Formula 1 - 2018 Season

When you say compounds, do you mean the entire range for the year or the thinner (but apparently otherwise chemically identical) treads they brought to Barcelona?

http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id...ves-ferrari-problems-spain-were-not-due-tyres

After Mercedes outpaced Ferrari throughout the race weekend in Spain there were suggestions that Pirelli's decision to bring thinner tread tyres gave a benefit to Mercedes. The decision was based examples of overheating and blistering at the same circuit during pre-season testing, which was partly due to a lack of wear on the new, smooth track surface, which was relaid over the winter.

The more rubber on the tyre, the more heat it retains -- and without the normal level of wear the surface of the tyre was getting so hot through Barcelona's high-speed corners that it started to blister. In agreement with the FIA, a decision was made to reduce the thickness of the tyres by 0.4mm for the Spanish, French and British Grands Prix in an attempt to avoid a repeat in the races.
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As part of Ferrari's investigations into its lack of race pace on Tuesday, Vettel tested standard tread versions of the soft and medium compounds as well as thin tread tyres in a back to back comparisons. The thick tread tyres came back with obvious signs of overheating and Vettel admitted after the session that they would have exacerbated Ferrari's issues if they had been used on Sunday.

"I think it's pretty straightforward," he said. "Obviously you don't get the chance to revisit this kind of decisions that are made [very often], but we did it today and the result is that if we had had the normal tyres on Sunday, it would have probably been worse, so it was the correct call. It was our fault for not having the same tyre wear or life as other people."
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(It's a continuous quote that I separated just to make it easier to read without having to expand the quote box.)
 
Bludd said:
But that is the opposite conspiracy. In 2013 RBR was dominating and the conspiracy was that the tyres were changed to stop the RBR domination. Now the tyres are changed to help the dominant team.

Bleh.
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Worth reading Adrian Newey's technical take on it with regards to what I quoted and linked who is the primary designer for Red Bull (and one of if not the greatest successful engineer ever in F1), including the context he says they all play games/politics.
He says the change benefited them while others lost out.
Anyway the post and quote was with regards to several points in this thread from a few; it shows changes happen mid season without full consent nor do they have full consent on the compound range produced for each race depending on temperature/weather/track, changes benefit some over others, and all the teams play games/politics with the tyre manufacture and FIA technical regulations.
The earlier post was a clearer example how teams do use relationship with tyre manufacturer to their advantage (such as Mercedes tried to in 2013), but over the years they are not the only ones, comes back to Newey and his point of politics and all teams play games.

The beginning of the article I linked in the post your responding to even without the quotes I provided says.
Despite Sebastian Vettel's eventual domination of the world championship, Newey felt the team was in a close fight until Pirelli returned to its 2012 tyre construction for the second half of the season.
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The context of which comes back to some of the factors I mentioned earlier in other post and here.
 
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Pete said:
When you say compounds, do you mean the entire range for the year or the thinner (but apparently otherwise chemically identical) treads they brought to Barcelona?

http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id...ves-ferrari-problems-spain-were-not-due-tyres
(It's a continuous quote that I separated just to make it easier to read without having to expand the quote box.)
Click to expand...
I mean the thinner treads.

Regardless if the thinner ones were actually better for all, it's natural that these kinds of surprise('ish) decisions made without consent of all the teams midseason are raising suspicions especially if one team seems to benefit greatly while others don't - who knows, even if the normal treaded tyres would have been worse for all, they might have been even worse for Mercedes who suddenly seemed to get huge boost
 
I think Mercedes also looked awesome in preseason testing at Barcelona with the same cooler temps but the normal tread depth. It's probably the temps and track more than the tire that suit Mercedes. If Merc are slower getting their tire temps up to optimum, that might also serve them well at a track where tires overheat.

After the problems Pirelli had a few years ago with exploding tires, they're probably given the last word on what they bring to the track.
 
I can't find the original Autosport article, but according to one finnish f1-news outlet (https://www.suomif1.com/2018/05/f1-...kertoo-miten-naurettavaksi-tilanne-on-mennyt/) ex-driver Alexander Wurz has commented (again) very strongly against the current F1 style of having pavement everywhere, which leads to drivers not paying for their mistakes.
He's not suggesting that we'd need to go back to when there was no asphalt outside track whatsoever, but still he's asking for more "hero to zero" -moments for drivers own mistakes. He used as an Silverstone race couple years ago, where Hamilton led Rosberg when it suddenly started to rain - Hamilton made a mistake but only lost around 0,5 seconds because he could just return to track without issues - in practice not paying anything since he kept his lead, something that would have never happened in the old days after a mistake like that. He actually even said barely anyone even noticed Hamilton going off because he could return to track so quickly
 
Monaco this weekend. Verstappen will start from the bottom of the grid, thanks to smashing to a wall in 3rd practice. After rebuilding the car they noticed they need to switch the gearbox and didn't have enough time to do it
 
Verstappen's mistake could have robbed us of a grandstand Q3 but DannyRic was just incredible. I don't know if Verstappen could have beat that time.
 
Bludd said:
Verstappen's mistake could have robbed us of a grandstand Q3 but DannyRic was just incredible. I don't know if Verstappen could have beat that time.
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At least he would crash trying :)
Shame for lack of Verstappen in Quali, but thanks to it we will get some overtaking in GP now.

Cracking lap by Ric! It was blast to watch it from onboard!

Bring on the race ... I mean procession!
 
I'm going to say maybe the third person he tries to pass he's going to crash into probably ruining both cars
 
While I love Monaco because it's Monaco, it's also incredibly sad that you can keep your lead with broken car and driving some 2++ seconds slower laps than you should
 
This is the first time that has been stated out loud by a team before as far as I know.

It was good to see DannyRic win in the fastest car (when everything was working), but the way the track is makes it impossible to overtake even if you are 160 bhp down which is crazy. Maybe Liberty will make some proposals to the organisers because there is more room now due to land reclamation being done on the waterfront for instance.
 
LOL, not sure if it's real outrage or fake.

We've seen Grosjean crash getting out of the way of the Ferrari's (this may not be true, but I'll post it anyway to illustrate my point using comedy)

Sauber and Hass cannot get out of the way of the Ferraris quick enough.

Same can be said with Force India.

Williams are just shocking though and move over for everyone.

As for the Daniel winning. Couldn't be happier. Senna held off Mansell in a vastly inferior car, with much better tyres and areodynamics that didn't cause too many problems for the cars following, so there was absolutely no chance Seb was going to do anything in this race.
 
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