Malaysian Grand Prix 2015, Kuala Lumpur - Race 2/19

Nice to see some competition at the top, but without the ill-advised decision to pit under the safety car Mercedes would still have most-likely taken 1-2. Merc won't screw up strategy calls often enough for Ferrari to be a true threat atm I don't think, but the gap's much smaller. Williams seem to have dropped off a bit and getting beaten by the rookies driving Torro Rossos must be embarrassing for Red Bull.
 
Ferrari would have challenged Merc here no matter the strategy.

2nd race of the season and Lewis already showing signs he would revert to his usual whiny tantrums if he is challenged, let's hope it continues :)
 
Mr Men said:
Ferrari would have challenged Merc here no matter the strategy.

2nd race of the season and Lewis already showing signs he would revert to his usual whiny tantrums if he is challenged, let's hope it continues :)
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Do you really think they have made up that much time during fly away races?
 
Degradation hurt Mercedes today and made it look much closer than it actually is. Conditions were very different in Australia. Brundle / Croft were saying during the race that Mercedes were not able to unleash their full ability because the extreme degradation held them back. It was a tyre limited circuit in a way that Australia was not. Lewis was faster on the harder tyre there than Seb was on the softer compound. Ferrari will be there on some tracks, but I don't seem them being a consistent threat.

As for hamiltons 'tantrums', I would be have been irritated aswell if the team kept telling me different things.
 
Monkey Puzzle said:
Nice to see some competition at the top, but without the ill-advised decision to pit under the safety car Mercedes would still have most-likely taken 1-2. Merc won't screw up strategy calls often enough for Ferrari to be a true threat atm I don't think, but the gap's much smaller. Williams seem to have dropped off a bit and getting beaten by the rookies driving Torro Rossos must be embarrassing for Red Bull.
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Would they have got 1-2? I'll have to have a look at the data, but from what I've seen every man and his dog (all the Merc crew inc.) have said that Ferrari were just quicker today regardless of strategy. I think they had the upperhand on deg and they've developed a very good car. When I saw the launch pics of the new car I remarked by how good it looked, and they sometimes say if she's good lookin' she's quick!
 
CaptainRAVE said:
As for hamiltons 'tantrums', I would be have been irritated aswell if the team kept telling me different things.
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He was just being pejorative because of his need for confirmation bias. You're quite right, anyone would be annoyed when their team lets them down like that. Even if the team had been spot on though, I'm not sure Lewis could have beaten Vettel. Ferrari have made some leaps forward since last season. Should be interesting how things play out in the coming races.
 
Mercedes Formula 1 boss Toto Wolff thinks it would be wrong to blame his team's Malaysian Grand Prix defeat on the early stop for new tyres under the safety car.

Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg were powerless to prevent Sebastian Vettel taking his first win for Ferrari on a day when their rival was faster.

But although the early stop to change tyres did not help, Mercedes insists that was not key to it losing the race.

"It is always easy afterwards to regret and say in hindsight we could have done this or that better, but we are taking these decisions together," said Wolff.

"We haven't done any strategic mistakes in the last two years and this is why it doesn't make sense to point the finger to a single event.

"We need to find out why we were struggling for long-run pace in these hot conditions because I think that is the main point to look at."

Wolff concurs with Vettel's belief that warm temperatures hampered Mercedes' form - although other factors were not up to scratch either, which left its drivers frustrated over the radio.

"I think that was a complicated race to read from the drivers' perspective," Wolff said.

"There were so many stops, your main competitors came out behind and then in front, and you need to lap cars, and you lose track.

"We weren't particularly good on radio messaging today. We had a couple of weird calls.

"Lots of action on the radio internally is something we need to look at.

"I guess if you see you are not able to catch up, there is a certain frustration that grows on you."

He said there was "no panic" at Mercedes but admitted the team had not been able to "control" the grand prix as has become its habit.

"We had a new situation that we haven't had for a while in that we were not in control of things," Wolff said.

"We had new information which was different from what we assessed over the weekend.

"Today things didn't pan out the way we expected them to pan out.

"It is not one particular thing; it is a couple of things we can improve.

"It is clear the winning streak was not going to go on forever, but today we were beaten fair and square."


http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/118285

In summary; Toto states that Ferrari were just quicker today, irrsepective of strategy, and also that they had crap radio comms, probably due to being out front 1-2 for ages, they've forgotten how to race other teams and make calls, and that rustiness showed through today during the race.
 
Oh man, I was warming to Vettel until he crossed the line. He is more irritating than most when he wins. Still, I'd rather him win this year's championship than Hamilton whose sulking I find unbearable.

Promising for the McHondas. Considerable improvement in pace over 1 race. Wonder how hard Honda were pushing their engines. Let's hope that's not them topping out.
 
Sliver said:
He was just being pejorative because of his need for confirmation bias. You're quite right, anyone would be annoyed when their team lets them down like that. Even if the team had been spot on though, I'm not sure Lewis could have beaten Vettel. Ferrari have made some leaps forward since last season. Should be interesting how things play out in the coming races.
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It's not him bitching out the team over the radio that I take issue with (well.....not entirely!). It's that he, a two-time World Champion of this sport, continually allows himself to get put in these positions.

He's been at this a little while now. He should know enough to be able to make calls all by himself. He wants tyres, the team must prepare them. He wants to stay out on track, they can sod back off into the garage. He needs to start calling the shots.

Now, as you say - Ferrari's pace here was excellent, it surprised Mercedes (surprised pretty much everyone), and even if team and driver made perfect strategic calls and never put a wheel wrong then they'd still probably have ended up second. Kimi's drive back to 4th from that puncture showed just how much speed was in that Ferrari today - yes, the safety car helped him catch up but doing that entire lap with a buggered tyre can't have done much good to the car and yet it was still quick enough to end the day where it did. If Lewis is lucky, then this was an aberration and the Mercedes pace relative to all their rivals will return to having the switch set in the 'crushing domination' position for the remainder of the season. If he's not, and we get a few more weekends like this sprinkled with a spot of unreliability, he might well find winning the title this year a damned sight less straightforward than the last one. Especially if Vettel can keep him in sight.
 
smr said:
Would they have got 1-2? I'll have to have a look at the data, but from what I've seen every man and his dog (all the Merc crew inc.) have said that Ferrari were just quicker today regardless of strategy. I think they had the upperhand on deg and they've developed a very good car. When I saw the launch pics of the new car I remarked by how good it looked, and they sometimes say if she's good lookin' she's quick!
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The race data backs up that the mercs were faster - from the f1fanatics link http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2015/03/29/how-mercedes-safety-car-strategy-backfired/ the graph shows both rosberg and hamilton gaining on vettel after they lost out from being stuck in traffic with an unnecessary pit after 5 laps, losing lots of time and slowly clawing that back. Hamilton ended up 10 seconds behing vettel after getting through traffic, with rosberg faring worse. Without the pit and binning the faster tyres before they were worn Hamilton would have led from when the safety car went in by a second or two rather than ragging tyres in the pack, and vettel may well have slowed defending againat Rosberg. Toto Wolffe can downplay it as much as he wants, and I don't blame him since a petulent Hamilton is probably quite dificult to apologise to, but I still think it's the iffy strategy calls that threw the race away.
 
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Skeeter said:
I wonder if in a SC free race the advantage Ferrari had with tyre degradation would have been enough to save them a pit stop over Mercedes?
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It doesn't matter, why is everyone so focused on the could they have done less stops thing. For decades teams have done the do less stops route. The ONLY time the Merc wasn't noticeably faster was when they were attempting an ill advised stint length after the safety car pit stop, at all other times they were faster, this is a short pit stop, some places you lose up to 30-35 seconds, here it's 20.

Without the safety car Merc would have stayed on a three stop strategy and been 20+ seconds faster over the whole race. Hamilton was at one point I believe what 24 seconds down or something after a pitstop and got that down to 10 or so. Strategy throughout the weekend wasn't great, would have been better to have fresher mediums than the Q1 set, but still no reason they couldn't use that Q1 set. Bad call in Q1, bad call in the safety car, worse call to attempt one stop over 50 laps, bad call to not realise this much sooner and switch back to a 3 stop race earlier had they called the change 10 laps earlier Hamilton could have pushed much harder on the first set of hards then had less time to catch up, less hard to push on the mediums. Every stint was compromised on length.

Rosberg was slower and may have had trouble, it was close enough that Hamilton would have to catch and pass Vettel after the final pit stop, but he'd be much closer and better set for a 13-14 lap stint on mediums and it should have been somewhat of a cake walk pass with faster and fresher tires and a faster car.

There are only a few tracks/conditions you can attempt to randomly go much longer on tires, Malaysia is pretty much the single last place you can attempt this, almost every call they made today was epically stupid.

Even had they told Hamilton to push a little less hard on the second set of mediums they would have lasted the extra few laps which would make the used set viable for the last stint.

They didn't get a single stint right, even after getting back on the 3 stop they still managed the tires, pace, stint length and final tire choice incorrectly.

WIth Rosberg being less fast in the first few laps, losing a bit to Vettel, and having limited speed throughout the race... it's possible that Rosberg would have struggled to get by Vettel in the final stint. While Hamilton would be more aggressive and frankly just better and faster in the twisty parts of the tracks, Rosberg may have both more time to gain, less time to pass and have to do it later into the stint... I could see Vettel having a genuine 2nd at this track, but not 1st. Though where Kimi may have factored in had his Q2 not been compromised and he not been clipped and damaged again.... could he have challenged Rosberg for 3rd, no idea.

While Kimi did great to get 4th and showed really good pace even with car damage, a LOT of cars made the same mistakes Mercedes did today, attempted less stops than they should have and ruined their race as a result. Then you had both RBR's with brake trouble. Ferrari made the right tire calls with him on his compromised race and optimised his time to finish after a puncture very well. Ferrari coped with strategy MUCH better than everyone else, and made the perfect calls for both drivers under completely different circumstances, well done.
 
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