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AleHop

Driver Of The Day China 2011

Driver of the Day  

29 members have voted

  1. 1. Who?

    • Hamilton
      16
    • Webber
      23


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I felt suicidal. For 0.0001 seconds. :lol:

Well. We have the conspirators point of view. McLaren couldn't find Red Bull's 968 page manifesto, so in order to not actually get caught this time Jens was the decoy and Whitmarsh ran in, and stole it from Vettel's school bag.

Or the other version. He royally stuffed it up. It is what it is. It happened. No use crying over it!

:lol::roll:

Someone told me the RBR crew put some white chest over trying to simulate macca crew!!! Or it was orange? Whatever... Jense needs glases, Jense needs glasses....!!!!

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Someone told me the RBR crew put some white chest over trying to simulate macca crew!!! Or it was orange? Whatever... Jense needs glases, Jense needs glasses....!!!!

SPAD_ButtonSpecsavers.jpg

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Honer's and Marko's face would have been priceless. :D

:lol:

Both drivers deserve a pat on the back. Hamilton for winning and Webber for a sensational drive.

Did Webber do it without KERS? if that is the case, even better effort.

I think at the next race we will see more strategy around qualifying. Webber proved what an advantage it was to complete the race on the soft tyres. We might see drivers, in Q3 of Qualifying make an early flying lap on the Softs, before switching to the Hard compound. This would mean that they start on the Hard tyres and be able to get them out of the way. With the ability to overtake due to KERS and DRS, it makes this strategy possible.

Yeah I think Webber didn't have KERS. Though I believe one must start the race on your fastest tyres in qualifying, at least if you're in the top 10.

he wasnt being held up tho, he was just slow. kobayashi went around and re-passed him at one point cuz webber was driving so slowly.

2 stops was an ok strategy. the only ones that the 3 stops really worked well for were hamilton and webber. jenson lost time and up until near the end of the race he was still behind massa who was somewhere around 10-15 seconds behind him during the first stops so it didnt really work out for him. whether its a combination of his inability to pass other cars or not having a new set of primes is irrelevant. the 3 stopper didnt really gain him anything. in fact he lost out to vettel who was trailing him at the beginning of the race and did a 2 stop race.

rosberg's 3 stopper wasnt necessarily a better strategy either since he only beat massa by 2 seconds or so which is not really indicative of anything since rosberg was ahead of massa at the beginning of the race in the first stint anyways. i dont really see any problems with the 2 stop strategy, only webber and hamilton made the 3 stop strategy work. but that was mostly because hamilton had an extra set of tires and webber had 3. hamilton was near unstoppable today as he pretty much drove around everyone at will (except for massa passing him right before his first stop) and webber blitz the race with the best car on the grid and 3 new sets of tires. webber started way back and almost caught sebastian so u can say he was on a better strategy but u would also have to consider that he had 3 new sets of tires and clearly they were worth something like 2-3 seconds a lap. i'm not so sure that 3 stop strategy would have worked as well for him had he been on old tires which is what he would have had if he started in the top 10. vettel's strategy was potentially a race winning strategy that hamilton spoiled with a spectacular drive. so im not going to say that 3 stops was a lot better cuz button proved otherwise as he was on a 3 stop strategy and leading the race but ended up 4th.

another example can be seen with pastor maldonaldo's 3 stopper. heikki beat him on a 2 stop strategy with a slower car.

Yes that's a good point. Webber saved massive numbers of tyres! :lol: Mark even joked about just not bothering with qualifying and starting from the back every race - but thinking about it, as you say, there really are possible advantages of doing so!

Surely it's going to become the norm now for drivers to only do one lap in Q3?

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Surely it's going to become the norm now for drivers to only do one lap in Q3?

If they can get away with it, then it's a distinct possibility.

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If they can get away with it, then it's a distinct possibility.

i'm not so sure. they might try it once or twice but if all of the fast cars start doing that then there really is no advantage to it. it actually just makes things more dangerous cuz u have to pass a boatload of cars. im sure even though mark made it work this time, he would prefer not to do it again. cuz passing that many cars increases the risk of something going wrong. not to mention if u're driving flat out every lap then the engine might not last all of the races that it needs to. there's a reason why guys turn down the engines whenever they can.

also, while mark did very well, he did not win the race and really should not have gotten on the podium. if hamilton won the race then i dont see what went wrong with jenson. he was ahead of hamilton for pretty much the whole race. lewis had 1 extra set of tires so if anything button should have finished 2nd or 3rd but he destroyed his rears somehow even tho he was driving pretty slowly (took him a long time to get around massa, hamilton just drove straight past him). furthermore, if mercedes werent so dumb and actually gave rosberg enough fuel, rosberg would have been faster in that last stint. so realistically mark should probably have finished 4th or 5th so while it was impressive, it was not a race winning strategy.

he finished 7 seconds behind hamilton but i think hamilton could have gone even faster if he needed to, it's just that his engineer kept telling him not to go any faster cuz he was guaranteed to get past vettel.

another thing to consider is that the red bull is already at least 1.5 seconds faster than everyone else except for mclaren so while 2-3 seconds a lap on those tires is impressive, i think at least half of that is from the car itself. for example, if u put a renault or ferrari on that strategy mark was on and started them 18th, i doubt they would have ended up any higher than were they actually finished the race. so i'm not convinced that it is a good strategy to use.

either way my point is that mark's strategy was borne out of necessity and was not a race winning strategy so i doubt u'll see teams using it. they might however started doing what lewis did cuz that was definitely a good call to save an extra set of tires.

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Hamilton,.Webber was spectacular,but Hamilton was the one that got my attention during the whole race,superb drive and great win!!

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I felt suicidal. For 0.0001 seconds. :lol:

Well. We have the conspirators point of view. McLaren couldn't find Red Bull's 968 page manifesto, so in order to not actually get caught this time Jens was the decoy and Whitmarsh ran in, and stole it from Vettel's school bag.

Or the other version. He royally stuffed it up. It is what it is. It happened. No use crying over it!

:lol::roll:

What I don't understand is how he got mixed up when their overalls are so different in color, they practically contrast one another so how he ended up in the "dark side"? I would like to know what he was thinking at that moment but don't be so hard on him as that was not a costly mistake I guess it was more embarrasing to him than being overtaken the way he was in this race :naughty: it was lke he was thinking about something else, he was not concentrated in the race, maybe he needed some cafeine and that's way he stopped there to get some Red Bull as he was sleepy.

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i'm not so sure. they might try it once or twice but if all of the fast cars start doing that then there really is no advantage to it. it actually just makes things more dangerous cuz u have to pass a boatload of cars. im sure even though mark made it work this time, he would prefer not to do it again. cuz passing that many cars increases the risk of something going wrong. not to mention if u're driving flat out every lap then the engine might not last all of the races that it needs to. there's a reason why guys turn down the engines whenever they can.

also, while mark did very well, he did not win the race and really should not have gotten on the podium. if hamilton won the race then i dont see what went wrong with jenson. he was ahead of hamilton for pretty much the whole race. lewis had 1 extra set of tires so if anything button should have finished 2nd or 3rd but he destroyed his rears somehow even tho he was driving pretty slowly (took him a long time to get around massa, hamilton just drove straight past him). furthermore, if mercedes werent so dumb and actually gave rosberg enough fuel, rosberg would have been faster in that last stint. so realistically mark should probably have finished 4th or 5th so while it was impressive, it was not a race winning strategy.

he finished 7 seconds behind hamilton but i think hamilton could have gone even faster if he needed to, it's just that his engineer kept telling him not to go any faster cuz he was guaranteed to get past vettel.

another thing to consider is that the red bull is already at least 1.5 seconds faster than everyone else except for mclaren so while 2-3 seconds a lap on those tires is impressive, i think at least half of that is from the car itself. for example, if u put a renault or ferrari on that strategy mark was on and started them 18th, i doubt they would have ended up any higher than were they actually finished the race. so i'm not convinced that it is a good strategy to use.

either way my point is that mark's strategy was borne out of necessity and was not a race winning strategy so i doubt u'll see teams using it. they might however started doing what lewis did cuz that was definitely a good call to save an extra set of tires.

Yeah I agree mate. Mark's strategy is a little too risky but Lewis's was what I meant. One lap in the final part of qualifying - in fact it might make qualifying rather irrelevant and boring. Unless someone tries to scrape into Q3 without using any soft tyres until the final lap in qualifying...

Perhaps the strategists have underestimated 3 stop strategies until now too? At least if you can also save tyres on Saturday, it seems like a better strategy.

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Perhaps the top few teams could try...

1 run on hard tyres in Q1

1 run on soft tyres in Q2

Don't run in Q3.

Qualify 10th with a lot of fresh rubber.

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he wasnt being held up tho, he was just slow. kobayashi went around and re-passed him at one point cuz webber was driving so slowly.

I seriously doubt webber was purposely driving slowly. He started his first stint on the harder tyres, which were very slow before the track rubbered in, he simply didn't have the grip to blaze past the cars around him. Almost all of the cars on 2 stoppers were very slow by the end of their stints, due to the tyre degradation being higher than expected.

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I seriously doubt webber was purposely driving slowly. He started his first stint on the harder tyres, which were very slow before the track rubbered in, he simply didn't have the grip to blaze past the cars around him. Almost all of the cars on 2 stoppers were very slow by the end of their stints, due to the tyre degradation being higher than expected.

no doubt, thats why i never said he was doing it on purpose. he just couldnt help it cuz that was the speed of the car at the time. another poster said that if he werent being held up durign that part of the race, he would have finished second. but my point was that he wasn't being held upat all...he was just slow; the reason does not matter. kobayashi went around him like nothing and the sauber is definitely slower than the red bull so mark was not being held up during that part of the race.

as for the 2 stoppers, i dont think they were actually that much slower at the end of the race. it looks that way cuz hamilton and webber blazed past all of them with fresh rubber. if u look at all of the other 3 stoppers, they weren't much faster than everyone else. vettel was only slower than button and hamilton. but clearly his strategy worked better than button's 3 stopper cuz button led the first stint and ended up behind him. rosberg was ahead of massa at the beginning and it took a late overtake near the end of the race to get ahead of him. kovalainen beat maldonaldo in a slower car. so i dont think the 3 stop strategy was that good. it worked for hamilton cuz he had extra tires. but if u were a driver that didnt have a new set of the tires (i.e. button) that strategy actually sucked. cuz button would have finished behind vettel and webber on a 2 stop strategy anyways but the difference would be he wouldnt have had to pass rosberg, massa etc. to get there. it was a lot more dangerous to go on that 3 stop strategy than a 2 stop strategy cuz u have to overtake more cars. and if u look at it, the 2 stoppers weren't really struggling for pace. it seems that way because webber and hamilton were driving exceptionally fast. but if u compare them to the other guys, they were doing decent enough lap times. and u could see that while vettel was slower than hamilton he wasnt actually struggling with the car. he looked pretty steady and the car wasnt really sliding around. and button may have been going a little bit faster but that is irrelevant cuz he finished behind vettel even though he led him in the first stint. the strategy did not work cuz even tho he may have been faster at the end, he lost position overall.

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i'm not so sure. they might try it once or twice but if all of the fast cars start doing that then there really is no advantage to it. it actually just makes things more dangerous cuz u have to pass a boatload of cars. im sure even though mark made it work this time, he would prefer not to do it again. cuz passing that many cars increases the risk of something going wrong. not to mention if u're driving flat out every lap then the engine might not last all of the races that it needs to. there's a reason why guys turn down the engines whenever they can.

also, while mark did very well, he did not win the race and really should not have gotten on the podium. if hamilton won the race then i dont see what went wrong with jenson. he was ahead of hamilton for pretty much the whole race. lewis had 1 extra set of tires so if anything button should have finished 2nd or 3rd but he destroyed his rears somehow even tho he was driving pretty slowly (took him a long time to get around massa, hamilton just drove straight past him). furthermore, if mercedes werent so dumb and actually gave rosberg enough fuel, rosberg would have been faster in that last stint. so realistically mark should probably have finished 4th or 5th so while it was impressive, it was not a race winning strategy.

he finished 7 seconds behind hamilton but i think hamilton could have gone even faster if he needed to, it's just that his engineer kept telling him not to go any faster cuz he was guaranteed to get past vettel.

another thing to consider is that the red bull is already at least 1.5 seconds faster than everyone else except for mclaren so while 2-3 seconds a lap on those tires is impressive, i think at least half of that is from the car itself. for example, if u put a renault or ferrari on that strategy mark was on and started them 18th, i doubt they would have ended up any higher than were they actually finished the race. so i'm not convinced that it is a good strategy to use.

either way my point is that mark's strategy was borne out of necessity and was not a race winning strategy so i doubt u'll see teams using it. they might however started doing what lewis did cuz that was definitely a good call to save an extra set of tires.

Sorry, I'm not quite sure if this is what you meant, but we were talking about doing 1 timed lap in Q3. Red Bull did it a few times last year as well. Puts a bit of extra pressure on the driver and if you get blocked, weather changes, etc then you can be stuffed. However, it seems to be a bigger advantage this year on the Pirellis having at least an extra set of new tyres compared to those around you.

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Perhaps the top few teams could try...

1 run on hard tyres in Q1

1 run on soft tyres in Q2

Don't run in Q3.

Qualify 10th with a lot of fresh rubber.

hmmm doesn't sound unreasonable...esp on races where there's a lot of degradation...of course it's riskier than anything else...and you can get stuck in traffic sometimes if you're not fast enough...

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All sounds reasonable strategy, but can you imagine the outcry?

Then who would be to blame?

A ) Pirelli for making a race tyre, not a road car tyre

B ) The teams for working out how to best use the resources around them

C ) The fans for daring to ask for some entertainment

D ) Nico Rosberg for being so pretty

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Perhaps the top few teams could try...

1 run on hard tyres in Q1

1 run on soft tyres in Q2

Don't run in Q3.

Qualify 10th with a lot of fresh rubber.

What I think is that qualifying is in seriuous trouble now as it doesn't seem to be that important now, this last method was working pretty well up to now, I noticed before that some teams were just doing one Q3 lap but I didn't now the reason now that it seems to be the way to go o nor lap at all like you say and I don't see a solution to that problem unless they start giving some points for the final grid position on Q3.

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All sounds reasonable strategy, but can you imagine the outcry?

Then who would be to blame?

A ) Pirelli for making a race tyre, not a road car tyre

B ) The teams for working out how to best use the resources around them

C ) The fans for daring to ask for some entertainment

D ) Nico Rosberg for being so pretty

Definitely D, it has to be D.

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Perhaps the top few teams could try...

1 run on hard tyres in Q1

1 run on soft tyres in Q2

Don't run in Q3.

Qualify 10th with a lot of fresh rubber.

I thought something similar, though not as dramatic while watching China's Qualifying.

I thought "It's obvious that Ferrari can't compete with the Maccas or the RBRs, they should make just one run on hards and start from whatever they can accomplish with the hard compound"

9th with hards would have been better than 5th with softs. Let the chaos settle down and start fighting once you get the softs later in the race. Seems like the latter stages have much more impact than the earlier stages this year.

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I'm going to disagree with myself and not because I'm not female either.

I only posted that to start a hypothetical conversation. I didn't mean it as a serious suggestion at all.

Now you guys are treating it like it's not the ramblings of an insane mind and I'm worried that I'm now being insane to think that I was previously insane.

Bugger.

Essentially I was saying that Petrov would have won had they put him on a 3 stopper. I honestly don't think that's the case, though he could have been up in 6th/7th or something (probably just in front of Alonso - that's where we usually see him).

I think that Webber's charge back wasn't just down to having new tyres and it wasn't just down to him pulling off some superb driving and overtakes. It wasn't just down to the 3 stop strategy and it wasn't just down to the fact he was driving the best car on the grid.

It was due to a happy combination of all these factors.

So - trying my (insane?) idea of running 1 lap in Q1 and Q2 and then sitting in 10th for the start would work nicely, but only with a top car, a competitive driver (who's in the mood to go for it) and the perfect strategy (which would be different from the teams ahead of him).

That adds another problem...

If everyone had been on a 3 stopper Webber may well have not made the podium and Vettel would probably have won. I think more teams are going to see the benefits of stopping 3 times from now on, so there'll be less suckers on two stops to easily fly by on track. Hence starting from 18th isn't going to be quite as "easy" ever again.

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It would be a shame if any team(s) deliberately failed to do a lap in Q3 or did a deliberately slow lap just to gain a tactical advantage for the race by starting 10th with more fresh tyres. I wonder if there are any rules on that (due to the impact on the qualifying spectacle it would have).

Not that I think it will happen. I do think teams will start doing one run in Q3, though, to save an extra set of tyres (at least at tracks where passing will be possible this year). Pit stop strategy is still dependant on the degradation of the tyres, I don't think Red Bull (or whichever team) were particularly wary of doing 3 stop strategies before and will start considering it any more after China, they just got it wrong this time (and only very slightly wrong).

What's clear is strategy starts on Saturday and the race is no longer decided in qualifying. Excellent.

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snorrisstrags, on 19 April 2011 - 01:08 PM, said:

Perhaps the top few teams could try...

1 run on hard tyres in Q1

1 run on soft tyres in Q2

Don't run in Q3.

Qualify 10th with a lot of fresh rubber.

I can see that every team in Q3 will do this with the exception of Maccas and Red Bull. However if the Maccas and Red Bull are smart enough, they will wait to see if the other teams adopt this strategy and then do similar. If you were to able to get to 4th or 5th on the grid on Primes with those in front on Options, you would be very happy.

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I thought something similar, though not as dramatic while watching China's Qualifying.

I thought "It's obvious that Ferrari can't compete with the Maccas or the RBRs, they should make just one run on hards and start from whatever they can accomplish with the hard compound"

9th with hards would have been better than 5th with softs. Let the chaos settle down and start fighting once you get the softs later in the race. Seems like the latter stages have much more impact than the earlier stages this year.

They'de be too far down the order, not any track will offer the nuances of China. Imagine where they will qualify, they will barely make Q2, look what happened to Webber when they sent him out on hards and they thought it was enough to get him into Q2. They don't have the fastest car on the grid unlike Webber and although their race pace is good I don't see them making an impression like ole Webbo did over the weekend. and remember Alonso said it's impossible to race with the new tyres.

It will be too risky I say...

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They'de be too far down the order, not any track will offer the nuances of China. Imagine where they will qualify, they will barely make Q2, look what happened to Webber when they sent him out on hards and they thought it was enough to get him into Q2. They don't have the fastest car on the grid unlike Webber and although their race pace is good I don't see them making an impression like ole Webbo did over the weekend. and remember Alonso said it's impossible to race with the new tyres.

It will be too risky I say...

Sorry, what I meant about the hard tire wa assumning they already made it tto Q3, of course. Once they get to Q3, just do one run on hard tires and acccept whichever place they get. Other than that, yes, I see your point. James Allen (isn't it funny that both you and I are fans of his blog? :D) has made some very interesting observations on the strategy and nuances of China. For those who don't follow his blog, he remarked that one factor that surprised most teams was that the surface didn't rubber in as expected. That (along with many other stuff) explains why a 2 stopper strategy paid so little when teams expected much more from it. And that is one of the things none of us probably knew about (before someone comes here and say "I did" I will reply "well, but you didn't mention it before!) :P Yet here we are, discussing grand strategies totally oblivious of some factors that could have such an impact.

This is not to belittle anybody's opinions on strategies (heck, even I am pointing merrily away my own strategy as if I were il signore Domenicalli himself), just a note that not always they are that stupid and we know better.

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Sorry, what I meant about the hard tire wa assumning they already made it tto Q3, of course. Once they get to Q3, just do one run on hard tires and acccept whichever place they get.

I see your point, again quite risky, they'll end up at the lower end of the top 10, then could be overtaken and might be invloved with accidents. Again, if they pit they'll prolly end up in the midst of heavy traffic. Ferrari seems to be in a no-win situation... caused about by an aerodynamically inefficient car. Hard times ahead...

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Wonder if we'll see a 4 stopper anywhere.

TBH - I predict strategies will become a bit more standard (i.e. the top 5 teams will start adopting the same strategy at pretty much every race) as the racing heads in to Europe - first they'll start to get beter at predicting the pirelli's characteristics and second China and Malaysia are similar style tracks in a few ways. Going back to tracks with shorter straights in less heat will have a huge impact on the tyres and also the best strategy to employ. Things could perhaps become less exciting (although I hope not).

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Wonder if we'll see a 4 stopper anywhere.

TBH - I predict strategies will become a bit more standard (i.e. the top 5 teams will start adopting the same strategy at pretty much every race) as the racing heads in to Europe - first they'll start to get beter at predicting the pirelli's characteristics and second China and Malaysia are similar style tracks in a few ways. Going back to tracks with shorter straights in less heat will have a huge impact on the tyres and also the best strategy to employ. Things could perhaps become less exciting (although I hope not).

Good post. I share your fears about the engineers and the teams getting a handle on these tyre issues quickly and the outcome of that being that we do not see further examples of the racing we witnessed in Sepang and Shanghai. We've all been craving this type of racing for so long now that it would be a travesty if the teams all started mirroring each other when it comes to the use of tyres in qualifying and their strategies in the race.

What I'm now looking forward to seeing is the performance of the inters and the wet weather tyre. It would be very interesting if the first time that they were used was in a race rather than a FP session. Very little chance of it happening in Turkey but we must get at least one wet/damp race this season.

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