The teams are facing some tricky choices between the hard and soft tyre compounds at Shanghai this weekend.
Take a closer look at how they got in in second practice with our interactive chart:
The chart shows each driver’s lap time (in seconds, on the vertical axis) and when they set them (in minutes, on the horizontal axis):
View interactive chart fullscreen
Mark Webber thinks the difference in performance between the hard and soft tyres will give teams something to think about:
We have a lot of stuff go through tonight about how the tyres are around here ?óÔé¼ÔÇ£ it?óÔé¼Ôäós the first track where they are behaving a little differently to other venues.
Mark Webber
His team mate’s times for stints on the hard and soft tyres respectively show the soft tyres start off quicker than the hard tyres, as you’d expect, and nine laps in their degradation still doesn’t seem too bad:
Hard: 100.492, 100.000, 100.189, 99.993, 99.984, 99.760, 99.682, 100.410, 102.689, 99.187, 99.513, 99.408, 99.348, 105.792
Soft: 99.990, 99.811, 99.732, 108.306, 99.588, 99.728, 99.998, 99.850, 99.953, 108.574
The team will be studying the wear on the tyres that came off Sebastian Vettel and Webber’s cars to see how far into the race they think the soft tyre will last.
Ferrari had a busy day, trying to test their F-duct while coping with Fernando Alonso’s engine failure in the first practice session. Their positions in the speed trap rankings make interesting reading:
Practice one
| Driver | Car | Speed | |
| 1 | Felipe Massa | Ferrari | 316.1kph |
| 2 | Fernando Alonso | Ferrari | 315.4kph |
| 3 | Kamui Kobayashi | Sauber | 309.8kph |
| 4 | Lewis Hamilton | McLaren | 309.8kph |
In second practice they slipped to fifth and seventh, recording around 311kph. Teams usually turn their engines down for Friday practice, not wishing to waste engine life, but perhaps Ferrari turned theirs down further after Alonso’s failure in the first session?
Michael Schumacher ran a new rear wing on the Mercedes (see pictures here) and pronounced himself happy with it but doesn’t expect the team to suddenly get on terms with Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari:
We brought some improvements here including the new rear wing which have helped. So I am quite confident for the rest of the weekend even if the overall ranking will not change much from the first three races.
I was a bit unlucky this morning as I had a puncture on my rear left prime tyre so we had to use one from the afternoon’s allocation. That meant I only had three new tyres in the second session but it worked out fine in the end.
Michael Schumacher
Both Renault drivers complained of a shortage of grip and Kubica is especially concerned to get on top of the team’s qualifying pace:
We still need to improve the overall balance of the car because we are still lacking overall grip, especially on low fuel runs, but the car felt much better on heavy fuel.
Robert Kubica
Sutil said he’s “expecting a similar qualifying and race performance to Malaysia” but without rain in qualifying I can’t see the VJM03 starting fourth on the grid again – with the ‘big four’ and Robert Kubica in the top ten, anything above tenth will be a result.
Liuzzi, meanwhile, struggled with the soft tyres:
The car was behaving well but then after we changed to the soft tyre we were sliding all over the place and struggling to get the temperatures in the tyres. It was a big frustration as the car was not there any more. It was strange as it was such a clear change from hard to soft. We need to look into this problem but I think we can be positive about the rest of the day as on the hard tyres we seem to be quite strong.
Vitantonio Liuzzi
Sebastien Buemi’s agitation was clear for all to see after his horror crash in first practice – and who could blame him? As in Bahrain, Buemi wasn’t able to get a full day’s running in on Friday:
There?óÔé¼Ôäós not much to say about what happened in FP1. I braked, the wheels came off and that was it. Physically, I was fine though. But I have to say, I am extremely disappointed that, once again, through no fault of my own, I have been unable to run for almost all of the three hours available.
I will have to try and catch up on Saturday morning and we will be relying on Jaime?óÔé¼Ôäós data from today to see which way to go.
Sebastien Buemi
His team mate felt the soft tyre looked a more promising choice than the hard tyre for the race.
On their first visit to Shanghai Lotus changed their gear ratios between the first two practice sessions to improve their trade-off between top speed on the long straight and acceleration in the twisty infield.
Mike Gascoyne said he wasn’t worried about the problem which caused Heikki Kovalainen to stop:
Heikki pulled over after 30 laps as he had a low oil pressure warning and he stopped the car, but it?óÔé¼Ôäós not a problem and we?óÔé¼Ôäóre looking forward to getting out again tomorrow.
Mike Gascoyne
At Virgin, Nick Wirth said Timo Glock’s front wing failure in the first practice session was down to them being too ambitious on their ride height:
Shanghai is the first circuit we?óÔé¼Ôäóve come to where we?óÔé¼Ôäóve had less than perfect track data for our simulators and along with some of the other teams we were caught out by the huge bump going into turn 1. We had been a bit brave on our initial front ride height, which resulted in Timo?óÔé¼Ôäós front wing hitting the ground hard, necessitating a wing change.
However, once we?óÔé¼Ôäód allowed for this bump in the set-up, the rest of the day was trouble-free, and our improving reliability allowed us to try a range of tests that we haven?óÔé¼Ôäót previously been able to do. The circuit is extremely bumpy and we?óÔé¼Ôäóve explored different ways to cope with this using the tools on the car that we have available right now.
Nick Wirth
2010 Chinese Grand Prix
- 2010 Chinese Grand Prix – the complete F1 Fanatic review
- Ferrari deny Alonso-Massa rift
- Points for Petrov and first McLaren 1-2 since 2007 (Chinese GP stats and facts)
- Safety car spares Hamilton and Alonso’s blushes (Chinese Grand Prix analysis)
- Chinese Grand Prix fastest laps
- Chinese Grand Prix in pictures
- Webber loses out in safety car incident
- Button leads McLaren to one-two in wet race
- Hamilton’s pit lane dice with Vettel could cost him second (Update: no penalty)
- Button takes lead in title race – full points standings after China
DMW
16th April 2010, 19:21
Regarding the speed traps, it’s interesting that the Ferraris were much faster in Q1 on the straight but 1.4+ seconds off the pace. Regardless of what they were doing with the engines, that top speed is not bona fide.
Marc Connell
16th April 2010, 19:52
thats probably because of there F-duct or something. Maybe they made one better than the mclarens.
TomD11
16th April 2010, 22:47
But I thought it was only Alonso who had the F-duct.
Adam
16th April 2010, 20:33
Hamilton already getting down to last year’s quickest lap in qualifying, give or take a tenth.
martinb
16th April 2010, 21:17
First time I’ve noticed that interactive chart. Very fancy! Must take you hours to set up.
Patrickl
16th April 2010, 22:00
Dunno how Keith does it, but I make the same charts in an Access database. Just paste in the lap times sheet and the data rolls out.
My chart is not that fancy though. Just an Excel type chart
One step I add is to clean the outliers. I remove the in and out laps and the laps where they are cooling off or are creating a gap (ie the laps with more than a threshold over the fastest laptime of the stint)
That leaves me generally with two neat sets of lines. The qualy and the race simulations really stand out then.
BTW I love the Flash charts. We’ve been using php packages for generating charts for our (client’s) websites. I’ll see if we can start using these Flash charts too.
Matt
16th April 2010, 22:55
Blimey I wish I had as much time as you!
sato113
16th April 2010, 23:34
what job do you have patrickl?
Patrickl
17th April 2010, 1:11
I own a small company that writes custom software and builds/hosts websites, So I can combine hobby and work. Or is that hobby and hobby? :)
My dream was to use the live data feed to populate charts like these in real time. I “hacked” the live data feed, but then I sort of lost interest.
martinb
17th April 2010, 10:03
Any idea what the horizontal axis is? Ends at 93. Can’t be minutes because there are 60 minutes in a session. Can’t be laps because you can’t squeeze more than 40 laps into a session.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
17th April 2010, 10:06
There are 90 minutes in practice one and two, but the axis goes beyond 90 because after the chequered flag comes out drivers can still complete laps.
martinb
17th April 2010, 12:23
Oh. My TV guide gives 90 min for P1, 60 min for P2 and P3.
Just shows. Trust F1Fanatic, not Bill O’Reilly and his media empire.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
17th April 2010, 13:56
Words to live by :-)
martinb
17th April 2010, 13:21
I’ve just learned something. On the chart, you need to tick the driver’s box to show his times.
As shown, all the boxes are ticked so the chart looks like confetti. What you should do is untick all the boxes, then tick the boxes of the drivers you are interested in. Only their data will show.
For instance, compare Schumacher and Rosberg. Schumi did 3 laps, 3 laps, 3 laps, 2 laps, then finally 12 consistently fast laps.
Nico did 4 laps, 4 laps, 2 laps, 5 laps, 2 laps. His times were all over the place.
Looks like Schumacher found his settings, then toured around learning the track, while Rosberg battled to find the sweet spot.
bob
17th April 2010, 18:20
These are really modern charts, but I usually print them, but these are impossible to print normally. I want old charts back please
Patrickl
17th April 2010, 18:43
These chart print just fine. You can even click on the “Fullpage” link and print the chart full page.
bob
17th April 2010, 19:45
I tried, but it prints only 1/4 of chat in one page
Patrickl
17th April 2010, 21:15
Odd. I’m using IE8 and it’s printing just fine. It scales to the whole page, so if anything it’s too big.
Maybe you can change the page setup before you print? Set the page to landscape or set it so that it prints all on one page?
bob
17th April 2010, 22:09
I press right button on mouth, then print bu it has only some features like how many copies and so on, but no page setups
Patrickl
17th April 2010, 22:38
I used the print preview and print setup of the browser itself. The (full page) flash chart simply scales to the whole page.
In the print preview you can see what you will get on paper.
When I right click on the flash chart I get “Printer preferences” though. I’d assume I’d be able to set it there too. At least my printer drivers show a “fit to page” checkbutton on one of the settings tabs
bob
18th April 2010, 7:22
Oh, now I understood. Big thanks. But I ill try it later :)
bob
18th April 2010, 7:28
But it is styill too small. And does anyone knows why my printscreen doesnt works ?
Patrickl
18th April 2010, 22:19
Lol, still didn’t get it to work?
I’m using IE8 on Windows and what I do is:
– Click on the “View interactive chart fullscreen” link
– Then pret CTRL+P (or select “Print” from th e menu)
– Click on the Preferences button and set “landscape” somewhere in the settings (depends on you rprinter drivers)
– Click OK a couple of times.
– One full page print rolls out.