Quickest cars during the 2012 season

A quali lap and a race lap are very different, and average lap time of both cars, excluding laps of insistence is not finishing order by a long way.

I do agree, mclaren dropped a bollard this year massively, but that's life.
 
http://www.f1zone.net/news/mclaren-had-the-fastest-car-in-2012/17115/

McLaren fielded the consistently fastest car in 2012, an analysis has shown.

According to the German language Speed Week, although Red Bull and Ferrari ended up fighting for the title, it was McLaren with the consistently faster car, based on an averaging of race laps throughout the 20-grand prix season.

Based on all the fastest race laps this year, McLaren was just 1.8 tenths from perfection, the report claimed.

Champions Red Bull came in second with an average of 3.8 tenths off the best, followed by Lotus, at seven tenths.

Ferrari was just fourth, with an average deficit of 7.5 tenths.

“It means Fernando Alonso almost became champion with the fourth fastest car,” the report read.

2012′s fastest team McLaren won seven grands prix this year, compared to seven for Red Bull and three for Ferrari’s Alonso.

McLaren drivers Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button, meanwhile, respectively won the last two grands prix of the season in Austin and Brazil.

“We have to make the normal gains over a winter and Red Bull and Ferrari will be flat out doing that, as will the other teams trying to catch up — Lotus and Mercedes,” McLaren’s sporting director Sam Michael is quoted by the Sun.

“But we’re pretty confident we can do the right things over the winter and start off strong. We’re going to Melbourne to win,” he insisted.

Another analysis, by Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport, shows that if the 2012 championship was in fact divided in two, a McLaren driver would not have been the champion or even the runner-up of either half.

Based on the first ten races, Alonso would have beaten Red Bull’s Mark Webber to the title by 40 points, while the second-half champion was Vettel, with a 45-point margin over Spaniard Alonso.
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Kerming said:
makes you think where did it all go wrong for mclaren, the car was clearly there but it just fell apart.
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Literally fell apart xD

Obviously would be more interesting to see this if one person had set a lap time in each car, as this isn't quite a true comparison, but it does really show just how poor McLaren were this year from a reliability perspective...

kd
 
Mr Men said:
http://www.f1zone.net/news/mclaren-had-the-fastest-car-in-2012/17115/
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That is very interesting.

Apparently, Ferrari had the 4th fastest car, averaged out across the season. It makes what Alonso achieved even more impressive.

It really is a shame that the guy is not winning titles because RBR have such a good Design and Engineering department. I wonder if Alonso could do a swap with Vettel in 2014?

I've said all along that on average, McLaren were the quickest in the 1st half of the season with RBR quickest in the 2nd half. I truly believe that if McLaren had Vettel or Alonso in their team they'd have won the title. Hamilton in the last quarter of the season was great, but in the 1st half of the season wasn't. I remember when Vettel beat him in an inferior car, in the 1st race of the season. After seeing that I knew Hamilton would struggle to beat Vettel over an entire season, unless Hamilton had a faster car. It turns out that he did have a faster car, but still couldn't beat Vettel.

Hamilton fans will point out that McLaren had their troubles (not Hamilton's fault), but then Alonso was taken out twice. I think Vettel had 2 car failures while leading (not sure). Hamilton should've won the opening 3 GPs. His inconsistency is what cost him the title. McLaren delivered him the best car.
 
"if McLaren had Vettel or Alonso in their team they'd have won the title"

Not convinced - their troubles weren't really driver related for the most part. They could have had Jesus driving the car and they'd still have been stuffing up pit stops and suffering mechanical failures and non fault accidents.

Hamilton had 5 DNFs this season (well 6 really but the first was close enough to the end to be classified still) and I don't think any were really directly his fault were they? You could possibly argue he could have avoided one or two of the accidents but you're still looking at twice as many DNFs as Alonso that he could do nothing about.
 
Skeeter said:
But that graph isn't meant to show 'fastest average race lap time', its meant to show pure pace, and it does, perfectly.

Average lap time would still be the finishing order, as its total race time divided by number of laps. Including people who didn't finish would skew the results.
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results are skewed by drs for a start , even more so by DDRS
 
Skeeter said:
Letting RBRs through in the race affected their qualifying times....

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight....
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Oh, sorry, is that the qualifying times?

Regardless, Toro Rosso only exist to block Vettel's rivals^W^W^W give Red Bull a place to test drivers. I think it was about the third race of the season where someone on the commentary asked "What should drivers aim to do to make quali 2?" and got the answer "Be faster than Jean-Eric Vergne".
 
Its the fastest time over the weekend. Unless there was some shake up (like it rained all Friday and Saturday) you would expect the single fastest laps to be from either P3 or Qualifying. The race laps, even the quick ones at the end on new tyres, were nowhere near the times of the qualifying laps.
 
Just out of interest do cars have to have the same amount of fuel still in the tank at the end of quali vs the end of the race

( I know a few cars have pulled over without completing the lap after the finish of the race, but Im guessing they still have to have enough in the tank for a sample)
 
There are no sampling requirements at the end of the race. Cars can finish the race with zero fuel in them at all.

Fastest qualifying laps will be set with no more than a few litres of fuel at most.
 
Kerming said:
makes you think where did it all go wrong for mclaren, the car was clearly there but it just fell apart.
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Just what I was thinking! The people back at the main McLaren base that designed the car must be hacked off as they worked hard to create the best car yet the team (including the drivers) who attended the races really underperformed.

Unless McLaren sort themselves out on racedays in 2013 then there is little point the people back at main base even bothering with upgrading the car!
 
Out of all the race winners this season, Hamilton is the only driver not to have won a race the BBC have shown live, coupled with this fact here are his results in the races the BBC have shown live:

China – 3rd
Spain – 8th
Monaco – 5th
Valencia – DNF
Silverstone – 8th
Spa – DNF
Singapore – DNF
Korea – 10th
Abu Dhabi – DNF
Brazil – DNF
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Oh dear :p
 
Just shows how brilliantly McLaren threw it away. Neat little graph.

RBR are going to walk this next year - the teams would be silly not to focus on 2014 early on tbh.
 
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