New cars three seconds off 2013 pace on first day

39 comments on “New cars three seconds off 2013 pace on first day”

1. 

   Magnificent Geoffrey (@magnificent-geoffrey)
   14th March 2014, 15:32

   For further reference, Hamilton’s 1’29.625 was:

   – Faster than the Pole position time in 1996, ’98, ’99 and 2000
   – Faster than the quickest race lap in 1996, ’97, ’98, ’99 and 2000
   – Four tenths off Raikkonen’s fastest race lap of 2013

   And as we know, they’re certain to get quicker on Saturday.
   1. 

      hobo (@hobo)
      14th March 2014, 15:41

      Yes, but they’re also certain to be slower on Sunday.
   2. 

      Bradley Downton (@bradley13)
      14th March 2014, 16:26

      @magnificent-geoffery – I wouldn’t say certain. Not if the predicted rain decides to intervene. Apparently we’re currently at 86% chance of rain and 92% chance of a thunderstorm for Qualifying…
      1. 

         JCost (@jcost)
         14th March 2014, 18:58

         I like that :)
         1. 

            matt90 (@matt90)
            14th March 2014, 19:03

            Do you not want to find out how fast they actually are over one lap?
            1. 

               MagillaGorilla (@magillagorilla)
               15th March 2014, 1:11

               @matt90 I’d rather see who the new rain masters are in these 4 times more torque driven machines. If yesterdays driving was any example of how tough they are with many guys going off or just outright spinning, then a rain soaked track will be far worse and show us the driver’s driver.
         2. 

            matt90 (@matt90)
            14th March 2014, 19:32

            Crikey
      2. 

         Paul (@frankjaeger)
         14th March 2014, 23:29

         Thunderstorm?! My quid bet on Kamui qualifying top @ 3500-1 has just become a little more realistic…Only a little though ; )
   3. 

      Robbie (@robbie)
      14th March 2014, 17:39

      All well and good to compare Hamilton’s 1’29.625 to selected past times, but what about the unselected past times? I think it is better to compare what this year’s pole time will be to other pole times…quickest race lap this Sunday to quickest race laps…etc etc.

      And who knows…I’m sure there’s some people out there that think by this time the cars should be 8 seconds faster than they were in the 90’s.
   4. 

      Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
      14th March 2014, 18:23

      It doesn’t faze me at all, the cars looked ragged even when tyre or fuel saving something that was missing last 4 years. The increase in top speed in melbourne seems to be very small perhaps as small has the advantage of a wider DRS and shallower rear wing profile, but maybe teams were not going at full power, we know that Renault were keen to use full power but for the sake of their opponents that’s all the new turbo solution Renault brought has to deliver because otherwise Red Bull are very comfortable in terms of downforce.
   5. 

      philip
      15th March 2014, 19:41

      Yeah and Vettel’s pole in 2011 was a 1:23.5, and Schumacher did a low 1:24 with race fuel in 2004 and a 1:24 during the race, that’s 6 seconds over 1 lap! Ridiculous.
2. 

   hunocsi (@hunocsi)
   14th March 2014, 15:47

   @keithcollantine I think you overlooked the FP1 speed traps, Bottas was even faster there.
3. 

   Paul (@frankjaeger)
   14th March 2014, 15:49

   I wouldn’t stress that the cars are 3 seconds off the pace of last years. After all, this is the first practice session-of the first grand prix-of the first year of a brand new regulations overhaul.

   Last years times were set with cars that have had 3 or 4 years since a previous large regulation change and had become fine tuned to their engines and energy recovery systems. Give it some time and I think these cars will be matching and beats the laps of the last generations. I doubt we have even seen half of the cars out there fully pushing in 100% racing mode
4. 

   Marcus Breese (@breesey)
   14th March 2014, 15:56

   Amazingly, looking at the long run pace it looks like it’s only Red Bull (particularly Vettel) who can hold a candle to Mercedes. Riccardo, Ferrari, McLaren, Force India (Perez) and Williams all looking like they’ll be fighting it out for the rest of the points. Usual fuel level disclaimers of course. Should be exciting qualifying tomorrow!
   1. 

      US_Peter (@us_peter)
      14th March 2014, 18:36

      Bottas looks like he’s right in there with Vettel. If reliability weren’t a concern and these times were all indicative of their true pace, you’d have to pick the Mercs to fight for the win, with Vettel and Bottas fighting for the final podium spot.

      That said, who knows what fuel loads everyone was running, and who knows what reliability will be. In years past Red Bull has often run pretty heavy in free practice so as not to give away their true pace. As for reliability that has to be a concern for all teams, even Mercedes. I think the gremlins will strike on Sunday, but who they strike will probably be somewhat random. I doubt we’ll see all the Mercedes engined cars finish while all the Renault engined cars retire for example. Some drivers/teams will be blessed with considerable luck while others will not. That said with the shape Caterham and Lotus are in it definitely looks like Renault engined cars will probably suffer the most overall.
5. 

   boardiccted (@boardiccted)
   14th March 2014, 16:05

   What was the difference between the lap times on the last major engine switch? Maybe from 2005 to 2006? Does anybody know?
   1. 

      Michael Brown
      14th March 2014, 17:30

      Approximately 1-1.5 seconds slower. Keep in mind that there are more significant changes this year as opposed to 2005-2006
6. 

   @HoHum (@hohum)
   14th March 2014, 16:08

   Only Bottas with 65 laps equalled the 65 laps of both STR Renaults exceeding by 1 lap only the 64 laps of Ricciardo’s RBR Renault.
   1. 

      JCost (@jcost)
      14th March 2014, 19:03

      @hohum Renault has done a remarkable job. Let’s see how they fare tomorrow and after tomorrow.
      1. 

         @HoHum (@hohum)
         14th March 2014, 19:20

         @jcost, yep the potential is there, but as Lewis proved in FP1, even the best of the new engines can have hidden weaknesses that can show up at any time.
         1. 

            BJ (@beejis60)
            14th March 2014, 19:33

            @hohum I expect a lot of electronic gremlins to appear for awhile, especially in the Renault cars due to their lack of running at “full power” if indeed they were not there in all of the testing.
7. 

   BABILLBA
   14th March 2014, 16:08

   Good gracious all this negative focus. New rules/engines/etc. there are bound to be growing pains. I for one am excited by the big shakeup. Sure beats watching Seb run off at a trot 9 straight times……I hope.
   1. 

      Eric Morman (@lethalnz)
      14th March 2014, 23:33

      your onto it BABILLBA,
      watching these cars slid around with out degrading the tyres and going off track by even the best of them has been more exciting than ever before,
      we will see guys loose positions because they can not keep it on the track while fighting for places, isn’t this what F1 is more about than all the nit picking going on in here?
      pick on something like the nose of these cars as that is the most disgusting thing in F1 i have ever seen.
8. 

   AdrianMorse (@adrianmorse)
   14th March 2014, 16:15

   It’s even harder to read these long runs this year than previous years. Not only don’t we know how much fuel they were carrying, we also don’t know how much fuel were saving. What strikes me though is that many drivers were able to put in pretty consistent runs, so at least they manage to keep the tyres alive.

   The biggest surprise for me today is Red Bull. Pre-season testing suggested they would fail spectacularly, but today’s running does not suggest either a deficit in pace (in lap time or straight-line speed) or any problems with reliability, as they completed as many laps as anybody – and this is just the first day of the season. I think I will have to start preparing mentally for title number five…
9. 

   pstaffan (@pstaffan)
   14th March 2014, 16:16

   Looking at the laptimes between Bottas, Alonso, Hamilton, Massa they all seem to be around the same laptimes.
   Massa about a sec down but he drove the harder tires during the long stint.

   Quali and the Race will be fun! And unpredictable.
10. 

    nidzovski (@nidzovski)
    14th March 2014, 16:17

    Scepticism and the fear of unknown are in the human nature of course, but when you think how big of a changes has happened in F1 2014 rules, than you realize that you have to give a credit to the engineers, and give time for things to fall into their places. Especially when you consider the fact that the time and resources required for developing such a radical new formula, parallel to the actual (2013 season), then one has to admire F1 as a championship/sport/business…. I think that we all have to give a break to F1 changes we are witnessing right now.
    And yes I don’t like the sound of this engines, not to mention double points Abu Dhabi charade. Regarding the sound I could give a break if they manage, in a reality, to finish the race with 2 thirds of last years fuel while racing on the edge not on the fumes, but there is no excuse for double points finale, especially when taking into account the fact that FIA didn’t give a damn about what F1 fans think about it or what F1 drivers and teams think about it!!!
11. 

    nairobiF1
    14th March 2014, 16:23

    Just catching up with events today and I’m reminded of a quote I read here back in 2012. This was in regards to th battle between Vettel and Alonso. It went something like, “if Alonso is to have a shot at winning the WDC , he had better put a very big gap between himself and Vettel by Hungary. This is because the RBR will come back like Bull seeing red.” Alonso seemed to have achieved that but RBR were simply too good that 2nd half.
    The same quote appeared last year, but it tool a more resigned tone,it went like “the championship is over already, if they let Vettel be on the lead after hungary, they might as well give him the title there.” We all know how it played out after that, he went on to just run rings around everyone for the 2nd hald of the season.
    I’m just wondering if people are still thinking along the same lines, I.e it’s not looking good seeing RBR so close to the top.
12. 

    nidzovski (@nidzovski)
    14th March 2014, 16:42

    And yet again what Maldonado think’s of his switch to Lotus?
13. 

    Jimbo (@jimbo)
    14th March 2014, 16:52

    I always forget this, but how is “Deficit to best” calculated?
    1. 

       Khalid (@leblep)
       14th March 2014, 18:02

       @jimbo The sector times you see in that table are not the sector times of the driver’s best lap, they are individial best sector times from possibly different laps. The ultimte lap time is the sum of these sector times and the deficit to best is the difference between this ultimate lap and the best lap.
       So for example in Vettel’s case, his best lap of the day was 1’30.381. But that lap did not contain all of his personal best sectors. He could in theory go in 1’30.239. I hope that makes sense.
    2. 

       Martin (@aardvark)
       14th March 2014, 18:09

       If you add the best times for each sector together, you get the “ultimate” time, i.e. the lap time the driver is theoretically capable of if he puts together the perfect lap.

       Compare with the best time actually achieved in the next table, and any difference is the “deficit to best”. In other words, the driver didn’t get his three best sectors all on the same lap. Maybe he made little mistakes here and there. But if he puts in a perfect lap, he should get the “ultimate” time.
14. 

    BasCB (@bascb)
    14th March 2014, 16:58

    I think i read that Rosberg mentioned that he had been above target fuel usage for almost every lap in FP today though, so it might be that their pace is really about the maximum available for the given amount of fuel. Off course when it rains that will be quite a different matter, as that is likely going to bring with it several laps behind the SC, which help them reach the line.
    1. 

       US_Peter (@us_peter)
       14th March 2014, 18:42

       @bascb Not to mention the fact that with so much torque and so little grip this year they likely won’t be able to run the engines at full power in the rain which will further conserve fuel.
15. 

    Djangles LeVaughn (@royal-spark)
    14th March 2014, 17:19

    I’m predicting pole will be a 1m 26.
16. 

    Oople
    14th March 2014, 17:26

    Disappointed to see no one referred to the fact last year’s times were set on Super Softs, and this year they were on Softs…

    I’d say ~1.2 seconds can be accounted for by that, alone… Which makes the difference far more palatable.
    1. 

       Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
       14th March 2014, 17:38

       I think that’s a good point but I wouldn’t be confident of putting an exact figure to it. Last year Pirelli said the performance difference between the medium and super-soft was around a second. While you would expect the difference between medium and soft this year to be smaller than that, as the compounds are more conservative we can’t really directly compare the two mediums year-on-year. That opens up a pretty big margin of error for how much slower these tyres are. I don’t doubt they will be accounting for some of the gap though.

       Like I said in the article, this is just one more data point, we’re still building up a full picture. The next two days will tell us more and Malaysia – which is much more representative of typical F1 tracks – should be far more useful.
       1. 

          Oople
          14th March 2014, 19:17

          Very true. I think I picked up 1.2 seconds from VDGs commentary, but there really is no sure fire way to compare.

          I wonder how much more of a picture the teams have on relative performance, or whether they’re speculating just as much as we are.
17. 

    Neel Jani (@neelv27)
    14th March 2014, 19:10

    Well firstly thanks to @keithcollantine for the analysis as his charts helps me a lot to have a more precise picture. 2014 Australia would be the trickiest race to predict in a long time due to countless variables. However I tried to analyse the laptimes of the top drivers. The method goes as follows,

    Drivers selected:
    Vettel
    Ricciardo
    Alonso
    Hamilton
    Rosberg
    Massa
    Bottas
    Button
    p.s. Kimi and Kevin were not really in the picture

    Method

    Took the first 11 laps of the drivers (since they were the least no. of laps in a stint of all).
    Removed the unrepresentative time spike from some drivers (eg. Lewis) since they must have incurred traffic and in that case added the 12th lap and so on.
    Calculated the avg lap time
    Calculated the standard deviation
    Assigned ranks to the best avg lap time and the least standard deviation
    Averaged both the ranks of each driver

    And this is the result

    Nico Rosberg has been the best driver in terms of speed as well as consistency compared to others.

    However on Sunday, rain might be the biggest variable and fuel saving will play a crucial role as well. At this stage, Nico Rosberg has been the best with the average rank of 3 while others are ranking in between 4 and 5.

    I am uploading the actual analysis file if anyone is interested to check out. Hope it helps.

    http://postimg.org/image/pfdsh46un/
18. 

    Matts_F1 (@ayrtons6094)
    14th March 2014, 21:53

    Last sector is the best indicator for downforce where Mercedes and Redbull are looking fast.

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