2024 Bahrain Grand Prix - Sakhir, Feb 29 - Mar 02

[Fluido]

They said Mercedes was loosing 0.5 sec because overheating, so they must reduce power.. If take this in calculation how much is Newey faster?
Why Hamilton didnt even mention this in post race interview, he think this is irrelevant for car, because car is overall slow/bad?
You cant just ignore 0.5sec...

Car was reliable??

[Unc1eM0nty]

I don't know about 0.5 this seems to much, but sounds more like cooling package needs work as the other Merc powered cars seemed ok.

Russell & Lewis went different ways on set up but Lewis seemed to have slightly better race pace, started 6 places back and only 5 seconds behind at the end.

Id like to see lap times for Ferrari, Merc and McClaren for that last stint, it looked very close.

[Juzh]

Race top speeds:
335 HUL
333 MAG
332 SAI
331 PER
330 HAM

quite slow, some 10-15 kmh down on 2020 for example.

[Fluido]

I don't know about 0.5 this seems to much, but sounds more like cooling package needs work as the other Merc powered cars seemed ok.

Russell & Lewis went different ways on set up but Lewis seemed to have slightly better race pace, started 6 places back and only 5 seconds behind at the end.

Id like to see lap times for Ferrari, Merc and McClaren for that last stint, it looked very close.

Everybody knows that Newey will win championship again with easy, but I am just interested how close is merc to him and are they even in level of ferrari?

[Seanspeed]

Random thought and not sure whether it's right so wanted to get other opinions:

F1 cars are getting *too* reliable. Accidents seem to be becoming rarer (at least anecdotal it feels that way) and cars have very few reliability issues. Safety Cars have always been a big part of interesting F1 races because they not only condense the grid, but they create opportunities for strategy, upsets, etc. Is a possible reason for this development the fact that the engines are frozen? Teams can't develop the engines (at least not the way they can when engines aren't frozen) and so they're not pushing them the maximum as much. In fact, the only development that is allowed *is to improve reliability*, and yes I know that means they can still find performance gains, but likely at a far smaller cost to the reliability of the engine than if normal development were allowed and everyone was pushing to make significant gains. Just a thought, not sure if it's correct, but I do feel that the level of reliability we are seeing right now is a big factor in making races very dull.

I like seeing actual competition. That's what I'm here for first and foremost. It can be dull at times, but I'd rather have a merit-based result than one where some landmines were thrown on track just to shake things up. If I wanted that, I'd watch IndyCar instead of F1.

[organic]

I don't know about 0.5 this seems to much, but sounds more like cooling package needs work as the other Merc powered cars seemed ok.

Russell & Lewis went different ways on set up but Lewis seemed to have slightly better race pace, started 6 places back and only 5 seconds behind at the end.

Id like to see lap times for Ferrari, Merc and McClaren for that last stint, it looked very close.

Williams also had cooling issues. McLaren and Aston Martin never really ran in traffic due to field spread so we don't really know if they could've had issues with it too

[sport777]

some verified Italian media say the same thing, that Merc sometimes lost up to 0.7 per lap, the truth is somewhere in the middle it’s about 0.5 per lap, I think this is true, you need to wait a few races, in my opinion the W15 is a good car, which is interesting that the media Italy was told that Russell's problem started on lap 4 of the race, if you look at his lap before the problems it was a solid 1:36.4, then the pace dropped sharply to 1:37.7 in one lap the tires don't wear out that much considering they only completed 7 laps , so the problem was clearly

[dia6olo]

some verified Italian media say the same thing, that Merc sometimes lost up to 0.7 per lap, the truth is somewhere in the middle it’s about 0.5 per lap, I think this is true, you need to wait a few races, in my opinion the W15 is a good car, which is interesting that the media Italy was told that Russell's problem started on lap 4 of the race, if you look at his lap before the problems it was a solid 1:36.4, then the pace dropped sharply to 1:37.7 in one lap the tires don't wear out that much considering they only completed 7 laps , so the problem was clearly

I doubt it's anywhere near 0.5, I'd say 0.2 at most.
They could have opted for better cooling, why would they choose to gamble on tight cooling if they felt they had pace?
Likely because they knew they didn't have pace and a bit of extra cooling would have slowed them down...

[Fluido]

some verified Italian media say the same thing, that Merc sometimes lost up to 0.7 per lap, the truth is somewhere in the middle it’s about 0.5 per lap, I think this is true, you need to wait a few races, in my opinion the W15 is a good car, which is interesting that the media Italy was told that Russell's problem started on lap 4 of the race, if you look at his lap before the problems it was a solid 1:36.4, then the pace dropped sharply to 1:37.7 in one lap the tires don't wear out that much considering they only completed 7 laps , so the problem was clearly

when merc had 1:36.4 how much RB had?
I am interesting how much is merc slower than RB

[Unc1eM0nty]

Everybody knows that Newey will win championship again with easy, but I am just interested how close is merc to him and are they even in level of ferrari?

Yeah me too, this track is a bit of an outliner, after anthother couple of races we should have a clear idea.

I suspect Ferrari, Merc and MaC are very close, it would be an epic season if Red bull were with them

[Fluido]

Everybody knows that Newey will win championship again with easy, but I am just interested how close is merc to him and are they even in level of ferrari?

Yeah me too, this track is a bit of an outliner, after anthother couple of races we should have a clear idea.

I suspect Ferrari, Merc and MaC are very close, it would be an epic season if Red bull were with them

From history we know that fastest car never loose winning momentum, change comes only after new rules.
24/25 easy win for Newey.
Other teams have chance 2026, when RB will make own engine which will not be competitive first few years..

[chrisc90]

Just have to look at the data on f1-tempo to see the differences, even in the middle stint when they were all on the same tyre.

Overall Race:


First stint:


Middle Stint:


Final Stint:



(sorry about it being time rather than laps, f1-tempo isnt showing right for some reason.)

The middle stint on Hards for RB was ruthless. Your looking at 1.6seconds a lap faster than both the Ferrari and Mercedes

[dia6olo]

Just have to look at the data on f1-tempo to see the differences, even in the middle stint when they were all on the same tyre.

Overall Race:
https://i.ibb.co/tqFNC9R/Screenshot-202 ... 175838.png

First stint:
https://i.ibb.co/9hmgbW4/Screenshot-202 ... 121935.png

Middle Stint:
https://i.ibb.co/0Vx5kZ2/Screenshot-202 ... 122351.png

Final Stint:
https://i.ibb.co/7vzyXJ2/Screenshot-202 ... 122450.png


(sorry about it being time rather than laps, f1-tempo isnt showing right for some reason.)

The middle stint on Hards for RB was ruthless. Your looking at 1.6seconds a lap faster than both the Ferrari and Mercedes

One wonders how he didn't finish 3 minutes ahead of the field
Also comparing to Leclerc is pointless...

[f1isgood]

I think the indications were always there on day 1 of testing. Max did a 10 lap stint in low 1.34s with no degradation on the soft tires (C3). His last stint in the race is basically the same. Also all of his mini long runs in testing seem to have been with full fuel -- which some teams estimated to be 85kg -- which also led to some hope.

Max did say that the RB car was in a better shape given the wind direction change b/w Q and R. That indicates a potential weakness of the car.

[chrisc90]

One wonders how he didn't finish 3 minutes ahead of the field
Also comparing to Leclerc is pointless...

Only marginally faster for Sainz. 1 second in the middle sector roughly.





Much closer in final stint, but Max was probably on 1/2 throttle mode.