2018 Australian Grand Prix - Melbourne, 22 -25 March

[dans79]

Here we go again. I've heard the same nonsense with Rosberg 3 or 4 times and look how it turned out. What were you watching last year? Bottas disappared after Merc de facto cllinched WCC around emberssement of Hungary and "came back" when they got DC.

As the saying goes, "every dog has it's day"........ And it's true, Rosberg was damn lucky to win the WDC, if Lewis hadn't lost the engine in Malaysia, he would have won in-spite of his own driver related faults (bad starts).

[Vasconia]

I think he has realized that he won´t beat Lewis unless he starts to make mistakes in many races. Bottas is a fine driver but he is not as fast and constant as Nico was.

Here we go again. I've heard the same nonsense with Rosberg 3 or 4 times and look how it turned out. What were you watching last year? Bottas disappared after Merc de facto cllinched WCC around emberssement of Hungary and "came back" when they got DC. A miracle or running on hype farce of a sport where corporation overpaying 30+ million a driver can't be emberassed like in '16.

As for can't beat: Russia, Bahrain, Monaco (Bottas is what 0,1 off Ferrari and Mercedes is labeled "diva") Hungary etc., team orders, bad tyre pressure and 2 engine failures in Barcelona.

Rosberg was anything but consistant, neither is Bottas (clearly stated before the '17 season by yours truly and quickly proved by reallity) and neither is Hamilton, especially under pressure (watch Singapore, Monza, Japan, Mexico '16). That's why he got a gift of DOUBLE TEAM ORDERS IN THE THIRD RACE OF THE F.... SEASON - to calm his feeble psyche. Look out, now this thread becomes off topic mommm! I mean mods.

I have never said that Bottas can beat Hamilton, he can do it on certain races but not enough to be a serious rival for the championship.

Sorry but Nico was consistently fast, especially during qualys, much more than Bottas. I won´t discuss more this because as you have said this is off-topic.

Back to the topic, Lewis has said that he expects RB to be the fastest team in Australia, mainly due to the already mentioned update which according to him, will give them between 0,2 and 0,4 seconds. I don´t know if we should take those comments very seriously. Mercedes loves to downplay its chances but I can´t see RB beating Mercedes even if this update is real.

[Big Mangalhit]

The pre-season testing thread has run its course. The 2018 speculation thread is just that. I choose to post this here but Mods move if you want it somewhere else.
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I think this is really really interesting! Even that it maybe deserves its own thread.

First I was thinking that there are some out liars like baku because it might be overall slow but that massive highway of a straight makes it almost mandatory to have slim wings and then there is mexico that we see cars bolt all the DF they can because of the thin atmosphere will always give a lower drag. Bu then somebody pointed out that having Red flags/rain and such will really change the outcome.

It would be nice to clean the data a little bit. For red flags and SC one could just do the average of every lap except those exceptionally slow ones and then multiply by the number of laps and probably had something like 20s for the pit stop if teams will take the chance to do one. There are still some errors since a stop at the beginning will eliminate relative slower laps from the average and skew it a little bit but it's the best I can imagine. For rain it makes things way more complicated.

Another method of correction, and a lot easier, would be to do those calculations with the average speed per race of several years together (eliminating the ones it rained). I know the cars are different but fast/slow circuits should maintain the order.

It would be nice to also see a trend in teams since 2014. Which ones changed their trend the most (probably McLaren/STR?) and which ones maintained their philosophy the most (merc?)

[TAG]

This time next week they'll be a whole lot of discussion here around the FP2 times and simulations. F1 officially, rejoice.

[Restomaniac]

This time next week they'll be a whole lot of discussion here around the FP2 times and simulations. F1 officially, rejoice.

FP2 On a Thursday?

[Edax]

The pre-season testing thread has run its course. The 2018 speculation thread is just that. I choose to post this here but Mods move if you want it somewhere else.
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Recently in the pre-season testing thread there was discussion about cars suited to high speed or high downforce circuits. I was aware of Monza, Silverstone & Spa as high speed & Monaco, Hungary & Singapore as high downforce circuits. But what about the rest? So I made a spreadsheet listing the winner of each race, the distance & the winner’s time. Calculated the winner’s average speed & used that to create a table of the tracks going from high downforce to high speed.

Sure, weather & safety cars distort it but here it is. Course & winners average speed in kph.
Azerbaijan 148
Monaco 149
Singapore 150
Hungary 184
China 188
Mexico 190
Spain 192
Abu Dhabi 194
Canada 197
Bahrain 197
United States 197
Brazil 201
Malaysia 207
Russia 211
Japan 211
Belgium 218
Australia 219
Austria 225
Great Britain 226
Italy 244

So already I got some surprises. Azerbaijan, Austria & Australia.

So now I had a list to guide me as how Ferrari (high downforce) & Mercedes (high speed) should perform at the various circuits. Red Bull was similar to Ferrari but what about the rest? So I decided to add to the spreadsheet the points scored by each team at each race to see what each team preferred. The full spreadsheet is attached ( no it 'aint as I don't see how to attach an xlsx file). To make it easier to interpret the data I made a scatter graph for each team. The Y axis is the score; the X axis is the sequence number of the circuit (Azerbaijan=1, Monaco=2 ...). It made things much clearer. I then added a simple trend line to each graph & the slope of the trend showed nicely which type of circuit each team preferred. I used the Excel function SLOPE() to give me the trend in units of points per kph which I could do from the table of data. (I don’t know how to set the X axis data in Excel.) Because the x-axis is different the slope value for the graphs is points per track sequence number. This gave me a very nice grading of the team’s strengths. Negative preference is high downforce. Positive is high speed. I have multiplied the numbers by 100 to give integers.

Toro Rosso -7
Ferrari -6
Red Bull -6
Williams -2
McLaren -2
Force India -1
Renault -1
Haas 3
Sauber 7
Mercedes 15

Sure that is last year’s cars so things will be somewhat different this year. But I am expecting the mid speed circuits to be where the closest racing will be. But you really can see how Mecedes has a strong preference for high speed circuits – that was the ‘diva’ so this year’s car should be somewhat different. But what about the longer wheelbase Ferrari?

Any insights you can share?

Cool. I believe there is merit in looking at the numbers this way. It is a pity you put it in a thread where I cannot upvote you. Otherwise it is well deserved.

I was thinking. You now use the average speed as a basis for your circuit ranking. I wonder whether ather metrics can be used to get an idea of other car parameters, like braking efficiency by ranking the circuits on the Brembo braking facts. Could be an interesting exercize.

[TAG]

This time next week they'll be a whole lot of discussion here around the FP2 times and simulations. F1 officially, rejoice.

FP2 On a Thursday?

It's Friday in Australia!

[Sieper]

Those Australians are always a step ahead of us!

[Restomaniac]

This time next week they'll be a whole lot of discussion here around the FP2 times and simulations. F1 officially, rejoice.

FP2 On a Thursday?

It's Friday in Australia!

True but I doubt they will have ran free practice whilst being in bed asleep

[Kingshark]

How badly will the mood be ruined for the rest of the season if Mercedes qualifying 0.8 seconds ahead?

[Zynerji]

How badly will the mood be ruined for the rest of the season if Mercedes qualifying 0.8 seconds ahead?

What if HAAS pulls out a pole while the top 3 all misunderstand their tyres...???

[giantfan10]

How badly will the mood be ruined for the rest of the season if Mercedes qualifying 0.8 seconds ahead?

This series of quotes from 2 drivers should put things in perspective.

Mercedes avoided Pirelli's new hypersoft tyre in Formula 1 testing because it will just be a compound to "survive" on this season, according to team principal Toto Wolff.

Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas ended the two weeks at Barcelona more than a second off Sebastian Vettel's pace, but did not pursue one-lap performance and only moved away from soft or medium Pirellis to try the ultrasoft.

Wolff dismissed it a a potential concern, claiming it was better for Mercedes' test programme as a whole.

"We decided not to use the hypersoft because we felt it is a tyre that is usable for one lap only, and that in testing it is about collecting data and understanding set-ups," he said.

"The hypersoft is just an additional big step in grip from the ultrasoft. It will be a qualifying tyre, and we felt that we would rather concentrate on the development work than on single lap.

"I think the hyper will be a qualifying tyre only, and you just need to hang onto it in the first couple of laps, and survive."

Wolff said that "every car" suffered blistering on the softer compounds in testing and reckoned that meant races they are used "can be exciting".

However, he also suggested that Pirelli's estimates of big steps between each compound would not prove to be accurate.

"What we have seen is that the steps in performance and in grip between the tyre compounds was relatively small," he said.

"Between medium and soft, soft and supersoft, supersoft and ultrasoft you could see tiny steps, between a tenth or two, sometimes no step at all.

"With some teams, like Williams, there was no step at all."

Pirelli's hypersoft appeared in Abu Dhabi in the post-season test last November, and Bottas said that offered sufficient opportunity to try the new-for-2018 compound.

He agreed with Wolff that the life of the tyres made it an irrelevant one to test on in Spain, claiming "they would only last one lap" on a high-energy circuit like Barcelona.

"They are grippier, based on what we know, so I don't think there's a risk," he continued. "We decided to focus on the tyres that are most likely to be [used] on that type of track."

"Vettel claimed after testing that Mercedes' decision to complete race simulations only using medium tyres, which is not allowed in races, made its impressive long-run pace misleading.

Bottas admitted that it was not entirely representative, saying: "We know that testing was good, especially our long-run performance felt good and consistent.

"But it's only one track, one [set of] conditions, one type of tyre."

He added: "I think we definitely need to be cautious, it was unique conditions. We know Melbourne will be different, Bahrain and China will be different.

"We can estimate pretty well but we need to prove in Melbourne that the car also works there."

Perspective

[dans79]

How badly will the mood be ruined for the rest of the season if Mercedes qualifying 0.8 seconds ahead?

If that was the case, I'd pay to see the look on the face of some Ferrari fans hear.

[Vasconia]

How badly will the mood be ruined for the rest of the season if Mercedes qualifying 0.8 seconds ahead?

If that was the case, I'd pay to see the look on the face of some Ferrari fans hear.

I guess no one except a Mercedes fan would be happy with this.

[Gerhardsa]

Well, that just means the other teams didn't do a good enough job honestly. But I don't think it will be too big a gap, if there is one at all.

What if Alonso makes it onto the first two rows of the grid? That would be epic.

Having Ham, Vet, Alo and Ves all nice and close together at the start of the race. Mouthwatering!