Lap time watch: How much quicker were the 2017 cars?

2017 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

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The 2017 F1 rules were intended to create faster cars. That clearly happened, but just how big a step did they take?

The goal was to reduce the best lap time from the 2015 Spanish Grand Prix weekend by five seconds. That target was met, but most tracks didn’t see the same kind of performance gain over a 24-month period.

On average, the cars were four-and-a-half seconds quicker than they had been two years ago. That included a peak gain over more than nine seconds at Sepang, though this was partly down to the track being resurfaced and changes in tyre compounds.

The cars lapped quicker at every circuit than they did last year. This was even the case at Monza, a track whose long straights and limited number of corners didn’t play to the strengths of the latest cars, which gained most time in medium-to-high speed bends.

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The Italian track was the only venue where the new cars did not beat the previous race weekend track record. Had Saturday not been wet Juan Pablo Montoya’s 2004 record lap of 1’19.525 may well have fallen.

Despite this, the 2017 cars were on average 2.3 seconds faster than last year’s machines.

Abu Dhabi was fairly typical of the year. Valtteri Bottas broke the track record and lapped 2.5 seconds inside last year’s best.

But while Mercedes has often been the team to beat, Renault has consistently been one of the most-improved teams. At Yas Marina they were again the team which had made the most progress in the last 12 months.

2017 Abu Dhabi 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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7 comments on “Lap time watch: How much quicker were the 2017 cars?”

  1. ”The cars lapped quicker at every circuit than they did last year. This was even the case at Monza, a track whose long straights and limited number of corners didn’t play to the strengths of the latest cars, which gained most time in medium-to-high speed bends.” – Incorrect, the fastest lap (FP2) of the Italian GP weekend was slightly slower than last year’s pole lap.

  2. ”On average, the cars were four-and-a-half seconds quicker than they had been two years ago. That included a peak gain over more than nine seconds at Sepang, though this was partly down to the track being resurfaced and changes in tyre compounds.” – No, it wasn’t really down to the tyre compounds as the tyres this year are harder than in recent seasons despite having the same compound names.

    1. Michael Brown (@)
      25th November 2017, 18:18

      @jerejj Specifically referring to tires used at Sepang.

      1. @mbr-9 Yeah, but 2017 supersoft is harder than 2015 medium, so that’s why it’s irrelevant what the name of the softest compound used in each occasion is. The gain of +9 seconds in Malaysia was down to these two factors: The fastest 2015 lap was set in a practice session rather than in qualifying, so therefore, we never got to see the full potential of the 2015 cars on this particular circuit. Had the fastest 2015 time been the equivalent pole time, then the gap, of course, would’ve been significantly smaller, and of course, the resurfacing of the tarmac for 2016 had an impact as well.

  3. The improvement in ultimate lap time on this circuit on last season was a bit more than I expected. I expected it to be around 2 seconds, not as much as 2.5 seconds.

  4. I wonder what the improvements will be like in 2018, particularly in the first half where many lap time improvements were similar to / smaller than those of 2015–16.

    It would also be useful to see the percentage lap time improvements at each track, so the comparison is not affected by the length of each circuit.

  5. How on earth is it possible that Toro Rosso is the second most-improved team if they are only 17th and 20th on the grid? Last year Kvyat set a 1:42.003 and this year Gasly set a 1:39.724, which is 2.3 seconds or 2.3% faster. I don’t know if the Toro Rossos were quicker in free practice this year, but given their engine situation, that seems unlikely.

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