Hamilton Vs Rosberg 2014

[turbof1]

No...in 2008 we had different rules. Once the safety-car was deployed the pitlane was closed. So completely different case. Now we have a safety car time everybody has to drive and, thus, everybody who has a gap of about 10 sec can do a pitstop without loosing places.

The pitlane was closed for one or two laps. After that it would open again and drivers are allowed to pit, DURING the safety car. Agreed the temporarily closedown excagerbates the advantage since you have the chance to drive down the majority of the gap before getting to the safety car train, but it is still the same principle: leader gets caught first by the safety car, is the first off the delta-time pace to the slower safety car pace. Which means if he didn't pit right before the safety car came out, and a competitor did, he looses time (yes, ok, that's obvious, however...) and possibly even his position.

What you are stuck is that you think that the leader always is in the position to pit before reaching the safety car. Say the safety car got deployed right when Rosberg passed the pitlane entrance. He and Bottas would need to do a complete round behind the safety car before getting the chance to enter the pitlane. Hamilton pits before the moment of deployment, drives the faster delta time opposed to all who are already stuck behind the safety car.

OF COURSE, this could go wrong as well. If Rosberg does manage to pit before hitting the safety car, he'll have the advantage.

[basti313]

What you are stuck is that you think that the leader always is in the position to pit before reaching the safety car.

I am not stuck. I am just talking about what is the usual case. With an arbitrary deployment and a delta time of 2 minutes and a time of less then 10sec between the F1 car passing the pit entry at normal speed and the safety car on the track, the possibility of getting caught is less than 10%.
No one is normally compromising his pit-stop and especially the big advantage of being able to pit at safety car delta time just for these 10%.

Say the safety car got deployed right when Rosberg passed the pitlane entrance. He and Bottas would need to do a complete round behind the safety car before getting the chance to enter the pitlane.

Bottas had enough gap to enter the pits in any case.
Yes, on a 10% possibility Rosberg would have had a problem. At least we do not have to discuss the conspiracy on this one...

Hamilton pits before the moment of deployment, drives the faster delta time opposed to all who are already stuck behind the safety car.

OF COURSE, this could go wrong as well. If Rosberg does manage to pit before hitting the safety car, he'll have the advantage.

We are still talking about a possibility of 10% for Rosberg getting stuck on old tires and a 100% possibility of Hamilton being stuck behind Alonso and Bottas on fresh tires.
With a look at the times I see Rosberg doing a 1:21.3 on 26 laps old Prime tires and Hamilton not being able to pass Bottas who could only do 1:22s.
So the question is not if Hamilton would have won with a safety car, but if he would have lost his 3rd place to Alonso and if Bottas would have won instead of Rosberg...still with only 10% possibility.

[stewilkinson]

Was the extra stop and using 2 sets of SS tyres really quicker than a nose change and S tyres til the end of the race?

He needed to go on the supersofts regardless because he'd only used softs already, so it's more a case of was it worth the nose change vs. the time lost from extra FL deg on both sets of SS - most likely not.

[SiLo]

How long does a nose change take? The rate at which he caught Bottas and the amount of laps still left when he had done so makes me think they should have changed the wing. He would have easily made up the time IMO.

[turbof1]

What you are stuck is that you think that the leader always is in the position to pit before reaching the safety car.

I am not stuck. I am just talking about what is the usual case. With an arbitrary deployment and a delta time of 2 minutes and a time of less then 10sec between the F1 car passing the pit entry at normal speed and the safety car on the track, the possibility of getting caught is less than 10%.
No one is normally compromising his pit-stop and especially the big advantage of being able to pit at safety car delta time just for these 10%.

Say the safety car got deployed right when Rosberg passed the pitlane entrance. He and Bottas would need to do a complete round behind the safety car before getting the chance to enter the pitlane.

Bottas had enough gap to enter the pits in any case.
Yes, on a 10% possibility Rosberg would have had a problem. At least we do not have to discuss the conspiracy on this one...

Hamilton pits before the moment of deployment, drives the faster delta time opposed to all who are already stuck behind the safety car.

OF COURSE, this could go wrong as well. If Rosberg does manage to pit before hitting the safety car, he'll have the advantage.

We are still talking about a possibility of 10% for Rosberg getting stuck on old tires and a 100% possibility of Hamilton being stuck behind Alonso and Bottas on fresh tires.
With a look at the times I see Rosberg doing a 1:21.3 on 26 laps old Prime tires and Hamilton not being able to pass Bottas who could only do 1:22s.
So the question is not if Hamilton would have won with a safety car, but if he would have lost his 3rd place to Alonso and if Bottas would have won instead of Rosberg...still with only 10% possibility.

Yes, it's true he would be stuck behind Bottas and Alonso. He'd definitely would have lost those places during the safety car period.

However, I think with Alonso, Bottas and Hamilton all on fresh tyres, Hamilton would have the pace advantage afterwards. In the race he didn't got passed Bottas because Hamilton's front left was heavily degraded. It was in a much more degraded state then Bottas old tyres, probably due the front wing being clipped off. With both on fresh tyres and no gap to close, I think he would have passed before the tyre was dead.

Of course, it's an if-if story. I don't either believe in conspiracy theories. There's nothing pointing to intentional keeping away of the safety car in order to rob Hamilton of a possible advantage. Nobody would even be able to predict how a safety car would have turned out for Hamilton. I'm merely interested in the possible scenario's.

[basti313]

However, I think with Alonso, Bottas and Hamilton all on fresh tyres, Hamilton would have the pace advantage afterwards.

Why? As stated above, lap times tell a different story...Bottas could do a 1:21.4 nursing his Primes on lap 45. The best Ham could get out of the Options was a 1:19.9...mostly only 1:20s ten laps later with fresh tires.
From these lap times one has to discuss if Hamilton would have had the pace to keep up when Bottas would have fitted Primes during safety car. I see no basis to discuss about Ham having the pace with Bottas having Options...

[turbof1]

However, I think with Alonso, Bottas and Hamilton all on fresh tyres, Hamilton would have the pace advantage afterwards.

Why? As stated above, lap times tell a different story...Bottas could do a 1:21.4 nursing his Primes on lap 45. The best Ham could get out of the Options was a 1:19.9...mostly only 1:20s ten laps later with fresh tires.
From these lap times one has to discuss if Hamilton would have had the pace to keep up when Bottas would have fitted Primes during safety car. I see no basis to discuss about Ham having the pace with Bottas having Options...

I of course can't back up my opinion since we are talking about a hypothetical situation; If Hamilton still had a pace advantage of lets say half a second, I think he would have gotten past Bottas. But it's a gut feeling if nothing else. The biggest issue why he couldn't get passed Bottas was that Hamilton's front left was completely gone. Yes, Bottas was also on old rubber, but I think Hamilton's tyre was at the very end of the race in a worse state then that of Bottas. Any pace advantage looked to have been nullified because of the severe degredation on the front left.

[basti313]

The biggest issue why he couldn't get passed Bottas was that Hamilton's front left was completely gone.

Which was a result of heavy understeer once he was close to another car. He approached Bottas with stable mid 1:20s, no sign of tire problems there. Then once in the dirty air behind Bottas he could not follow close enough through the first three turns and was always too far away for an attack with DRS. In the end the tire wear resulted from the understeer.

This is also why I think the wouldn't even had a chance to pass Alonso: No possibility to follow the Ferrari in the corners when he can not even follow the Williams. And in the first rounds after the safety car DRS and slipstream for Alonso. Would have been a question who makes his tires work to the end. With Ham falling to the 1:23s like he did behind Bottas even Vettel would have been a threat.

[turbof1]

The biggest issue why he couldn't get passed Bottas was that Hamilton's front left was completely gone.

Which was a result of heavy understeer once he was close to another car. He approached Bottas with stable mid 1:20s, no sign of tire problems there. Then once in the dirty air behind Bottas he could not follow close enough through the first three turns and was always too far away for an attack with DRS. In the end the tire wear resulted from the understeer.

This is also why I think the wouldn't even had a chance to pass Alonso: No possibility to follow the Ferrari in the corners when he can not even follow the Williams. And in the first rounds after the safety car DRS and slipstream for Alonso. Would have been a question who makes his tires work to the end. With Ham falling to the 1:23s like he did behind Bottas even Vettel would have been a threat.

There was a stark difference between the front left tyre and the rest of Hamilton's tyres. The dirty air would have had something to do with it, but I think the heavy usage of the front left anyway on this particular circuit combined with Hamilton's damage to the wing, which probably would have protected the front left more from dirty air, meant he "fell down the cliff". His other 3 tyres were pretty ok, but that particular one looke just awful at the end.

[stewilkinson]

How long does a nose change take? The rate at which he caught Bottas and the amount of laps still left when he had done so makes me think they should have changed the wing. He would have easily made up the time IMO.

~15 seconds maybe? No idea exactly, just used this video as a gauge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5p7QmcdWf4

Thing is, don't forget that pace would've fallen off those supersofts at some point anyway, so even though the damaged nose exacerbated the situation I'm not sure he would've been any better off. Sure, when Lewis got up to Bottas he'd already started to feel the negative effects of the increased wear, but if he'd had a nose change he would've got up to Bottas at *least* 5 or more laps later (That's giving it a generous 3 sec/lap of extra use out of the super softs) by which point he'd more than likely be in the same situation in terms of wear. The only 'what if' scenario that works is if Merc didn't bring lewis in for the safety car gamble, letting him get the remaining good use of the first set of supersofts and then reach Bottas when he's still got plenty left in the second set (Not to mention closing the gap more on the first lot too).

[marcush.]

There was a stark difference between the front left tyre and the rest of Hamilton's tyres. The dirty air would have had something to do with it, but I think the heavy usage of the front left anyway on this particular circuit combined with Hamilton's damage to the wing, which probably would have protected the front left more from dirty air, meant he "fell down the cliff". His other 3 tyres were pretty ok, but that particular one looke just awful at the end.

what are you implying with dirty air ? I cannot make any sense of this .

Hockenheim is VERY demanding for the left front tyre -that´s the Name of the game - the circuit is typical understeer and it´s only two Corners really turning left -one of them is the sachs curve.

So it seems more than likely you will have more or less Trouble with your left front towards the end of a stint and cars with a "loose" or lively rear are going to perform a bit better than you thought .
The effect of the loss of the endplate and cascade should add to the understeer by reducing the amount of front total downforce - but in effect I beleive you cannot see it isolated so you will also cripple the airflow Downstream more or less so the car will not only shift downforce front to rear but also towards the undamaged side .
The majority of downforce producing area was still intact so one would assume the loss in downforce was not like 50% but more like 5 % to 10% and if there was drag added or reduced we will never really know.

[mrluke]

Would the damage to the front win affect the tyre temp of the front left?

In my mind the bit that was knocked off improved airflow over the tyre, therefore with it missing there would be more stagnation in front of the tyre and a higher temp? Hamilton was very kind on tyres up until the damage and then he was one of the worst users, unlikely to suggest they aren't linked.

[Mandrake]

Lewis gap without dnfs would be 21 now (rosberg lost 7 points in Canada as well) so he'd be up by 4 points only given equal share of dnfs

[Kingshark]

Without misfortunes:

Hamilton lost 25 points in Australia
Rosberg gained 7 points in Australia

Hamilton lost 18 points in Canada
Rosberg lost 7 points in Canada

Rosberg lost 25 points in Great Britain
Hamilton gained 7 points in Britain

Hamilton lost 3 points in Germany.

All in all, without misfortunes, the championship would look something like this:

1. Lewis Hamilton - 215 points
= Nico Rosberg - 215 points

Both would have 5 wins and 5 second places.

This is, of course, making the following assumptions:

1. Hamilton would've beat Rosberg in Australia
2. Rosberg would've beat Hamilton in Silverstone and Germany.
3. Without Rosberg's slow 2nd pit stop, Hamilton would not have jumped him in Canada.

[Juzh]

3. Without Rosberg's slow 2nd pit stop, Hamilton would not have jumped him in Canada.

there was more going on at that stage than simply a slow pit stop.