Ferrari and Red Bull closely matched on early stints

Fernando Alonso, Ferrari, Melbourne, 2011

Mark Webber was over a second faster than Fernando Alonso in first practice.

But Red Bull and Ferrari were much more closely-matched over longer runs in first practice.

Longest stint comparison

The graph below compares the lap times done by each driver during their longest stint. Use the controls below to show and hide different laps.

A few points of note:

Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso’s lap times were closely matched in their stints
Rubens Barrichello appears to be ‘best of the rest’ in the Williams
McLaren did the longest stints by far
Timo Glock did very little running in the Virgin

https://www.racefans.net/charts/2011drivercolours.csv

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13
Sebastian Vettel	98.126	90.154	88.434	94.009	87.869	87.739	88.065	94.967
Mark Webber	89.316	87.45	97.098	89.633	86.831
Lewis Hamilton	91.315	90.679	90.05	97.443	90.282	90.339	90.517	92.103	90.112	90.338	91.088	90.48	93.559
Jenson Button	89.466	89.409	88.946	89.377	90.002	93.124	89.706	89.929	94.835	90.269	90.745	90.695	90.44
Fernando Alonso	89.436	95.365	88.819	93.075	87.958	87.749
Felipe Massa	92.275	88.927	93.969	91.283	88.842	105.029	109.259
Michael Schumacher	89.204	88.782	99.713	88.965	107.358	88.69
Nico Rosberg	88.152	93.975	95.754	89.83	94.53	90.081
Nick Heidfeld	96.927	96.248	91.201	91.767	90.122	89.381
Vitaly Petrov	93.575	95.344	90.477	89.042	88.765
Rubens Barrichello	94.439	88.594	97.368	88.606	88.43
Pastor Maldonado	104.351	91.657	90.242	101.654	92.304	89.96	89.403
Adrian Sutil	91.579	94.423	92.942	89.314
Nico Hulkenberg	98.755	96.561	93.555	93.754	92.818	93.71	98.216
Kamui Kobayashi	94.055	93.329	90.891	94.733	90.677	89.375
Sergio Perez	99.465	93.797	91.434	95.952	90.322	97.476	89.686
Sebastien Buemi	91.948	90.704	90.122	90.263	89.979
Daniel Ricciardo	101.237	96.086	94.562	105.429	93.061	91.973
Heikki Kovalainen	94.875	93.288	92.428	103.267	95.98	95.116
Karun Chandhok
Narain Karthikeyan
Vitantonio Liuzzi
Timo Glock	96.757	95.549
Jerome d’Ambrosio	100.938	97.606	99.856	95.767	95.282	99.295	95.372

Ultimate lap times

An ultimate lap is a driver’s best three sector times added together.

Sergio Perez looks to have comparable pace to team mate Kamui Kobayashi.

But there are no comforting signs for Virgin in their sector times. First practice indicates they’re over two seconds slower than the 107% time. If they can’t beat that in Q1, they won’t be allowed to start the race.

	Car	Driver	Car	Ultimate lap	Gap	Deficit to best
1	2	Mark Webber	Red Bull-Renault	1’26.828		0.003
2	1	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull-Renault	1’27.146	0.318	0.012
3	5	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1’27.749	0.921	0.000
4	8	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1’27.956	1.128	0.196
5	11	Rubens Barrichello	Williams-Cosworth	1’28.161	1.333	0.269
6	4	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1’28.415	1.587	0.025
7	7	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes	1’28.462	1.634	0.228
8	3	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren-Mercedes	1’28.483	1.655	0.000
9	16	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber-Ferrari	1’28.725	1.897	0.000
10	10	Vitaly Petrov	Renault	1’28.765	1.937	0.000
11	6	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	1’28.771	1.943	0.071
12	9	Nick Heidfeld	Renault	1’28.849	2.021	0.079
13	17	Sergio Perez	Sauber-Ferrari	1’29.054	2.226	0.589
14	14	Adrian Sutil	Force India-Mercedes	1’29.237	2.409	0.077
15	19	Daniel Ricciardo	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1’29.293	2.465	0.175
16	18	Sebastien Buemi	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1’29.306	2.478	0.022
17	12	Pastor Maldonado	Williams-Cosworth	1’29.403	2.575	0.000
18	15	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	1’31.002	4.174	0.000
19	20	Heikki Kovalainen	Lotus-Renault	1’32.267	5.439	0.161
20	24	Timo Glock	Virgin-Cosworth	1’35.065	8.237	0.224
21	25	Jerome d’Ambrosio	Virgin-Cosworth	1’35.155	8.327	0.127

Complete first practice times

	Car	Driver	Car	Best lap	Gap	Stint lap	At time	Laps
1	2	Mark Webber	Red Bull-Renault	1’26.831		5/5	92	20
2	1	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull-Renault	1’27.158	0.327	2/5	88	19
3	5	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1’27.749	0.918	6/6	80	20
4	8	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1’28.152	1.321	1/6	84	16
5	11	Rubens Barrichello	Williams-Cosworth	1’28.430	1.599	5/5	93	24
6	4	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1’28.440	1.609	1/1	54	29
7	3	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren-Mercedes	1’28.483	1.652	6/6	50	26
8	7	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes	1’28.690	1.859	6/6	91	14
9	16	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber-Ferrari	1’28.725	1.894	2/2	84	13
10	10	Vitaly Petrov	Renault	1’28.765	1.934	5/5	92	15
11	6	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	1’28.842	2.011	5/7	72	20
12	9	Nick Heidfeld	Renault	1’28.928	2.097	3/3	92	14
13	14	Adrian Sutil	Force India-Mercedes	1’29.314	2.483	4/4	91	19
14	18	Sebastien Buemi	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1’29.328	2.497	4/4	92	21
15	12	Pastor Maldonado	Williams-Cosworth	1’29.403	2.572	7/7	90	24
16	19	Daniel Ricciardo	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1’29.468	2.637	4/5	88	23
17	17	Sergio Perez	Sauber-Ferrari	1’29.643	2.812	2/6	85	18
18	15	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	1’31.002	4.171	3/3	47	20
19	20	Heikki Kovalainen	Lotus-Renault	1’32.428	5.597	3/6	57	13
20	25	Jerome d’Ambrosio	Virgin-Cosworth	1’35.282	8.451	5/7	89	17
21	24	Timo Glock	Virgin-Cosworth	1’35.289	8.458	1/1	81	15
22	21	Karun Chandhok	Lotus-Renault

2011 Australian Grand Prix

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Image © Ferrari spa/Ercole Colombo

9 comments on “Ferrari and Red Bull closely matched on early stints”

davey (@djdaveyp87)
25th March 2011, 4:57

Very worrying there for Virgin. I really don’t think any team that gets DNQ’S will last a season. Still, at least they have done some laps, lets see if HRT can get their cars together in time!

bosyber (@bosyber)
25th March 2011, 5:10

My thoughts exactly. Good to see McLaren finally get some longer stints done :-p

graigchq (@graigchq)
25th March 2011, 5:16

this is quite interesting. I think it’s unfair to say Rubens was best of the rest, given that he has split the Mercedes and Ferraris and beaten both McLarens. What would be fairer is to put Williams in the leading pack, and say McLaren are the best of the rest.

However, if a McLaren can do 20% or more longer stints, then ultimate lap means very little. Imagine if they can somehow pull a race in two tops when most of the rest are doing three if not four.

If it’s worse than that, and most teams are doing five pit stops, then it’s even more possible that one team can smoothly get away with a full stop or two less than those blistering their tyres.

This is so godamn exciting I almost wet myself

Mouse_Nightshirt (@mouse_nightshirt)
25th March 2011, 7:37

Considering McLaren have now topped P2, those stint times appear very consistent. McLaren could be very dangerous this season.

BasCB (@bascb)
25th March 2011, 7:12

That last table is great Keith, just what we needed to understand a bit of thos times. McLaren is a lot slower, but hteir fastest laps were set much earlier in the session.

A bit of a worry for Virgin.

F1iLike
25th March 2011, 9:06

I like the new “Complete first practice times” with stints and so on.
I just wish there was an option to “untick all” in the lap time graph! I find it very annoying to have to click every name and to find some info..