Japanese Grand Prix 2013, Suzuka - Race 15/19

Well that was a bit of fun. But it looks like Pirelli have gone "Can't have that. Racing when they could be eco-driving" and then the tyres have trashed that.

Button pits after only 15 laps on the hard tyre.
Rosberg in after only 12 laps on the hard tyre.

These Pirelli tyres are useless. 12 laps on the hardest tyre they do? Really, it should be able to do most of the race.
 
"We're not racing Mark, we're racing Grosjean"
Nice that Brudle took that radio message to mean Webber's going to win...

To me it more says, he'll move over, no problem.
 
The issue I have with the tyres is there is a hard upper limit on pace. You can't choose to go 1.5seconds faster a lap and do 15 laps instead of 25, which gives you actual tactical choices. There is a hard limit on the temps you can use meaning a hard limit on the speed you can go.

Every driver says it's boring, people aren't allowed to publically say what they've heard the teams say about the tyres and races.

But the drivers being bored to tears in races because they aren't actually out driving the cars to the bone but so far within.

You know why Hulk and Grosjean and Vettel rarely make mistakes, in fact most cars don't, because they are so far within themselves, you need a certain amount of rubber, so a tyre gives you X amount of wear and you can choose between racing full speed and doing more stops, or doing less stops and going slower.

I have no idea why Webber is trying to do one stop more but only pushing a harder pace for half the race. It might work out later in the race but I expect Webber won't be particularly close.
 
I have no idea why they've pitted Webber when they did, he was gaining on Grosjean, his tyres clearly weren't gone, but they've cost his strategy completely. It's a merc/mclaren mistake, costing your strategy WAY to early for a stupid supposed undercut on a car that clearly wasn't going to be pitting for ages.

They've given Webber an extra pit to undercut a car that wasn't remotely close to pitting, so gaining a few seconds at the expense of an extra 22 second pit stop. He will be faster, but would have to pass Grosjean and Vettel which likely won't happen.

If he'd been pushing 3 stop strategy from the start he would have passed Grosjean or pushed him on to a 3 stop himself which would favour red bull anyway.

They are banging on about Vettel/Grosjean gap but if Vettel does another few laps the end of the stint will see Vettel pass Grosjean pretty easily, the speed at which WEbber/Vettel caught Grosjean when they wanted to was easy. They could, if Vettel can get past Grosjean after he pits quite quickly, keep Webber out long and slow and use Vettel to hold up Grosjean and protect him which is possible.
 
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utajoker said:
webber is flying. 1 second faster than vettel in middle sector alone.
Click to expand...

yeah but to beat a 2 stop you need to be on that pace throughout the race pretty much, or half a second faster for the whole race, doing it in one stupid stint is worthless. Vettel only has 15 laps to do on mediums, he won't have to manage tyres at all and his tyres aren't going to drop off at the end. Grosjean's probably will do, he's doing just over 50% more laps on this stint and set of tyres than Vettel so he's got almost no chance, but he won't be painfully slow, if Webber can probably pass Grosjean as his pace is no where near good enough.

Why Webber stopped when he was gaining on Grosjean, or why if he wanted to three stop he didn't fight Grosjean MUCH earlier I don't know.
 
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