Temperature Windows

[beelsebob]

Fun with graphs of top position at end of race, against track temp:







I have the rest made, but have run out of uploads on cloud.app, I'll post them tomorrow. For me, the strong correlations are:
1) Lotus – wow they like it hot.
2) Mercedes – also seem to like it on the warm side, this surprised me, I thought they liked it cool.
3) Ferrari seem to like it around 30-35°C

The wtfs...
McLaren – I guess that reflects the changing relative pace of their car, and the results being dominated by random pit lane --- ups
RedBull – That's a pretty wide operating window, that'll be why they're winning!
Sauber – No clue what to say about this

[SeijaKessen]

Thank you for posting this!

Out of curiosity, where did you get the track temperatures from?

[SeijaKessen]

I should add, if the track temperature is hot in Hockenheim this weekend, I think we may see a Red Bull/Lotus battle.

[beelsebob]

Thank you for posting this!

Out of curiosity, where did you get the track temperatures from?

The track temperature data is from a liberal application of google. Most of it is from Wikipedia's articles on each race.

For reference, here's the temps I'm seeing, if you have better data than me, please feel free to correct:
Australia: 22°C
China: 24°C
Bahrain: 45°C
Spain: 35°C
Monaco: 35°C
Canada: 39°C
Valencia: 44°C
Silverstone: 28°C

I missed off Malaysia due to wetness making it pretty much invalid.

[SamH123]

Don't reckon you can really say that about Mercedes IMO

If you take out the Australia result (when they were all over the place at the beginning of the season in races) then the plot almost looks the other way round

[raymondu999]

Fantastic work beelsebob. However could I suggest the cars be plotted in terms of percentage of how "off the pace" they are? I think it would shed more light. Race results are affected by penalties etc. Mind you I might just do that myself over the weekend (if I'm not working )

Also, could I suggest a more specific thread title? I thought the thread was a generic one on temperature windows.

[raymondu999]

I just realised that perhaps what I said wasn't the best way to do it

Obviously you have cars often just cruising to the flag like Vettel probably was in the second stint in Valencia.

[Mr Alcatraz]

Great work Beelse.
Under WTFS I think Ferrari (Alonso for the most part) is performing the best in pretty much the same gaping window as Red Bull, No?

[marcush.]

track temperature is not ambient .Heat up will be highly dependend on the angle of sunlight hitting the road but due to thermal mass and not so good heat conduction you would expect the track surface to follow ambient slowly with some delay..so these effects are always overlaid and in case of strong sun radiation dominated by this and as soon as it´s overcasr the other factor will dominate...so this all is a bit more involved .

[Nando]

Can air-tempteratures make a difference?

Assuming we have two tracks with the same track-temp but different air-temp and moisture.
Or is track temp the only thing the tires really care about because it´s the only element capable of making it reach certain levels of temps?

[raymondu999]

In terms of dealing with tyres I suspect track temps would play a much greater effect, thanks to the tyres being in direct contact to the road surface.

[hollus]

But the contact patch is so small and the total surface of the tyre so large...

[bhall]

How does one then account for mechanical failures? Qualifying troubles? Pit stop troubles? Development/updates? Penalties? Driver error/lack of talent?

I don't see how race position correlates to track temperature given the many variables that eventually determine race position.

[marcush.]

ambient temperature will always play its part .heat transfer is always driven by delta t so your ambient will have a big impact on the potential in terms of bing able to cool the tyre .

[FrukostScones]

Thank you for posting this!

Out of curiosity, where did you get the track temperatures from?

The track temperature data is from a liberal application of google. Most of it is from Wikipedia's articles on each race.

For reference, here's the temps I'm seeing, if you have better data than me, please feel free to correct:
Australia: 22°C
China: 24°C
Bahrain: 45°C
Spain: 35°C
Monaco: 35°C
Canada: 39°C
Valencia: 44°C
Silverstone: 28°C

I missed off Malaysia due to wetness making it pretty much invalid.

Australia: 23-29/29-23
Malaysia: 24-28
China: 23-24
Bahrain: 27 (sic) but maybe error and they meant 37, you know it rained shortly befoe they race and was not really sunny, for qualy they give 43
Spain: 33-35
Monaco: 31-35/31-35
Canda: 39-45
Valencia: 44-45
Silverstone: 30-33

all temps from German motorsport-total.com, they have a huge database so I count them as reliable, only that Bahrain value is a bit mysterious