Hamilton on top as suspected gearbox problem halts Verstappen

30 comments on “Hamilton on top as suspected gearbox problem halts Verstappen”

1. 

   Jere (@jerejj)
   6th July 2018, 11:58

   But still eight tenths off last season’s pole time (1:26.600). I was expecting it to get beaten in the first session already as that happened in Montmelo where the entire track had also been resurfaced ahead of this season’s race weekend.
   1. 

      Matthijs (@matthijs)
      6th July 2018, 14:01

      @jerejj The reason could be that in Catalunya Pirelli brought a softer tyre than last year, whereas they brought a harder compound for Silverstone
      1. 

         Jere (@jerejj)
         6th July 2018, 14:12

         @matthijs Actually, the compounds for the British GP this season aren’t harder than the ones from last season, but rather the same rubber-wise despite having different names. The soft from this season is the same as the super-soft from the previous season, and the same with 2018 medium/2017 soft, and 2018 hard/2017 medium.
2. 

   Mashiat (@mashiat)
   6th July 2018, 12:01

   I’m expecting Mercedes domination this weekend, with a track layout that suits them, and more importantly, tyres that suit them. I expect Haas to be equally good in the battle for best of the rest.
   1. 

      Jere (@jerejj)
      6th July 2018, 12:16

      @mashiat ”I’m expecting Mercedes domination this weekend”
      – That was the expectation, for example, for the Canadian GP as well, and we all know how that eventually panned out.
      1. 

         Mashiat (@mashiat)
         6th July 2018, 12:51

         @jerejj Not for me, Canada had cooler temperatures, softer tyres and slow corners; it was a Ferrari track all day.
      2. 

         Kribana (@krichelle)
         6th July 2018, 13:03

         You forget that in Canada over the years, Ferrari has been close to them. At Silverstone, the gap to Ferrari has been crazily huge. Remember, in 2016 Red Bull were closer to Mercedes and Ferrari and in 2015, it was Williams who were behind the Mercedes. Let’s not forget 2017 when they were at least half a second slower than them. Let us also remember that here you can overtake due to the medium-high speed exits particularly on the Hangar Straight. The main problem with overtaking is that most exits of corners leading to an overtaking zone are slow corners. You need medium to high speed corners to give the drivers a better chance.
         1. 

            Jere (@jerejj)
            6th July 2018, 14:16

            @krichelle ”The main problem with overtaking is that most exits of corners leading to an overtaking zone are slow corners. You need medium to high speed corners to give the drivers a better chance.”
            – Wrong, it’s actually the other way round. A slow-speed corner preceding a long(ish) straight generally gives a better chance to overtake into the turn following the straight than a medium or a high-speed corner as it’s easier to follow another car closely through a slow-speed corner than a medium or a high-speed one.
            1. 

               DaveW (@dmw)
               6th July 2018, 15:13

               I have to agree with Krichelle and this is a major issue I have with how Tilke tends to put hairpins in front of long straights. It doesn’t promote passing. It just gives the car ahead a jump because the chasing car is still unwinding the steering while the quarry has his pedal on the floor. It doesn’t matter as much that you can’t tuck up under the other guy’s wing on a medium corner because you can still be closing in the corner if you have superior performance in the car or if you are far enough back. Look at how Interlagos has good passing even though it is a fairly short track.
   2. 

      Esploratore (@esploratore)
      6th July 2018, 22:59

      I agree, mashiat, I was expecting ferrari to have the strongest car in canada cause of their baku performance, it doesn’t matter they didn’t win there, it was noticeable they had the best car when straights make up a big % of the track.

      Silverstone is not the same thing, there are several fast turns but not that long straights, so I should expect hamilton domination, even because of the tyres, but don’t forget this year hamilton has been subpar at 2 tracks he usually dominates at: china and canada, so he did 2, he might as well do 3, but apart from that, mercedes should be at least better than ferrari which should be better than red bull.
3. 

   GeeMac (@geemac)
   6th July 2018, 12:07

   0.7 between 7th and 14th…the qualifying battle in the midfield is going to be incredible.
4. 

   Jesper (@jesperfey13)
   6th July 2018, 12:13

   Verstappen 0.8s of the pace on used mediums gives Red Bull some perspective perhaps..
5. 

   pastaman (@)
   6th July 2018, 13:18

   Gap between the top 6 and the rest is pretty insane
   1. 

      nase
      6th July 2018, 14:05

      Imagine how much worse it would’ve been without Grosjean …
   2. 

      DaveW (@dmw)
      6th July 2018, 15:14

      Yes it’s a good place to break an FIA seal if you have to and if you are in the top three teams.
6. 

   Markp
   6th July 2018, 13:20

   The Merc spec Pirelli tyres are doing their job.
7. 

   Matteo (@m-bagattini)
   6th July 2018, 13:33

   Dat gap
8. 

   Steven Robertson (@emu55)
   6th July 2018, 13:52

   That chart really highlights the two tier element to the F1 Championship, the last race won by a team outside that top group was in Austalia during March 2013.
   1. 

      DaveW (@dmw)
      6th July 2018, 15:37

      Ironically perhaps, it was Raikkonen, who hasn’t won since, despite now driving a Ferrari.

      And if you also consider that the last team to win regularly besides the current front runners was McLaren, which is in freefall right now, you see that part of the problem is that the peloton is just not keeping up. Even Williams, which gets a healthy cut of shared income and should be able to get dibs on any sponsor coming into the sport, is on the ropes. That is, I think this situation is as much about the field just being poor as the top teams consolidating a privileged situation within the sport.
      1. 

         Steven Robertson (@emu55)
         6th July 2018, 16:58

         I think it’s all the constant expensive regulation changes, midfield teams can’t compete on the R@D, and it’s going to happen again next season with the reduced aero.
9. 

   Matthijs (@matthijs)
   6th July 2018, 14:03

   Horner claims the powerdeficit between Renault and Mercedes is 0,9 seconds a lap. That should make Red Bull the fastest car, at least according to Horner.
   1. 

      nase
      6th July 2018, 14:13

      @matthijs
      The thing is, he’s notoriously exaggerating. If not downright lying.
      1. 

         MG1982 (@mg1982)
         6th July 2018, 14:33

         +1.

         I think more that with this kind of comments he tries to pressure Renault.
   2. 

      anon
      6th July 2018, 14:58

      @matthijs, as nase notes, Horner has a proven track record in heavily overexaggerating claimed power difference – during the V8 era, for example, the University of Cologne proved that Horner’s public claims of the power difference between the Renault and Mercedes engines were more than twice the actual difference and overexaggerated the difference to Ferrari’s engine by a factor of about three.

      There has also been, on another forum, an individual who was connected to Honda’s racing programme who suggested that the claimed differences in peak power between the teams was again much larger than it really was, often overstated by factors of two or three.

      Horner has every incentive to talk up the performance of their chassis, especially ahead of the partnership with Honda, and to put the blame on Renault instead – after all, he also put a lot of blame on Renault when, a few years ago, Red Bull had a poor car, even though most external observers noted that the car had an unresponsive and unstable front end in high speed corners (with Horner only later conceding, after a major aero update, that aero correlation issues had been hampering their performance).

      In reality, I suspect that the difference in power is unlikely to be making that much of a difference in lap time.
      1. 

         Robbie (@robbie)
         6th July 2018, 15:32

         I highly doubt Horner has a monopoly on political speak. All team principals do it to shade a better light in their own team. As to a University proving his exaggeration, I assume they had access to several makes of engines to put on dynos if proof is what they have come up with, which is something of which Horner would not have access. In this current era pretty much the whole world has been conceding the advantage Mercedes has had since 2014, and I’m sure that is not from a power deficit and strictly due to chassis.
         1. 

            nase
            6th July 2018, 17:44

            @robbie

            I highly doubt Horner has a monopoly on political speak.

            Well, that’s obviously true. But Horner is pretty extreme in that respect, and a bit of a broken record on that subject.

            As to a University proving his exaggeration, I assume they had access to several makes of engines to put on dynos if proof is what they have come up with, which is something of which Horner would not have access.

            I don’t know what study anon is referring to, and I’ve never heard of it before. To say I’d be interested in a link for further research would be a massive understatement.
            However, without knowing the paper, it is extremely implausible that a University should have access to information a team manager in F1 doesn’t have. You don’t need to have a physical entity of each engine you want to compare to gain precise insight into its performance parameters. GPS tracking does the same job for much less money. Every team has access to those, and even if you don’t know the exact aerodynamic properties of other cars, you can make very precise assumptions based on your own chassis, and the fact that drag is proportional to velocity squared makes it an easily identifiable variable. All you need to do is feed a relatively simple computer simulation with GPS data of a rival’s car on a qualifying attempt, and you get a neat little array of performance data, such as drag and aerodynamic efficiency (calculated on the basis of the discrepancy between expected and observed data), peak and average power output. These data can then be used to deduce further parameters, such as fuel loads and engine settings. The margin of error is very small, depending on the granularity of the GPS data, usually not exceeding 5, but definitely not 10 bhp.

            => Horner knows these figures, but he keeps using facts that are inconsistent with them.

            You can say that this is part of his job description, and I’m not going to argue against that. But if he’s on the record saying the engine alone is costing them almost a second per lap, I’m going to call him out on this obvious nonsense.

            In this current era pretty much the whole world has been conceding the advantage Mercedes has had since 2014

            It doesn’t matter what ‘the whole world’ thinks. The F1 circus is an echo chamber; common beliefs and facts have to be treated as entirely different beasts.
            Yes, Mercedes has obviously had a power advantage over Renault since 2014. I’m not going to dispute that. In fact, neither I nor anon have argued against it. Our point is that his numbers are way off, and deliberately so. We’re calling him out on populist agitation.
10. 

    Sush meerkat
    6th July 2018, 14:34

    Romain Grosjean stopped running long before the end of the session. The Haas driver crashed heavily at Abbey, damaging the front-left corner of his car.

    Normal service is resumed
11. 

    GnosticBrian (@gnosticbrian)
    6th July 2018, 15:29

    Boy wonder puts it into the wall in FP2.
12. 

    CareyPatrick (@careypatrick)
    6th July 2018, 16:19

    Wow. The gap between the big 3 and the others is really noticable. A full second between #6 and #7 fastest.
    1. 

       Esploratore (@esploratore)
       6th July 2018, 23:03

       Yes, and only grosjean managed that, if it weren’t for him it’d be 1,5!

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