Chinese Grand Prix 2014, Shanghai - Race 4/19

Wow great stuff from Hamilton. I do rate Rosberg, and that was a thumping.

I was fully prepared to give Vettel a bunch of praise after bouncing back from the last grand prix to emphatically beat Ricc, as it looked like Vettel had a good 6-7 tenths over his team mate for most of qualifying, then right at the end Ricc turned that the other way round. So unbelievably impressed with Ricciardo this season, but I'm not sure whether I just criminally underrated him or if vettel is weak in this new formula.
 
There are no dry/wet setups anymore. All they change now is the front-wing angle, and usually cover up the brake ducts a bit to compensate for the usually cooler temperature and more tyre-limited braking zones, all of which they're permitted to do in a change of climatic conditions. The tyres do the rest by raising the car.

In an extreme case, where it's touch and go whether they will race at all, teams have been allowed in the past to make bigger changes - raising the car further, softening the springs and adding rear wing - but I think that's only happened once in F1 since the post-qualifying parc ferme conditions were brought in. And in that case it wasn't about performance, but trying to give every opportunity to actually get the race run. Might have been in Fiji in 2008?


Anyway,

2004 qualifying: 1:34.012
2014 qualifying: 1:53.860

We'll ignore the fact that in FP2 they were only 4 seconds slower because we're applying deuselogic™ here.
 
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Setroc said:
Wow great stuff from Hamilton. I do rate Rosberg, and that was a thumping.

I was fully prepared to give Vettel a bunch of praise after bouncing back from the last grand prix to emphatically beat Ricc, as it looked like Vettel had a good 6-7 tenths over his team mate for most of qualifying, then right at the end Ricc turned that the other way round. So unbelievably impressed with Ricciardo this season, but I'm not sure whether I just criminally underrated him or if vettel is weak in this new formula.
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With Riccy it's very difficult to judge. Ultimately to me this formula is a "drivers" formula. It's all about feel, when and where to get the power down, being on the edge of wheel spin, the track, braking and cornering is more down to the driver than the car this year. So to a degree I think Vettel is certainly not looking as strong when it's more down to the driver than the car. An argument could be made that the jump from a Red Bull to any car this year is maybe the biggest difference(well maybe Lotus). As in maybe Vettel is a great driver but because of how damn good the Red bull is he hasn't really had to drive hard for 4-5 years and so just needs a little time to get back into driving a car that isn't on rails.

I think we'll see over a season if Vettel gets more used to driving these cars and improves a lot or if he still isn't looking very strong. As it stands currently he's not looking to me like someone who could be a 4 time world champion in anything but that car with that type of aero/grip advantage. Riccy is doing better than most expected but it's exceptionally hard to judge a driver in a less than competitive car from the outside.

With Rosberg, meh. Last year's car was built for Rosberg and Hamilton never felt comfortable in it yet beat him in points, qualifying and with basically all the teams bad luck.

Even with bad luck and a car that wasn't completely suited to him Hamilton pretty much owned Rosberg in qualifying when you factor in the difference in times. Hamilton qualified ahead of him more often but the gaps he did it by were WAY bigger than Rosberg, if you compare the season Hamilton utterly destroyed him.

I think Rosberg is okay but Hamilton is on another level to him. this won't always show in points because of luck and circumstance Rosberg for me has been out driven at every significant session/race in the season yet leads the championship due to Hamilton's engine going. A 1 euro spark plug cover, as ridiculous a piece of bad luck as you could get. It's likely that without that Hamilton would have a 21 point lead already.
 
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Rybo89 said:
wet dry?
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I thought I'd made that obvious with the paragraph which followed it, with the deuselogic™ bit and them doing 38s yesterday.

I remember watching the tale end of that first Chinese grand prix in the pub at Donington. Seems a lifetime ago. That might have been the first GP I'd missed live since I'd started watching in the 80s - I just couldn't have cared less about F1 in that era, it was that boring.
 
Love it, Vettel wins the title year after year in a car with stacks in hand and it was the car while others said he was the most complete driver since MS.

Now Hamilton has perhaps a bigger advantage than even Vettel had and he's upped his game, the new rules are for the driver etc etc blah blah. 99% of the lap time is the car and yet people will still spend more time than anything else arguing about which driver is the best. Hamilton hasn't suddenly got better or fitter or mentally stronger. His car is simply 1 second or more faster than anyone elses. I imagine that does a lot for your mental state :D

Drivers should get paid 10k or something per point, the engineers, designers etc should get 100k per point ;)

For the record I'd be happy for either Merc driver to win the title but give Ferrari a car 1 second+ on the rest next year and all of a sudden Alonso or Kimi would be being talked up as rediscovering form. If Vettel got a car 1 second faster again he would be the best thing since Senna again.

Last year lots of people wanted a DNF for Vettel because "it would keep the championship close". I guess the same people now want a Merc double DNF tomorrow in the interests of a close championship? :D

I'd like a totally wet race tomorrow or I think Hamilton will be gone by lap 8. A wet race would at least allow them to keep putting safety cars out to allow the others to catch him for a good finish :D
 
Well Webber got nearly double the points of Rosberg in 2006, Webber was generally thrashed by Vettel at Red Bull, Rosberg is near enough similar pace to Hamilton at Mercedes so conclusively Vettel is better than Webber, Rosberg and Hamilton - Ricciardo is unrivalled. ;)
 
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this_is_gav said:
Rosberg is near enough similar pace to Hamilton
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Where on earth do you get that from? Hamilton was over a second a lap quicker in quali today and would have finished far ahead from Rosberg in the last race if not for the safety car. Rosberg is no where near.

A might lap from Hamilton today, very impressive.

Great to see Vettel exactly where we expected him to be against a half decent team mate.
 
Setroc said:
So unbelievably impressed with Ricciardo this season, but I'm not sure whether I just criminally underrated him or if vettel is weak in this new formula.
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Red Bull saw to it that Webber wasn't a threat after the season that Webber almost won the WDC, Vettel just doesn't have by far the best car on the grid (including Webber's car) anymore due to the changes.

Ricciardo has equal car and is doing splendidly despite Red Bull doing their best to sabotage his races and not allow him to embarrass Vettel in the WDC. What reliability issue did Vettel complain about over the radio this time?
 
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If Renault sort there engine out rbr will be right up there. Wet condition hides their issues and exaggerates the other teams. Basically Williams, McLaren etc are relying on the extra power whilst there downforce is bar, rbr has great downforce but rubbish engine.

Unfortunately for rbr they are lucky the first part of the season is often wet, once we get to drier places I think they'll suffer more.
I also suspect it'll be easier to engineer downforce upgrades, rather than engine, due to rules.

Mighty lap by Hammy and beating Romberg massively, same with Ric vs Vet
 
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Problem is they can't sort out the power issues in the short term. Plus, even under the old rules they struggled with power and required special concessions to catch up. If they do catch up then it depends whether the others can improve aero to stay ahead. I doubt any can match rbr and newey on aero though.
 
CaptainRAVE said:
Where on earth do you get that from? Hamilton was over a second a lap quicker in quali today and would have finished far ahead from Rosberg in the last race if not for the safety car. Rosberg is no where near.

A might lap from Hamilton today, very impressive.

Great to see Vettel exactly where we expected him to be against a half decent team mate.
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Hamilton has been on the front row 4 out of 4 times, with 3 poles, Rosberg has been on the front row once. Rosberg beat Hamilton in qualy by under 0.3seconds while Hamilton has beaten Rosberg by, 0.3, 0.6 and 1.2 seconds going in order. Except for one mistake he's growing the gap to Rosberg.

There appears to both be a significant and growing gap between Rosberg and Hamilton in qualifying. Same was true last year. When rosberg beat Hamilton in qualy the majority were sub 0.3 seconds difference, quite a few being ridiculously close, when Hamilton beat Rosberg it was often by far greater margins, I forget the average but it was something like 0.5 or so in Hamilton's favour over the season.

I can't see any evidence that Rosberg is almost the same pace. A decent driver, sure, putting up more of a fight than Webber did against Vettel, yes, but particularly close, not really. Two of his three wins have required his team mate to have car failures to achieve, on both occasions Hamilton looking quicker and faster in qualifying and in the race last year also.

Hamilton's bad luck has flattered Rosberg to be honest. As Hamilton looks a lot more comfortable in the car this year he looks to have increased the performance gap between him and Rosberg.
 
Setroc said:
Wow great stuff from Hamilton. I do rate Rosberg, and that was a thumping.

I was fully prepared to give Vettel a bunch of praise after bouncing back from the last grand prix to emphatically beat Ricc, as it looked like Vettel had a good 6-7 tenths over his team mate for most of qualifying, then right at the end Ricc turned that the other way round. So unbelievably impressed with Ricciardo this season, but I'm not sure whether I just criminally underrated him or if vettel is weak in this new formula.
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IMHO, the mark of a great driver is one who can drive around problems with a less-than-great car. Schumacher could do it, so can Alonso and I think Hamilton has that ability too.

I don't think Vettel does. He's great if he has a great car, but if there are issues he's not good at adjusting his driving to maximise what he has and often just bitches and moans about it.
 
CaptainRAVE said:
Where on earth do you get that from? Hamilton was over a second a lap quicker in quali today and would have finished far ahead from Rosberg in the last race if not for the safety car. Rosberg is no where near.

A might lap from Hamilton today, very impressive.

Great to see Vettel exactly where we expected him to be against a half decent team mate.
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Oooh, aren't we touchy today. Did you not notice the ";)"? I'd have showed a tongue firmly in cheek smiley too, but it would look a bit wrong.

Taking the tongue out of the cheek, Hamilton has just about been the better Mercedes driver over the past year and a bit, and on average is certainly looking more comfortable overall this season, but looking at Bahrain, Rosberg was faster in the only stage of the race when they were both on the same tyres, Hamilton was faster on the same tyres in Sepang and in Melbourne we'll never know. Hamilton certainly looks stronger here. But to suggest that Hamilton and Rosberg aren't and haven't been close is nonsense... what is happening is now that they're odds on to win both titles, Rosberg is starting to look ragged while Hamilton has upped his game.

Look at Brawn - at Honda, pre-2009, Barrichello had looked the better driver than Button, but in the 2009 Brawn, with suddenly the fastest car and with a title to fight for, with Button's need of having a better car, he came through and Barrichello started getting rattled - he settled down for the second half of the season, but in the first half, he let himself get wound up too easily and too often. With two different drivers, it's starting to look quite familiar.
 
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Hamilton did his fair share of bitching and moaning when his mclaren was sub par too. Alonso too but mostly less vocally in public than Hamilton and Vettel.

When you are used to winning, it's what they do.

Hamiltons all smiles and every thing is close and fair because it's going his way. If the role had been reversed or someone ran him wide and he lost he would be upset. The same for any of them. Drivers make out it's a team game but to them it's all about them. Which is crazy in a sport where they are less important than the engine tyres and aero and the people that come up with these fantastic ideas and innovations.
 
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