2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 & 2008 Quali times

[Scotracer]

I was bored so I decided to look up the times for the respective years:

Malaysian Grand Prix qualifying

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

1:33.074 1:32.582 1:33.840 1:35.043 1:35.748
1:33.715 1:32.672 1:33.986 1:35.310 1:36.230
1:33.756 1:32.765 1:34.626 1:35.479 1:36.613
1:34.054 1:32.839 1:34.668 1:36.045 1:36.709
1:34.164 1:33.106 1:34.672 1:36.543 1:36.711
1:34.221 1:33.204 1:34.916 1:36.829 1:36.727
1:34.235 1:33.333 1:34.983 1:36.896 1:36.753
1:34.413 1:33.464 1:35.747 1:36.902 1:37.009
1:34.602 1:33.616 1:38.715 1:37.078 1:38.450
1:34.917 1:33.724 No P10 time 1:37.345 1:39.656

Looking at this, we've had a 3 year slowing down of laptimes. The first two make sense as we first lost the V10 engines and then for 2007 we got the harder tyres. But...the 2007 to 2008 times make no sense. This must be the first time in F1 history where a year (with no regulation changes) have caused times to actually slow down. Now, I started to look at the track conditions for the two years and they are:

2008:

Track Temp 35C
Air Temp 28C

2007:

Track Temp 40C
Air Temp 32C

So it's not like there were VAST temperature differences. But that would be negated as all the races so far have had slower quali times than last year. wtf is going on? If they are slower, why didn't the teams not just save themselves a few hundred million and bring their 2007 cars? Last year, the Mclaren was actually faster than this years! It's absurd. What has F1 become that the previous year's car is faster than now...and they are STILL spending ridiculous amounts of money. The FIA needs to get its head out its arse pronto.

[Ogami musashi]

It seems you took the Q3 qualifying times, this year Q3 fuel loads are heavier (it is required to have at least the first stint load fuel AFTER Q3 ends) so the times are slower than in 2007. If you take Q2 times with light fuel, they are all faster (except malaysia but only off but less than one tenth) and sometimes faster by 1 second.

[Scotracer]

It seems you took the Q3 qualifying times, this year Q3 fuel loads are heavier (it is required to have at least the first stint load fuel AFTER Q3 ends) so the times are slower than in 2007. If you take Q2 times with light fuel, they are all faster (except malaysia but only off but less than one tenth) and sometimes faster by 1 second.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that rule. The reason I didn't use Q2 times was that '04 and '05 were with race loads and wanted to keep it some-what indicative. Thanks for the clear-up.

[megz]

The lack of TC this year may make an amount of difference too.

[Ogami musashi]

Tc absence can't be seen on a lap time unfortunately because there's some areas where you can see the difference but since cars have more grip than last year most of the other part (mid corners, straight line speeds etc..) are faster so overall the car are really faster than last year.

I just realize that if 2004 cars were to have low fuel qualifying specs...they would just be even more scary...when you think they lapped monaco in 1:13 with fuel load..they maybe would have lapped into 1:11 with low fuel....gosh.

[Scotracer]

Tc absence can't be seen on a lap time unfortunately because there's some areas where you can see the difference but since cars have more grip than last year most of the other part (mid corners, straight line speeds etc..) are faster so overall the car are really faster than last year.

I just realize that if 2004 cars were to have low fuel qualifying specs...they would just be even more scary...when you think they lapped monaco in 1:13 with fuel load..they maybe would have lapped into 1:11 with low fuel....gosh.

Well looking at the free practice times they never really were faster than qualifying times. Even so, the 2004 cars were insanely fast...I'm just glad I got to see them in real life before we turned to V8s (not that you could really see the difference anyway). I just wish we had 2004 aero regs with developed V8s (over 21,000rpm)...we'd be very close to those times again.

[Ogami musashi]

Pratice times are done with fuel loads relevant to race and qualifying so that's surely why they weren't that different.