mwillems wrote:SmallSoldier wrote: ↑20 Apr 2021, 00:24
mwillems wrote:
I'm not questioning the strategy at all so I'm not really going to go down that route.
But I don't understand how a comment can be made that Lando wasn't attacking and ignore the fact that he was pushing to defend, from the Ferraris and then from Hamilton, so he was pushing for quite some time to try to stay ahead, so for large parts he wasn't conserving his tyres, he was racing hard.
And despite this Max did pull ahead considerably and whilst he wasn't cruising, I suspect he had more in the tank.
He was pushing on the fraction of the lap that he needed to push and taking care of the tires on the rest of the lap... He was pushing the tires at the end of the lap in order to get a good exit towards the main straight... He was pretty consistent in S2 during almost 30 laps at 27.2 (with just 1 tenth variance during that stint)... He was losing most of his time to Verstappen in S2 (at a rate of bit more than half a second a lap).
In S2 (which is the most punishing one for the tires) he wasn’t pushing, he didn’t need to since there was no possibility for Leclerc to make a pass on the sector and he (Leclerc) couldn’t get much closer to the downforce loss by been so close to Lando... He will just push his tires by the end of S3 (not even in the first portion of S3)... As a reference, Daniel (who clearly was behind in Pace to Lando was matching his S2 times in the last stint (and actually Stroll was faster than Lando during that sector).
Lando would be conserving not only tires, but also battery / deployment for the main straight (which is a suboptimal deployment strategy probably).
That’s at least what I can see from the data... He needed to make the Soft tires which were supposed to last 20 laps to make it to 30 laps, the only way to do so was managing his pace, so no, he wasn’t “attacking”.
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He was managing the tyres, yes, I'm not saying he wasnt. Would he have been able to go quicker over 30 laps on a set of mediums?
I don't think by much.
It was the right strategy to go softs, because it got crucial track position. But could they have gone on mediums and done 30 laps quicker? I think that near second a lap would have been maintained. And crucially, I suspect max had plenty in the tank if he wanted it. Could we have put on some yellows and gone on average 4 tenths a lap faster, pushing, with nothing but clear track in front or behind like max? Yes, possibly we could, but
1) we aren't fast or lucky enough to be able to put ourselves in that situation
2) I'm fairly certain Max could have found that time easily too.
Net result, we are nearly a second a lap down.
But we can agree to disagree, I prefer to not get carried away with our good form and keep my feet on the ground. I think the next few races will show us how far we are from Red Bull.
You are right, I don’t think we will agree
I was just looking at the data and basing the analysis on it... Just one more point, today during Mercedes GP Debrief, they mentioned that the Medium tire was actually faster than the Soft tire since not only you could push it harder for longer, but because of track temperature they weren’t overheated... I will stand by the argument that from an stint perspective, Lando would have been faster with the Medium tire compared to the Soft, the question was if we would have been able to make the overtake on Leclerc on the Medium tire considering how hard it is to stick the move at Imola.
Regarding Max cruising, I’m sure at some point he was, nevertheless it is also true that he kept banging fastest laps until Hamilton pulled the fastest lap (at which point there was probably too much risk to attempt one).
In regards to been as fast as RBR or Mercedes, the car isn’t there yet... And I don’t think an argument has been made that it is the case... I don’t think there was a second lap difference between the cars, but if it is 3 tenths or 1 second, there is still a gap to cover in order to be able to fight those two.
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