2018 Spanish Grand Prix - Catalunya, May 11-13

[Sieper]

Reading this thread you begin to wonder why 50% of the people here are even interested in F1.
I enjoyed this one, not the best track for overtaking but it kept me on the edge of my seat all 66 laps.
- masterful drive by Hamilton. Bottas showed good pace but looked shaky with vettel in his mirrors, twice.
- what was grosjean thinking? Full throttle to keep out of the gravel? Shocking. Good job stewards for the grid penalty.
-stroll.. Has verstappen P3 and vettel P4 in his mirror, fails to notice the restart. Just.. Facepalm... Lot of salt against verstappen for this, but what would you do with vettel close up? This guy failed to notice the restart a full two seconds(!). I feel for Williams.
-VSC, we need to lose this ridiculous measure. Artificial gaps opening and closing because of sleepy backmarkers, it's just a lottery.

But apart from that.. Good midfield action.. Nice strategy-spread, clean racing, much better than what I expected from this circuit.

Edit : reading manoahs post above.. Was it sirotkin? In that case I apologize to the stroll fans if any and feel doubly sorry for Williams.

Seconded. No it was Stroll (I think).

[NathanOlder]

If find it hard to believe 0.4mm is equal to a kilo. That would mean the tyres would weight 100kg+ each, which of course they dont. Unless the tyres are only 5mm thick?

You are correct, I had it wrong. It is one kilo per set, not per tyre. Fact stays, small things can have a big impact as we saw today. Two teams highlighted sever blistering and two teams clearly had an tyre life and performance advantage today. One much much more than the other though.

Yeah , another thing I remember is in 2017 when we went to wide tyres, the rear tyres increased 1500grams, and that was a HUGE increase in size the rears increased in width by 80mm! thats 200 times more that the 0.4mm. If the 1kg for all 4 tyres in correct, then the weight change compared to the 2016-2017 change was 1/6th. yet the size mentioned was 200 times different. It just doesn't add up to me ??

[Sieper]

Nathan, I do think the 0,4 mm makes a difference, not so much the weight of the tires, rather the movement within the top layer itself, how thick is the top layer? Blisters come under (within) the top layer, just like in our skin I imagine.

Maybe superflouos, this is not a discredit to merc, or Hammy, who both did an excellent job.

[Wynters]

it's pretty obvious the new tyres helped Mercedes by far most.

Moreover somebody yesterday has asked me here how I justify the gain in performance (0.5s) made after Australia and I have given my response.
Now I ask you how has Mercedes gained 1 seconds to everybody in 2 weeks?

How can a car from being dominant ala Ferrari (Vettel) Baku style in the race goes to more than half second slower in 2 weeks time I dont undestand. Its the tyres, mark my words.

Agreed! Just look at Australia (Merc in front by 7/10ths) and Bahrain (Ferrari in front by 2/10ths)! Such a change is impossible without Pirelli tyres changing. Ferrari must've had a secret agreement with Pirelli to give them all special 'Ferrari4Evah' tyres and it's only now that they've not been able to use them because of the secret Pirelli agreement with Mercedes!

Or, alternatively, nothing stands still and nothing is simple in F1.

I'm amazed Grosjean was let off so lightly. He could've killed someone in his desperation to get back in the race and is lucky he only smashed into two cars and no one smashed into him. Another crash for Verstappen. A bad spin for the other Red Bull, one of RIC's rare off days. Fortuantely for the Red Bulls, Ferrari clearly went the wrong way on early setup and couldn't come back in time and Kimi continues to be relentlessly cursed. Poor guy, so many retirements that weren't his fault.

Barcelona is still a terrible track.

[drunkf1fan]

Stroll didn't look to be keeping to his delta, he was going extremely slow. He also regardless of the VSC should have accelerated out of the corner. I put that collision entirely on Stroll. Max could absolutely have avoided it but Stroll is miles and miles under his delta, he could have sped up literally 2-3 seconds before the VSC went green and had no trouble. But again regardless he just didn't accelerate at all out of the corner when he should have been. If under VSC, full safety car, if you just fail completely to accelerate out of a corner you're going to cause a crash by driving too slowly when no one would expect it. A lot of racing (and frankly normal road driving) is based around having a rough idea what everyone should be doing, every driver operates with an expectation that other drivers will accelerate and brake roughly where they should do, as soon as that changes


On Ferrari's performance personally I think Ferrari's performance problems didn't stem from the tires, though people seem to be completely misreading the situation on tires. Merc run tires cooler and have primarily had better tire wear outside of races they couldn't heat them up and get them in the right window. Ferrari heat the tires up faster which is better in qualifying when heat in tires is an issue but worse for tire wear. Ferrari would only have had more problems with tires that overheated even more than the ones today imo. It's just this new surface is weird, not reacting like others and overheating tires.

I'm wondering if the lack of performance was more about engine modes. They had an expected engine blow up in practice, on an engine they wanted to complete Canada it would seem before being replaced. Did they find something bad in the engine straight away and decide to turn down their engines or just get worried about the potential for problems?

Also frankly as soon as they were in second place, why push? You can't pass here, they had little to no chance to win after being behind by the second corner. If you can save engine life and stay in second place well, why not? Until the second pitstop Vettel would have finished second easily so again why not just back off, here all it does is slow the guy behind it doesn't give them a genuine chance to overtake. I was frankly surprised Hamilton was pushing so hard for much the same reason. he had a huge gap and backing off wouldn't have cost him anything.

[PlatinumZealot]

What we saw today was domination. Other weekends it was only in quali where Ferrari seemed to have an clear advantage. The races were always very evenly matched. It only means that Ferrari understand and use the proper tyres better but only to a small extent - which is one of the major challenges of the sport, especially in the Pirelli era. Having a tyre altered and then suddenly your cars come alive - that is helping.

And the 0.4mm equals about a kilo per tyre if I remember correctly. That is a lot less in F1 standard! Less rubber on the tyre, less movement which means it is "harder" but alo less graining. The Pirelli tyres are really sensitive too so even a small change can have a big influence on how they work.

Remember there is no way to tell how much is the tyre and how much is track conditions. Unfair to say the tyre is what hurt Ferrari. Maybe Ferrari hurt themselves.

[GrandAxe]

Then again, if like what you say, 0.4mm hardly makes a difference, why even bring them here?

Taking 0.4mm off without changing the build or chemistry is equivalent to wear from a couple of laps, only it will be on a brand new surface. Same tyre, just thinner surface rubber.
The excess 0.4mm was deemed unsafe due to excessive graining.

Blame for this mess should go to both Pirelli and the FIA for making the tyres part of what they call "the spectacle", or the "circus". The consequence is that tyres have now become a political tool to be batted around. Its best to take the tyres out and give us good old, uncontroversial racing.

[Restomaniac]

The Hamilton record setting machine rolls on.

His latest one is winning races from pole positions.

I think first driver to have back to back Barcelona wins as well.

Missed that 1.

[foxmulder_ms]

Reading this thread you begin to wonder why 50% of the people here are even interested in F1.
I enjoyed this one, not the best track for overtaking but it kept me on the edge of my seat all 66 laps.
- masterful drive by Hamilton. Bottas showed good pace but looked shaky with vettel in his mirrors, twice.
- what was grosjean thinking? Full throttle to keep out of the gravel? Shocking. Good job stewards for the grid penalty.
-stroll.. Has verstappen P3 and vettel P4 in his mirror, fails to notice the restart. Just.. Facepalm... Lot of salt against verstappen for this, but what would you do with vettel close up? This guy failed to notice the restart a full two seconds(!). I feel for Williams.
-VSC, we need to lose this ridiculous measure. Artificial gaps opening and closing because of sleepy backmarkers, it's just a lottery.

But apart from that.. Good midfield action.. Nice strategy-spread, clean racing, much better than what I expected from this circuit.

Edit : reading manoahs post above.. Was it sirotkin? In that case I apologize to the stroll fans if any and feel doubly sorry for Williams.

Seconded. No it was Stroll (I think).

I still think It is magnussen dirty move. I have a feeling it was intentional on his part. Decided to cover outside to prevent being passed by the team mate. Grojan is an idiot to for trying to power it through though I agree.

[Sieper]

It would be interesting to see Magnussens on board camera there. But likely he just lost it a bit on cold tires?

[foxmulder_ms]

What we saw today was domination. Other weekends it was only in quali where Ferrari seemed to have an clear advantage. The races were always very evenly matched. It only means that Ferrari understand and use the proper tyres better but only to a small extent - which is one of the major challenges of the sport, especially in the Pirelli era. Having a tyre altered and then suddenly your cars come alive - that is helping.

And the 0.4mm equals about a kilo per tyre if I remember correctly. That is a lot less in F1 standard! Less rubber on the tyre, less movement which means it is "harder" but alo less graining. The Pirelli tyres are really sensitive too so even a small change can have a big influence on how they work.

Dude come on. You cannot engineer smt like this. Amount of work R&D to engineer a tire just to help Mercedes specifically is quite a scientific discovery on Pirelli's part. Get real.

[NathanOlder]

The Hamilton record setting machine rolls on.

His latest one is winning races from pole positions.

I think first driver to have back to back Barcelona wins as well.

Missed that 1.

You missed it for a reason, its not true 98 99 & 00 The Flying Fin. Would have been 4 in a row if it wasn't for a breakdown while leading on the final lap.

Michael won it 4 years in row as well but i prefer Mika's hattrick as it was against Michael where as Michaels wins were against....... Rubens ?

p.s I thought you guys were better than this

Also just checked, Nige did it in 91 & 92

[NathanOlder]

Reading this thread you begin to wonder why 50% of the people here are even interested in F1.
I enjoyed this one, not the best track for overtaking but it kept me on the edge of my seat all 66 laps.
- masterful drive by Hamilton. Bottas showed good pace but looked shaky with vettel in his mirrors, twice.
- what was grosjean thinking? Full throttle to keep out of the gravel? Shocking. Good job stewards for the grid penalty.
-stroll.. Has verstappen P3 and vettel P4 in his mirror, fails to notice the restart. Just.. Facepalm... Lot of salt against verstappen for this, but what would you do with vettel close up? This guy failed to notice the restart a full two seconds(!). I feel for Williams.
-VSC, we need to lose this ridiculous measure. Artificial gaps opening and closing because of sleepy backmarkers, it's just a lottery.

But apart from that.. Good midfield action.. Nice strategy-spread, clean racing, much better than what I expected from this circuit.

Edit : reading manoahs post above.. Was it sirotkin? In that case I apologize to the stroll fans if any and feel doubly sorry for Williams.

Seconded. No it was Stroll (I think).

I still think It is magnussen dirty move. I have a feeling it was intentional on his part. Decided to cover outside to prevent being passed by the team mate. Grojan is an idiot to for trying to power it through though I agree.

KMag had to steer into a slide, the back stepped out, I dont think he was blocking.

[LM10]

it's pretty obvious the new tyres helped Mercedes by far most.

Moreover somebody yesterday has asked me here how I justify the gain in performance (0.5s) made after Australia and I have given my response.
Now I ask you how has Mercedes gained 1 seconds to everybody in 2 weeks?

How can a car from being dominant ala Ferrari (Vettel) Baku style in the race goes to more than half second slower in 2 weeks time I dont undestand. Its the tyres, mark my words.

Agreed! Just look at Australia (Merc in front by 7/10ths) and Bahrain (Ferrari in front by 2/10ths)! Such a change is impossible without Pirelli tyres changing. Ferrari must've had a secret agreement with Pirelli to give them all special 'Ferrari4Evah' tyres and it's only now that they've not been able to use them because of the secret Pirelli agreement with Mercedes!

Or, alternatively, nothing stands still and nothing is simple in F1.

I'm amazed Grosjean was let off so lightly. He could've killed someone in his desperation to get back in the race and is lucky he only smashed into two cars and no one smashed into him. Another crash for Verstappen. A bad spin for the other Red Bull, one of RIC's rare off days. Fortuantely for the Red Bulls, Ferrari clearly went the wrong way on early setup and couldn't come back in time and Kimi continues to be relentlessly cursed. Poor guy, so many retirements that weren't his fault.

Barcelona is still a terrible track.

How can you even compare Australia with Bahrain? Melbourne is a unique track and in addition to that Ferrari had big issues with their car (Vettel told that they started to understand it well after Melbourne). You just can't tell Ferrari got better by 9 tenths because they were 7 tenths slower in Australia and then 2 tenths faster in Bahrain. That's anything but serious.

[ferkan]

Then again, if like what you say, 0.4mm hardly makes a difference, why even bring them here?

Taking 0.4mm off without changing the build or chemistry is equivalent to wear from a couple of laps, only it will be on a brand new surface. Same tyre, just thinner surface rubber.
The excess 0.4mm was deemed unsafe due to excessive graining.

Blame for this mess should go to both Pirelli and the FIA for making the tyres part of what they call "the spectacle", or the "circus". The consequence is that tyres have now become a political tool to be batted around. Its best to take the tyres out and give us good old, uncontroversial racing.

What is spectacular about these tires? Im completely serious, what is it about them? We pretty much have 1 stop races all the time. Today, Spain, one of the toughest races on tire - 1stop for 90% of the field. 5 years ago? 3-4 stopper.

Thing is, Ferrari struggled badly with tires. They where faster on S then SS, as where RB. This is something completely new. Only team not struggling with SS was team that struggled most with them up until this weekend. If 0.4mm change is nothing, then why introduce it at all? Even Ric said he had big issues with tires today. I dont buy it, there is no need for Pirelli to listen to suggestion of champ contending team if there is no serious security risk. And there really is no...we ran 39 laps on SS with 100kg fuel on board in Bahrain and Baku ffs.