Chinese Grand Prix 2015, Shanghai - Race 3/19

Gaps will be interesting now, Hamilton really has no reason to attempt to pull away hard now, his best strategy to cover off future reliability problems will be to back Rosberg into Vettel.

Hamilton is again managing a 1 second gap. He pulled out 1 second in the very first lap, then backed right off and has kept Rosberg just at 1 second. Though the championship gap is obviously closer to Vettel today over the length of the season it should be mostly Merc 1-2's and it will help Hamilton if Rosberg/Vettel share out the second places for sure.

Gap is now stretching quite quickly between Rosberg and Vettel though. Kimi maintaining his gap to Vettel pretty easily but unable to stay in contact with Rosberg.
 
Lol kyvat. Also clearly it's not a second a lap difference on the softs for Ferrari as some were predicting. Vettel only 3 seconds back from Rosberg and 4 from Hamilton after 8 laps.
 
SS-89 said:
Lol kyvat. Also clearly it's not a second a lap difference on the softs for Ferrari as some were predicting. Vettel only 3 seconds back from Rosberg and 4 from Hamilton after 8 laps.
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Actually that is what the gap looks like. Hamilton had a 2 second gap over Vettel after a single lap, he was only max a half second down out of the first corner which means Hamilton just blitzed the rest of the lap easily. He then backed off. Rosberg is simply slower than Hamilton, his medium times were far less impressive than Hamilton all weekend, long and short runs, both tires.

In the long runs Hamilton was just running at his pace, today he's running at Rosbergs pace, if he takes all the life out of the tires then there is a safety car, well, a 5 second gap wiped out then having worse tires is meaningless.

Hamilton is entirely controlling Rosberg now and is clearly capable of pulling another 3/4 tenths at will, which puts him at 7-8/10ths faster than Vettel. Vettel is clearly pushing fair hard because losing time to Rosberg on purpose is not going to happen. They are pushing as hard as they can. I said they would be 0.75 seconds faster on average on the soft and that is precisely what I'm seeing. Hamilton having that pace available at will, Rosberg being a few tenths back and Hamilton simply matching his slower pace because anything else is a waste.

EDIT:- Vettel half a second down on his best time now, so showing tire deg already and still losing time to the Mercs, so Mercs faster per lap AND not slowing down at a faster rate than Vettel as yet.
 
Hamilton either getting ready to come in, which seems a poor strategy call, or showing tire life plus speed is a joke. a high 1:43's when Vettel went almost a second slower than that the lap before. Vettel losing time at the same time or even before Hamilton who has been cruising.

Again remember he lost time a little earlier than Vettel BUT was going a second a lap faster, if Hamilton was going the same pace as Vettel his tires would obviously last longer.

Malaysia was INSANE temps and it meant Merc amongst other cars compromised aero performance by opening the car up, so they had tire temp issues and less car performance. They have great deg and better aero in more normal races. Even 45C track temps here are nothing on the 65c track temps in Malaysia.


EDIT:- yup, Hamilton going softs again, 7-8 seconds faster over the stint on softs over Vettel, when he started using the tire at the end of the stint he showed that higher pace and started going another half second faster a lap over Rosberg... so even at the end of the stint he had that extra half a second a lap I said he had.
 
SS-89 said:
Guess we'll see now, Vettel and Hammy on new softs. Will be interesting to see.
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They were on basically identical softs last time, the difference now is Hamilton needs to drive at his own pace and have a gap on Rosberg because of the different strategy. Now in Rosberg trying to go different on strategy to get at Hamilton he may instead leave himself vulnerable to Vettel. Vettel on the faster tire, and Rosberg simply not as fast Hamilton. Though I felt like Merc may have a larger advantage on the mediums than softs. Vettel if he has a brain will burn the hell out of the tires, get ahead of Rosberg then defend for his life and hold Rosberg up for as long as possible.
 
Vertigo1 said:
Am using the iOS app and the timings are working for once, although the delay feature still loses time gradually.
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It sorted itself out after 5 minutes or so. The delay feature has apparently been fixed in the next build, but wasn't available to release for the race today.
 
Vertigo1 said:
Renault really have produced a total turd of an engine this year.
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A little, but then TR haven't blow 3 engines per car, they did move to the second engine now but significantly later than RBR. So RBR as last year, still doing something less sensible with cooling and pushing the engine too hard.

Again though this is partially the case that if the engine is severely under performing the only way to claw back time is to be even more aggressive on aero, which usually means less cooling.
 
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