NathanOlder wrote:Hi guys, just something that's been bugging me for a few days,
The theory is that Mercedes heat their rear tyres quicker than most , thus enables Lewis & Nico to dominate Saturday sessions in qualifying. This makes perfect sense.
Then on the sunday they struggle with bad tyre deg and go backwards. This also makes perfect sense.
The 1 thing bugging me is, if this was the case, why is it Nico & Lewis are always almost the slowest in the top ten on the opening few laps? Surely they would be the best? The tyres are fine for the opening laps, and if the can heat them to the optimal temperature fastest they should be fastest in the opening laps. But its certainly not the case.
remember in qualy the car is light, i guess it has to do with starting on heavy fuel.
It can also be that having got so much out of the tyres in qualy, the tyres are in less optimal state at the start of the race compared to the other cars which didnt get them up to optimal range during qualy.
I agree with what is being said here, they are probably looking at one instant of tyre performance. Maybe the car is setup on a peak in terms of getting the most out of the tyres. That is a very aggressive setup that only looks to use the tyres to the max on one point, but doesn't really cater to other instances through out the race.
But ultimately i feel the tyres are not in the range that pirelli so nicely revealed in their hungaroring video. The setup and how the car is made simply builds temperatures too quickly through the tyres and can't get the temperatures back down.
In fact the damage is probably done if the tyres stay at elevated temperatures too much as the rubber changes permanently.
The FRIC may have to do with this overheating as well, the mechanical contact with the track is good, .... tooo good.
