tilt - as that's what the lead driver always does - being fast and preserve tyres - because any SC means giving up track position and giving up the time gap that's built up - both. So Norris catching up 8 seconds on much fresh M tyres, with 20 laps to go - that was a given anyway. He was easily more than 0.4s/lap faster, with a 13 lap tyre delta advantage, on top of the natural tyre deg advantage the Mclaren has.
2) the puncture occurring during VSC was luck - hard tyre would have meant a H-M one stop with lots of management driving. The 10s that were lost, was nothing - Max was gaining 1s/lap on the Mercs during certain phases of his M and S stints.
3) the only Q that really calls for a debate is - was the final stop for S 'wasteful' and could the 2nd M set have been preserved for more than half the race distance, instead of wasting 20 seconds.
It all boils down to :
plan A - full push (no management) on the 2nd M set for 20 laps, throw away +20s, full push on fresh S for 18 laps
versus
plan B - manage pace on 2nd M set for 38 laps until the end and 'defend' against the Mercs and Piastri with tyres that were 'double-age'.
it all depends on how much 'management' would have been needed for B to workout. And looking at the latime chart below, I would think 'a lot'. Because the way the 2nd M stint and the final S stint looks, it's madMax mode pushing. In my estimate this 'a lot' would be :
15 x 0.8/lap + 8 x 0.5/lap = 16s (the boxed phases in the chart)
20s-16s = 4s nett lost on rivals, by driving planA
The 'management that would have been needed in planB shouldn't have sacrificed more than 4s over a 38 lap stint, if B was to have been faster. This is ignoring the fact that a lot of tyre life wasting would happen 'defending' the chasing pack of 2 Mercs and one McLaren. 4s over 38 laps ? That's driving only 0.1s/lap slower than what he did with planA.
I think planB would have spectacularly failed. It's a crudely formed 'loose-data' opinion, not an ironclad one, though.
