No, most of this is misinformed. Firstly, the plot I attached is a representation of lap time in a way that’s far more useful & with less noise. It’s a plot of everyone’s gap to the race leader. From this we can ascertain pace & distance relative to the race leader and to each other. Individual lap time data won’t tell the story of the leading group. Given all that, I’ll comment to your numbered points.Dunlay wrote: ↑26 Aug 2024, 07:05Actual lap times below.214270 wrote: ↑26 Aug 2024, 06:07The data indicates RUS pace was poor & not getting better; he was at risk.
https://i.ibb.co/1JS2h9w/IMG-2541.png
https://i.ibb.co/gwYVWPP/IMG-2543.png
Whichever way you slice it, gap forward to LEC or gap backward to HAM - both made significant inroads against RUS during the H-tyre stint (you can calc the gaps yourself), HAM circa 0.230/lap faster. SAI likely had the pace to pass & the trendline indicates RUS wouldve been at risk to PER towards the end (who also had a 4/5 lap tyre offset). HAM close to PER at the end depending on the trendline
https://i.ibb.co/Xx89LG1/IMG-2544.png
1. Lewis was half a second slower in the first stint. He was obviously stuck behind cars. But that's the "data". That's the penalty for not having a good qualifying.
2. There was an average difference of 7 to 8 tenths between Lewis and George in second stint. If that represents George's performance, then one has to relook at the entire season's race performance difference. It just shows that the setup was not up to the mark for Hards on his car. May be it was more biased towards Mediums and Softs.
3. In 3rd stint on Softs, they were almost equal. That nullifies the argument that George was slower.
2. The performance gap to Sainz was around half a second and that was not enough difference to overtake a car ahead. We saw Piastri struggling to overtake Leclerc with similar margin. Carlos may or may not have overtaken, but would have certainly damaged his tyres running behind George.
3. Perez had bigger degradation than George. So he wouldn't have certainly overtaken George. Red Bull would have boxed Perez to cover Lewis, which means they had fight it off to reach George, with 1 second advantage and 24 to 26 seconds to close in 23 laps. Would that have happened? Anybody's guess.
So that pit stop for George was a clueless job from Mercedes. It's not the first time though.
https://i.postimg.cc/PJnQ6wbM/dutch-gp.png
1. OPs initial question was, the reason behind 2-stopping RUS. The pace in the 1st stint hasn’t a lot to do with the switch. It was the pace in the 2nd stint (H) which influenced the conversion.
2. I’ve no idea where you’ve gotten this. I attached 2 screenshots earlier - RUS out of the pits after his 1st stop (lap 26) & HAM 2nd stop (lap 49). In the first, gap forward to LEC is 1.4s & gap back to HAM is 15s. By lap 49, the gap forward to LEC was 6.7s & the gap back to HAM was 10s. RUS lost out significantly & both made inroads.
3. 3rd stint like the 1st is again pretty irrelevant to the base question. Either way RUS was again slower; I’m not sure how many laps his S had done, but HAM again closed the gap.
2(4). I refer you to the orig graphic. SAI plot/pace was actually fantastic (quite flat) - better than his teammate in that stint. So what we had was the pilot with amongst the flattest plot/one of the quickest vs RUS who has the steepest plot (losing the most time out of the top 8 to NOR in that period); SAI gets it done on track
3(5). To argue PER had worse deg his plot would need to be steeper than RUS, it clearly isn’t. RUS has easily the steepest out of the front 8 & is losing the most time.
I’ve sketched a pretty favourable trendline for RUS below, you can see PER crosses towards the end of the race. Furthermore, overlaying LEC curve on HAM gives an indication of whether HAM would also be in the mix if he also 1-stopped & raced a decent race himself (a la LEC). For the avoidance of doubt, HAM plot too would cross RUS plot before race end. Those are the reasons for the conversion to a 2-stop I’d wager. Whilst they may not have actually passed on track, as I said before RUS was at risk - no pitwall brain fart behind the decision.
EDIT: 4 lap S for RUS fitted on his last stint, better than HAM by 3.
