2016 Japanese Grand Prix lap charts

2016 Japanese Grand Prix

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Sebastian Vettel defended Ferrari from criticism of their strategy despite a late pit stop which potentially cost him a podium finish.

Vettel was running in third place with 20 laps to go when a pursuing Lewis Hamilton pitted before him and used the ‘undercut’ to jump ahead.

2016 Japanese Grand Prix in pictures
Ferrari realised the were at risk of losing the position soon enough to switch Vettel to a set of soft tyres when he made his final pit stop on the next lap. But he was unable to mount an attack on Hamilton, and dropped back from the Mercedes as the stint wore on.

“We tried to go on the softer tyre in the end, which initially we thought would work well, but then we had too much degradation and we were falling off this group,” said Vettel.

“It is always easy to criticise, and I am sure there are many ‘experts’ that knew better, but on the pit wall as well as in the car, I was keen to go for this strategy so to extend the second stint.”

Vettel dropped almost 15 seconds behind Hamilton at the end of the race, and was unable to take advantage when the Mercedes driver went off at the chicane on the penultimate lap as he tried to pass Max Verstappen.

Ferrari’s strategy worked better for Kimi Raikkonen, who was able to jump ahead of Daniel Ricciardo through his final pit stop. He used hard tyres for his 27-lap final stint.

2016 Japanese Grand Prix lap chart

The positions of each driver on every lap. Scroll to zoom, drag to pan, click name to highlight, right-click to reset. Toggle drivers using controls below:

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2016 Japanese Grand Prix race chart

The gaps between each driver on every lap compared to the leader’s average lap time. Very large gaps omitted. Scroll to zoom, drag to pan and right-click to reset. Toggle drivers using controls below:

2016 Japanese Grand Prix

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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4 comments on “2016 Japanese Grand Prix lap charts”

  1. We’re not “experts”, but we can see the obvious… says a lot about Ferrari’s actual experts on the matter.

    1. Us fans might know better and maybe we can do better. But not that difficult considering they set the bar pretty low this year .

  2. Force India deserves the fourth place ahead of Williams, the two pairs were separated by 40 seconds

  3. Just curious, how are the (lead) laps counted? Hamilton was actually in the lead for the entire lap 13, but every source claims that Rosberg was. Is it because Rosberg was ahead for the last 50 meters of the lap and crossed the finish line before Hamilton could in the pit lane?

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