Best Driver: Ricciardo - Looked strong all weekend Worst Driver: Palmer. Off the pace all weekend even allowing for the car. Best Rookie: Wehrlein. Really doing a solid job. Best Team: Red Bull Worst Team: Renault Best Overtake: Kvyat on the Ferrari's at turn one. Most Surprising Result: RBR on the podium Least Surprising Result: Vettel crying when it goes wrong Funniest moment: Kvyat and Vettel after the race. Excuse of the week: He's a madman Special Mention: Kimi looking strong, he is someone who could do with a bit of luck. Best post from the race thread: - Race Rating: 8.5/10
indeed, didn't he have the fastest lap for a while? seemed to me to be a bit of a case of the commentators giviing Hamilton an excuse for not getting the fastest car onto the podium. Interesting point made about radio though, could the lack of constant information from the pit lane be hindering Lewis more than Nico?
Two races in a row Hamilton's car has supposedly suffered damage sufficient enough to lose him a lot of performance, whilst not being race ending or reparable during a pitstop. Seems pretty unlikely to me, you see drivers frequently carrying heavy damage and still setting competitive lap times. Hamilton was way off the pace on Sunday, falling away from Massa, slower than both Bulls, outraced by Raikkonen from the back of the grid and he would've lost out to Verstappen if the race was one lap longer. Meanwhile his team pissed on everyone out front. I can't put all that down to a damaged tea tray, he underperformed. On the plus side his overtake on Bottas was spectacular.
The cars are pretty complicated aerodynamic systems, so perhaps we shouldn't be surprised when some damage has a bigger/or smaller effect than expected based on the downstream consequences that we can't possibly fully anticipate. For example the teams spend forever on the front wing cascades, which should affect the airflow all way down the car and then Vettel doesn't even notice he did 2/3 of a race without one. I agree with Ern that there was definitively some revisionism going on on the part of the commentators to try to explain what was a very poor last stint. It seemed to me that Ham just didn't manage that final stint well and he neither used the grip early to get past Massa and also ran out of tyres before the end, nearly costing another place. The contrast with Vettel again was striking, who zipped past Kyvat, and then stayed just out of range despite being on a less durable tyre that was marginal on life required to finish the race. I'm pretty sure I heard Ham asking for an explanation of the strategy after a stop, the short one on SS I think, so I guess he wasn't leading it - I'm not sure what use questioning it after the event was meant to be though.
no, that stop was Mercedes strategy call, they said they wanted to get the 2nd tyre out of the way. I'm not sure how much he lost out through it though, he was at the back anyway and the SC was out so he wouldn't have lost out that much. It was a weird call though, considering they later put mediums on which meant he'd used all 3. It does maybe highlight something else, the Mercs ability to follow other cars
There is a consensus on the following aspect, but as mentioned before, Rosberg was heavily chastised at times last season for not recovering aswell as expected.
Don't recall Rosberg having any particular issues in races which meant he had to climb through the field. He had mechanicals that sidelined him completely. Whilst it was clear at Bahrain that Hamilton had sustained damage as there were bits flying off the car, it is less clear about the damage at China. Suffice to say there would have been some as his wing was wedged underneath the bargeboards. The Merc is an amazing car with all the bits attached, is it that when something is damaged, the knock on effect on the aero through to the back of the car is such that the damage is exaggerated because of all the other parts that then don't work as they should because of the change to the airflow? 5 tyre stops suggests something was amiss. I think we're all agreed his tyre shredding days are over (if they did really exist) so there must be some other reason that necessitated so many stops.
Am I misremembering, or were they all fairly explainable? 1st stop - Damage 2nd & 3rd stop - "Free" tyre change under safety car, then strange strategy call to only run the SS one lap That only takes us to lap 6, so with 50 to go it's no great surprise he needed two additional stops, the softs were only lasting 15-20 laps. He ran a 15 lap 4th stint on softs (normal), then a fairly inexplicable 9 lap 5th stint on softs, before finishing with 26 laps on the mediums. Other than his 5th stint being a few laps short that looks fairly explainable. (The damage would surely have told in the prior stint, if anything the 5th should have been easier on the tyres as fuel loads dropped). Only Perez and Ericsson ran longer stints on the mediums too. He could have gotten away with a stop less if his team planned to run the mediums and hadn't bothered with the pointless lap on the super softs. Granted that stop didn't cost him as much as a normal stop because it was under the safety car, but he finished the race 13 seconds behind Raikkonen in 5th, and that doesn't seem an unreasonable amount of time to have saved. I honestly can't see how the Mercedes strategy guys didn't realise the SS lap was a mistake. I called it the moment he pulled into the pitlane, and I was still half-asleep!
5th would certainly have looked a lot better. Did they run out of soft & SS tyres so had to go to mediums because they had no choice, can't remember what his tyre allocation was for the race. Or was the damage from the first lap such that the inbalance of the car meant anything other than harder tyres got ruined too quickly through the long turns?
EternalMSC "Worst Driver: Hamilton or Vettel, considering Hamiltons poor recovery in the race and Vettels start." Or courser the car was damaged that's why he had to come into the pits after the crash? you think he came in for ****s and giggles?
I can remember Webber still lapping competitively with an entire end plate missing: please log in to view this image Vettel in Brazil 2012 won the championship with heavy damage. Obviously every situation is different, but two races in a row Hamilton has been off the pace and it's been excused as damage sustained in earlier collisions, I don't think that benefit of the doubt would be extended to many, if any, other drivers. To have it fixed no? Otherwise what was the point?
I'm pretty sure that only says he was potentially the worst, but English isn't my first language so... Like AG I thought, he came in to get it fixed, but given what came next maybe he was just trying to get a few more stamps on his Loyalty Card...
http://www.skysports.com/f1/news/24...es-drove-like-a-four-poster-bed-at-chinese-gp "Hamilton had to come in for one of five pitstops for a new front wing after the melee, with part of his old wing stuck under the W07's floor for the remainder of the grand prix." Shush now, it's becoming embrassing!
Front wing replaces, you don't replace barge boards or allow for bit of damaged old wing being stuck underneath the car. What he wrote was Hamilton was the worse driver out of him and Vettel, whether English is your first second or third language, what he wrote was utter bullshit. If you don't like a driver, just man up and say you don't like him, but to say that someone coming from the back after a crash and 5 stops was one of the worse if not thee worse driver on the track, makes this whole board look stupid!
Do you think not being told how to drive the car by the engineers is the problem with Hamilton this year? when he was being coached he was on top, now maybe Rosbergs engineering background helps him more?
Popular wisdom, is/was that Rosberg was more reliant on the coaching. Honestly I just think Hamilton has made a few mistakes so far this year and this combined with the non qualifying last weekend has meant he has got caught up in some accidents as a result. This combined with some pretty average recovery drives means he's not getting the results expected. On the flip side, Rosberg's made one real mistake and recovered well from it, with a little help from Ferrari. I'm sure it will turn again soon, Rosberg's too average to hold this advantage for long.
Personally I think he drives best when he doesn't listen to the team and just does what he wants. Personally I think all this restricted fuel and dodgy tyres to make exciting racing is bollocks. I say let them drives balls out from start to finish, introduce fuel stops, all this tree hugging kumbaya save the environment racing can go **** itself!