Poll: Chinese Grand Prix 2018, Shanghai - Race 3/21

Rate the 2018 Chinese Grand Prix out of ten

  • Total voters
    84
  • Poll closed .
JunglistE said:
Hamilton is already down in the dumps saying it's going to be hard to win the WDC this year.

I think once the European leg gets started he'll be hoovering up some points. But that Ferrari looks to be the best car so far.
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To be fair to him he's had an easier time for the last few years so it probably is a bit of a shock to his system having more competition. Plus at the same time he'd be a fool to say its fine and he's going to smash everyone regardless. At least i wouldnt as i know that would be tempting fate. :)
 
timmeh said:
Just watched the race. Strategic masterclass by Red Bull. Mercedes and Ferrari caught napping at the SC. It was poorly timed for Bottas & Vettel but Hamilton & Kimi could have taken advantage of it.
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See, personally I thought the race was mostly boring and strategic masterclass? For years on these or very similar tires pushing the limit to get a one stop has always been worse than running a faster two stop. The only time this matters is when overtaking is difficult. Toto said after they got the strategy wrong because early in the race it looked like overtaking was difficult... that was on tires they qualified on, that always happens. The cars behave differently on lower fuel, on a rubbered in track and with different tire life. There are probably 5 races a year where anywhere with decent straights and a few good passing corners someone does an extra stop and blows by multiple people at the end of a race, it happens more often when everyone else decides to stick with less stops and bad strategies.

How everyone wasn't ready for a second stop I don't know. RBR followed for me, the absolutely standard and obvious strategy, Merc and Ferrari utterly utterly screwed up beyond belief. RBR pitting wasn't brilliant, Ferrari and Merc not pitting was beyond brain dead.

Merc have been screwing up strategy more and more consistently lately and Ferrari have been bad at it for years, just with the occasional fluke result.

As Vettel said after the race, he was planning on letting Max through uncontested because fighting would only hurt his own race. The only driver who even really defended was Bottas because he was the only one who had something massive to lose, even then it was completely inevitable.

Also people banging on about how deep Ricciardo was overtaking from, ridiculously superior tire life enables coming in from deep and Hamilton nor almost anyone else actually defended against him. The overblown hyping up about what a good drive it was. From the pitstops it was inevitable and easy. The only 'excitement' was Verstappen/Vettel crash and seeing what happened after.

Why on earth do the teams keep going for less stops when tire life is far more important. Also that they've gone for one stops by pitting as early as possible is mental. When you look at charts of lap times, effectively the lap you pit sets the pace for the stint. If you pit onto lets say fresh softs, if it's lap 15 you'll do a laptime say 1:41s for the entire stint, if you pit on lap 20 you can do 1:40's for the entire stint, if you pit on lap 30 you can do 1:39's. You have to hit a certain temp to give a certain tire wear level so ultimate pace is set by when you pit. Pitting onto tires so early in the race made the one stop an amazingly bad option and pitting that early the strategists should have both said hey, push hard and we'll pit in a given window but if a safety car comes out we'll utilise that. Not being ready is embarrassingly stupid of both teams.
 
KiNgPiN83 said:
To be fair to him he's had an easier time for the last few years so it probably is a bit of a shock to his system having more competition. Plus at the same time he'd be a fool to say its fine and he's going to smash everyone regardless. At least i wouldnt as i know that would be tempting fate. :)
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Vettel after three Merc wins "it will be hard to win the WDC in 2014/15/16/17" fine by everyone, Hamilton after three races without a win says the same thing... he's a whiny git. He's not saying oh poor me, he's just saying, it will be hard to win and as yet the car looks a step behind.
 
drunkenmaster said:
How everyone wasn't ready for a second stop I don't know. RBR followed for me, the absolutely standard and obvious strategy, Merc and Ferrari utterly utterly screwed up beyond belief. RBR pitting wasn't brilliant, Ferrari and Merc not pitting was beyond brain dead.
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I think the strategy crew were literally napping. Sure the SC came out very very late for Ferrari and Mercedes to pit, but they could have done it had they been on the ball. Pitting was the standard and absolutely only strategy as is the case nearly 100% of the time under a SC.
 
ScoobyDoo69 said:
Q3 Seb vs Kimi - how did Seb gain so much on the last straight? Did anyone notice on the C4 coverage when they compared the laps side by side? That seemed like more power to me, not just a better exit!
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Kimi was quite a bit wider in the hairpin. Even going through frame-by-frame Kimi had to use much more steering lock on the exit, and of course that means he can't use as much throttle. If you remember Kimi himself was a good way ahead of his own delta, but had a yellow final sector - such tiny margins these days.

chinesegp_q3_vettel_raikkonen.jpg
 
Was good to see the undercut used in this race, I couldn't understand why Bottas wasn't pitted early in Bahrain but I guess the computer said it wasn't worth it.
 
drunkenmaster said:
Also people banging on about how deep Ricciardo was overtaking from, ridiculously superior tire life enables coming in from deep and Hamilton nor almost anyone else actually defended against him. The overblown hyping up about what a good drive it was. From the pitstops it was inevitable and easy. The only 'excitement' was Verstappen/Vettel crash and seeing what happened after.
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Yeah, I really didn't want to detract from Danny as he did get the moves done but people were really overplaying it. Some of the on boards with the RB cars after the pit stop the advantage they had on cars was unreal. Looked like their tires were made from super glue with how much grip they were getting on exits. The one where Hamilton made Max run ride really shows it.
 
The_Abyss said:
Because it is the fastest way to the finish line. Until, as shown in China, the race is interrupted and someone else reacts and another doesn't.
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It's not though, it happens over and over again that those who try to eek out a one stop at a track like CHina fails to be faster.

Don't forget that the guys on older tires were not only much slower towards the end of the race but had what 5-6 laps of safety car to protect those tires which also gave the other guys 5-6 laps less to use their newer faster tires. Without the safety car they'd have been further back but the rest would have had another 5-6 laps on tires going 2 seconds a lap slower.

Also, the RBR was simply no where near as fast as the other two cars, the slower car made the win easily due to fresher tires. If they all pitted the RBR's would have finished 5-10 seconds back and if any of the front three teams pitted with no safety car while the others didn't, they'd have easily won.

Again Toto said after the race they thought the one stop was best because there was so little overtaking possible early on, but that happens repeatedly at many tracks. With heavier cars you push the tires harder, they are hotter and everyone is tire/fuel limited, later in the race with more rubber down a difference in performance between the cars establish themselves.

At least a half dozen races a season teams apparently figure out that a one stop is a better strategy, then get done by a team who makes a second pitstop and is way way faster for the final third of the race. Teams get this wrong more than often enough that assuming they always get strategy right is a silly assumption to make. Merc screwed up huge, absolutely huge in Australia, then they also screwed up in Bahrain, and now they screwed up in China, can you really safely say that a one stop was faster because Mercedes and Ferrari decided it was better?
 
Except that it is.

You're saying that, if there had been no safety car and Red Bull had decided to two stop while Ferrari and Mercedes chose to one stop, Red Bull would have won the race.

I think that's wrong. Red Bull would have had to make up additional track position, overtaking cars other than the top four, and by the time they approached the leading cars then their tyres would be more damaged and more on a par.
 
The_Abyss said:
Except that it is.

You're saying that, if there had been no safety car and Red Bull had decided to two stop while Ferrari and Mercedes chose to one stop, Red Bull would have won the race.

I think that's wrong. Red Bull would have had to make up additional track position, overtaking cars other than the top four, and by the time they approached the leading cars then their tyres would be more damaged and more on a par.
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No, that isn't what I said at all, Red Bull were the slower car, it would have improved their overall competitiveness but they were the slower car. The safety car enabled that superior strategy to take them from closer to Merc/Ferrari to ahead of them.

Lets say if it stayed a one stop then the RBRs end up 15 seconds behind Bottas, and the two stop would have let them move to 5 seconds behind them, the safety car meant saving what, ~10 seconds in the pits so they end up 5 seconds ahead rather than behind.

The Merc was a faster car, if they two stopped they would have ended up still 10 seconds ahead of RBR (without the safety car and RBR two stop) and both ahead of Ferrari, if they all two stop nothing changes except reduced risk of tire failure.

Same last week really, if Vettel pits I think he catches Ham and Bottas ridiculously fast and ends up 5-10 seconds up the road from Bottas at the end with absolutely no threat of being beaten in the final couple laps.

Two stop is much much more often than not faster than one stop, the teams just get scared about track position, that is a valid concern in Barcelona, Monaco, Singapore, Australia, but not Bahrain, not China, not Spa, etc.

Again I'd point out in regards to the latter, Vettel wasn't planning to fight Verstappen as he knew he'd lose time for no gain and the pass was inevitable, you think the cars behind RBR who were even slower and less capable of fighting would have held up the RBRs? Even if they wanted to, look how easily the RBR on the fresh tires passed Mercs and Ferrari, even if the cars behind RBR wanted to fight, they weren't capable. RBR would have been behind Hamilton after a few laps regardless.

I always think back to Canada in, I forget the year exactly, maybe 2011. Hamilton pitted, Alonso and Vettel hung it out. Yes the tires there had a more pronounced cliff and Alonso ended up like 6th or something stupid and Vettel pitted after Ham passed him but managed to recover a place or two maybe. But Hamilton caught them before the tires were completely over the cliff, it was the final 4-5 laps those guys hit the cliff and lost.

If you pit on lap ~35 vs lap 18 you're going to end up 2 seconds a lap faster on average over the last stint. If the front runners pitted closer to lap maybe 25 then maybe they'd have the performance to stay ahead, but you pit that early into the race you've utterly destroyed your max pace late in the race in such a way that a two stop will end up so embarrassingly faster you'll absolutely lose to those who pit a second time (within reason, Williams with another pit wasn't going to do that).

That Ferrari/Merc strategists weren't all ready for a second stop under any changing circumstances is completely unforgiveable, the second stop under a vsc or sc was a complete no brainer.
 
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So without the safety car, were Mercedes and Ferrari right to run the one stop strategy, as it was the fastest means of getting to the end?

I agree completely on their failure to be responsive to the changing situation btw, and said as much in my review of the race. Ferrari screwed up twice - firstly not reacting to the pace of the cars who had pitted ahead of them (and before Bottas) and secondly with the safety car. Their response to screwing up was to screw up Kimi's race even more in a vain attempt to hold up Bottas, which lasted about 5 corners.
 
The teams always go for the safe option which is to get track position and defend. It's what the current rules all point to given the lack of ability these cars have to follow closely through a mid-speed corner or faster (unless one has a sizeable tyre advantage).
 
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The_Abyss said:
So without the safety car, were Mercedes and Ferrari right to run the one stop strategy, as it was the fastest means of getting to the end?

I agree completely on their failure to be responsive to the changing situation btw, and said as much in my review of the race. Ferrari screwed up twice - firstly not reacting to the pace of the cars who had pitted ahead of them (and before Bottas) and secondly with the safety car. Their response to screwing up was to screw up Kimi's race even more in a vain attempt to hold up Bottas, which lasted about 5 corners.
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No, without the safety car, if Merc two stopped, they'd have beaten Ferrari easily, if Ferrari two stopped, they'd have beaten Merc easily, if both two stopped, we'd have had 4 drivers with tires able to push much harder to the end so we'd have had 4 faster cars getting the best out of each other, 2 seconds faster a lap, closer to the limit, more likely to make mistakes and more likely to make passes on each other.

The teams do try to go for the safe option, but it rarely plays out. At tracks with actually difficult passing, Monaco, Singapore, Barcelona, Australia in particular sure, track position is king. But most other places it simply doesn't bear out and most who try to push a theoretically slower strategy because they think track position is king... lose out. Seriously the tracks you can or can't pass at have been the same forever, the fundamentals of tracks don't change. The cars are barely changed from last year, the idea that you suddenly couldn't pass in China is crazy, everyone was just running conservative early on but they were going 15-18 laps on that first set of tires.

One of the reasons Ricciardo and Max make so many passes in the last couple of years is Ferrari/Merc and other teams keep trying to do these slower strategies, they keep making mistakes. RBR more often than not go for not an aggressive strategy, but just the right strategy, being on the right tire at the right time beats almost anything else. Having 2 second lap faster tires more than makes up for a half a second a lap less engine power if it's that much.

I think the teams data would almost certainly have come up with a two stop being faster before the race, they just thought they had to hang on to track position.

I think that is why both teams didn't pit after the safety car and I think it's why Ferrari pitted Vettel so late, they were desperate to do the one stop and felt they needed to go further. They weren't wrong. Kimi was the only guy anywhere near the right window imo for a one stop strategy. Sometimes you've got to go slower for 1 second slower for 5 laps to make every lap in the second half of the race half a second faster. Both Kimi's pace at the end and the pace of Vettel, Ham, Bottas absolutely prove that a one stop with an early first stop was a terrible strategy.
 
drunkenmaster said:
No, without the safety car, if Merc two stopped, they'd have beaten Ferrari easily, if Ferrari two stopped, they'd have beaten Merc easily, if both two stopped, we'd have had 4 drivers with tires able to push much harder to the end so we'd have had 4 faster cars getting the best out of each other, 2 seconds faster a lap, closer to the limit, more likely to make mistakes and more likely to make passes on each other.

The teams do try to go for the safe option, but it rarely plays out. At tracks with actually difficult passing, Monaco, Singapore, Barcelona, Australia in particular sure, track position is king. But most other places it simply doesn't bear out and most who try to push a theoretically slower strategy because they think track position is king... lose out. Seriously the tracks you can or can't pass at have been the same forever, the fundamentals of tracks don't change. The cars are barely changed from last year, the idea that you suddenly couldn't pass in China is crazy, everyone was just running conservative early on but they were going 15-18 laps on that first set of tires.

One of the reasons Ricciardo and Max make so many passes in the last couple of years is Ferrari/Merc and other teams keep trying to do these slower strategies, they keep making mistakes. RBR more often than not go for not an aggressive strategy, but just the right strategy, being on the right tire at the right time beats almost anything else. Having 2 second lap faster tires more than makes up for a half a second a lap less engine power if it's that much.

I think the teams data would almost certainly have come up with a two stop being faster before the race, they just thought they had to hang on to track position.

I think that is why both teams didn't pit after the safety car and I think it's why Ferrari pitted Vettel so late, they were desperate to do the one stop and felt they needed to go further. They weren't wrong. Kimi was the only guy anywhere near the right window imo for a one stop strategy. Sometimes you've got to go slower for 1 second slower for 5 laps to make every lap in the second half of the race half a second faster. Both Kimi's pace at the end and the pace of Vettel, Ham, Bottas absolutely prove that a one stop with an early first stop was a terrible strategy.
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I appreciate your detailed response, but it is contrary to all the current F1 strategists which suggests you're wrong.
 
The_Abyss said:
I appreciate your detailed response, but it is contrary to all the current F1 strategists which suggests you're wrong.
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Those strategists were wrong in Australia, wrong in Bahrain and wrong in China.... but they must have been right about that even though the ridiculously slow speed of the race barely being faster than last year at all, the ludicrous efforts they had to go to save the tires for a stupidly long second stint of the race and the fact that no one wanted to start the race on the ultrasofts if they didn't have to because they knew the tires don't last well.

I love the idea that, they are strategists therefore they must be right, that they were wrong repeatedly in only three races which cost them major points in each race somehow doesn't prevent you deferring to their judgement on this.
 
drunkenmaster said:
No, without the safety car, if Merc two stopped, they'd have beaten Ferrari easily, if Ferrari two stopped, they'd have beaten Merc easily, if both two stopped, we'd have had 4 drivers with tires able to push much harder to the end so we'd have had 4 faster cars getting the best out of each other, 2 seconds faster a lap, closer to the limit, more likely to make mistakes and more likely to make passes on each other.

The teams do try to go for the safe option, but it rarely plays out. At tracks with actually difficult passing, Monaco, Singapore, Barcelona, Australia in particular sure, track position is king. But most other places it simply doesn't bear out and most who try to push a theoretically slower strategy because they think track position is king... lose out. Seriously the tracks you can or can't pass at have been the same forever, the fundamentals of tracks don't change. The cars are barely changed from last year, the idea that you suddenly couldn't pass in China is crazy, everyone was just running conservative early on but they were going 15-18 laps on that first set of tires.

One of the reasons Ricciardo and Max make so many passes in the last couple of years is Ferrari/Merc and other teams keep trying to do these slower strategies, they keep making mistakes. RBR more often than not go for not an aggressive strategy, but just the right strategy, being on the right tire at the right time beats almost anything else. Having 2 second lap faster tires more than makes up for a half a second a lap less engine power if it's that much.

I think the teams data would almost certainly have come up with a two stop being faster before the race, they just thought they had to hang on to track position.

I think that is why both teams didn't pit after the safety car and I think it's why Ferrari pitted Vettel so late, they were desperate to do the one stop and felt they needed to go further. They weren't wrong. Kimi was the only guy anywhere near the right window imo for a one stop strategy. Sometimes you've got to go slower for 1 second slower for 5 laps to make every lap in the second half of the race half a second faster. Both Kimi's pace at the end and the pace of Vettel, Ham, Bottas absolutely prove that a one stop with an early first stop was a terrible strategy.
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It is nowhere near that simple. Mercedes barely even seem to understand their tire performance

You also make no mention of the engines. With 3 engines maximum they are never going to go flat out unless it is absolutely necessary. Red Bull may get the occasional win due to this, but they are going to suffer some serious grid penalties later in the season. I can actually see this season being decided on grid penalties more than ever.

RBR are also in the favourable position that they aren't fast enough to win the championship, but are just about there when a risky strategy presents itself. If it doesn't pay off, no one will really notice or care. If they get the occasional win, they will take all the glory for having beaten the Ferrari's and Mercs. This then brings two comments - that they are strategy geniuses and that Ferrari and Merc have lost the game and that they are making a resurgence; neither comment is true.
 
I would say RBR get strategy correct much more often than Merc and Ferrari do so and one of the reasons they keep making good runs late in races is they are usually on the right tire at the right time while many/most other teams aren't.

Going flat out isn't here or there, with better tires you lose less energy in tire spin and can slow less for corners with better grip to take corners faster. In the exact same engine mode fresher tires can be 2 seconds faster a lap without using a single drop of extra fuel. Engine mode isn't the difference that RBR had in China, it was all tires. They were comfortable and easily going to win, once out front there was no reason to be in a higher engine mode yet still stretched the gap easily even after backing off

Barely understanding tire performance.... makes the strategy of being safer on tire limits and taking an extra stop the much more favourable and safe strategy than apparently not understanding tire performance but banking on an extremely long stint on medium tires and being slow as hell. When tires are unknown, less stops is much more risky, not much less risky.
 
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