2012 Chinese Grand Prix lap charts

25 comments on “2012 Chinese Grand Prix lap charts”

1. 

   Alehud42 (@alehud42)
   15th April 2012, 22:37

   Take a look at the lap chart for Lewis and Jenson. Pretty much parallel.
   1. 

      Ed Marques (@edmarques)
      16th April 2012, 1:08

      Prelude to an epic finish?? Let’s hope so!
   2. 

      Alehud42 (@alehud42)
      16th April 2012, 1:22

      It shows that both drivers were pretty much matching each other over the race. Thus, relative grid position is a key factor in this inter-team battle.
      When either the die-hard Jenson or Lewis fans claim that their favourite has better race pace than the other, they are sorely mistaken.
      1. 

         James (@goodyear92)
         16th April 2012, 1:26

         Agreed. It annoys me seeing comments where people are saying Jenson did a better job today. He started ahead and finished ahead because they were fairly evenly matched and arguably Hamilton had to deal with more traffic. Had Hamilton not had that penalty he would have finished ahead for certain. I’m waiting till he gets a weekend with no bad luck atall. He deserves it, he’s made no mistakes so far.
   3. 

      Alfisti37 (@alfisti37)
      16th April 2012, 8:45

      @alehud42 And it’s interesting to see how costly was Jenson’s slow stop and how badly was held by Perez. Both were bad even to the same parallel extent.
      1. 

         smudgersmith1 (@smudgersmith1)
         16th April 2012, 17:26

         I actually thought Jenson dispensed of Perez quite quickly , whereas Lewis struggled and was saved when he pitted ( signed a JB fan!)
2. 

   John H (@john-h)
   15th April 2012, 23:45

   Vettel played down the Webber move at the end of the race, but his tyres were only 3 laps older looking at the lap chart. I quite liked the jinks they both had at each other, even though it could have been another Turkey.

   In all honesty though you have to give Vettel credit for almost getting a podium after being P15 after the start.
   1. 

      AndrewTanner (@andrewtanner)
      16th April 2012, 20:41

      @john-h I thought that myself. Damage limitation!
3. 

   Theoddkiwi (@theoddkiwi)
   16th April 2012, 0:17

   Wow you can see how tight the pack was and how hard the leading drivers had to work to make their way back to the front after each pit stop. would be interesting to see who made the most on track passes.
   1. 

      MooseVenom
      16th April 2012, 0:21

      Rosberg was controlling the pace all day. I think if Button had come out of the pits clean, Nico would have merely picked up the pace to maintain the gap.
      Dominant performance.
      Congratulations to Rosberg and Mercedes.
4. 

   Nigel
   16th April 2012, 8:50

   What cost both McLarens the chance of victory was their grid positions.

   Had they been on the first or second row, and avoided tyre wearing traffic, either might have challenged for the win. A competitive midfield together with tyres which degrade rapidly when battling for track position have increased the benefits of leading from the start.

   I expect the leading teams to push very hard indeed to get their version of the Mercedes F-duct developed and racing.
   1. 

      Nick.UK (@)
      17th April 2012, 0:06

      @Nigel Remember though that the effects of that Mercedes system had no part to play in the race. It is only useful when the wing is open. Rosberg overtook no cars as far as I can remember. The W03 is a very quick car even without it.
      1. 

         Bigbadderboom (@bigbadderboom)
         17th April 2012, 9:59

         @Nick.UK i think to qualify that, you would need to add a very quick car around China. I think the circuits characteristics perfectly matched the cars attributes. I’m sure they will develop the car, but around around other warmer twisty circuits I think it will struggle.
5. 

   andae23 (@andae23)
   16th April 2012, 9:11

   Just something I noticed: Massa has driven 80 laps inside the top ten so far, but doesn’t have a single point. Meanwhile Ricciardo has driven exactly 1 lap inside the top ten (final lap Melbourne), and has two points!
6. 

   DT (@dt)
   16th April 2012, 11:44

   one thing certain here is that Mclaren needs to work on its pit stop. The mistakes coming from them is getting annoying… They did that countless number of times last year and have done it twice this year. They are letting their drivers down and need to work on that area ASAP.
   1. 

      Bogz
      16th April 2012, 13:27

      Better it happened to JB. If it was LH then we now have a conspiracy theories. :)
7. 

   roadie
   16th April 2012, 13:27

   Would it be possible to see a chart of each drivers lap times too? That would really help to show who was quick where!
   1. 

      Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
      16th April 2012, 16:19

      I do that for every race, here’s the one for China:

      2012 Chinese Grand Prix fastest laps

      And here’s the rest for this year:

      Race charts Lap charts, lap times and pit stop strategy information for every race.
      1. 

         roadie
         16th April 2012, 16:34

         Awesome, thanks Keith!
8. 

   Ryan
   16th April 2012, 15:58

   Can you do a chart with the actual lap times, so that we can compare like for like. Whilst the gap to first is informative, it would be nice to see how the lap times of different drivers were matching up, and whether Button and Hamilton catching Rosberg was due more to their car getting faster or Rosberg’s dropping off.
   1. 

      Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
      16th April 2012, 16:19

      See reply to previous comment.
      1. 

         Ryan
         16th April 2012, 17:02

         Thanks Keith. I went there brfoe but my browser never loaded the chart. My bad.
9. 

   Force Maikel (@force-maikel)
   16th April 2012, 19:18

   This is a good analysis but you have to take in to account that Rosberg was just managing the gap once he knew button was in traffic long enough. So if button would not have had that stop Rosberg could have given more and his lap times could have been better. But off course I’m just a simple soul what do I know about data.
10. 

    lubhz (@lubhz)
    17th April 2012, 0:55

    What happened to Massa? He lost 14 places TWICE. The first time was during his 1st stop, in fact he lost 2 places on the lap before, and 12 when changing tires. But interesting was on lap 40, he lost 7 places, than went to change tyres on the following lap, costing him other 7 places. Did his tyres fall of the cliff like Kimi’s? I haven’t heard anything about that.
11. 

    Tyran
    22nd April 2012, 17:52

    Love the race chart. Almost exactly what I was looking for, which is illustrated by the following spreadsheat

    F1_Race_Graph.ods

    Sorry, the documment is in open office format.

    The changes being that the graph should be scalled to the mean winning race pace, rather than the leaders lap time, and express time deficits as negatives. This has several nice properties. 1) The leader is at the top of the graph, not the bottom. 2) You can see more clearly the leader pulling ahead of the mean race pace only to fall back below after a pitstop. 3) you can see when it started to rain and everones pace fell dramatically for a few laps.

    I hope you can work these ideas into your website charts.

    Where do you get the raw timing and scoring data?

    Ty

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