Originally Posted by
Silent Bob
Here you go.
The Spanish Grand Prix served up a very exciting race in the battle between Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel. But what it didn't deliver was a clear indication of whether Ferrari or Mercedes has the fastest car.
Mercedes and Ferrari are clearly in a different league to the rest in race conditions. Between the two it is going to be all about the development war and who gets the breaks or makes the best calls when it comes to strategy, as we saw at Barcelona.
My favourite way to judge performance of the cars in the first four races is by using the supertime method, which is based on the fastest individual lap set by each team on a weekend as a percentage of the overall quickest and then averaged out.
Mercedes was not quite fastest every weekend, but was very close to doing so at 100.019%. If we take off the 0.019% of all teams to square things up, this is the result:
Early-season F1 supertime ranking
How the 10 F1 teams compared in the opening four races
TEAM SUPERTIME
1 Mercedes 100.000%
2 Ferrari 100.248%
3 Red Bull 101.423%
4 Williams 102.031%
5 Renault 102.211%
6 Toro Rosso 102.550%
7 Haas 102.551%
8 Force India 102.805%
9 McLaren 103.473%
10 Sauber 103.944%
Now, I know Barcelona is only one race and a team can have a bad weekend. But it's a track with fast corners, long medium-speed corners and some slow bits so has a good mix of everything. That's why teams like going there to test, because if your car is good around there it means it should be fairly good everywhere.
Looking at the supertimes from the Spanish GP weekend produces these results, with Mercedes still at the top.
Spanish GP supertime ranking
How the 10 F1 teams compared at Barcelona
TEAM SUPERTIME CHANGE
1 Mercedes 100.000% -
2 Ferrari 100.064% -0.241%
3 Red Bull 100.704% -0.720%
4 McLaren 102.399% -1.074%
5 Force India 102.427% -0.378%
6 Williams 102.632% +0.600%
7 Haas 102.754% +0.203%
8 Toro Rosso 102.807% +0.257%
9 Renault 102.840% +0.639%
10 Sauber 103.353% -0.591%
Now, this is based on taking Mercedes as the datum. It might not have moved forward at all with its developments, but five teams closed the gap by an average of 0.500% and four lost out by an average of 0.425%.
So, in reality, the Mercedes development package was fairly mediocre and I am pretty sure the team will be elated to have won the race, but disappointed not to have dominated it.
McLaren's improvement also catches the eye at just over 1%. But let's be honest, there was a lot of room for improvement there and actually I think we could look at this a different way. Fernando Alonso's performance on home ground probably accounted for most of that 1% because Stoffel Vandoorne's performance was just about the norm that we have seen from McLaren so far this year and in Sunday trim it just wasn't at the races.
Let's have a look in a bit more detail at the packages the leading three teams took to Barcelona.
MERCEDES
The most obvious new component to the eye was the shell-shaped vane on the underside of a new, much narrower, nose profile.
Up until now, teams have used the S-duct to help keep the airflow attached to the underside of the nose profile. The current regulations requiring the forward crash structure at the tip of the nose to be very low have meant the underside of the nose sweeps upwards at a greater rate than the airflow would like.
So fitting this shell-like device has separated the airflow where it comes off the trailing edge of the FIA-mandated central section of the front wing, from the airflow coming around the sides of the nose.
These two flows will reattach at the trailing edge of this component, and its flow direction will be more sympathetic to what the bargeboards require.
To make the best use of this improved airflow coming through from the underside of the nose, Mercedes has also added some more intricate detail to the bargeboards.
These have become major downforce-producing devices and, as they are more or less bolt-on components, I'm pretty sure it is an area where we will see continued development.
The front suspension is also slightly different, as are the brake ducts. These two components also act as flow conditioners for the airflow coming around the wider front tyre. Optimising and tidying up this airflow improves the performance of the sidepod outer-corner vertical turning vane, which in turn improves the performance of the undercut sidepod and Coke bottle.
The floor in front of the rear tyre has also been modified with increased slotted vanes. The objective of the undercut sidepods and Coke bottle is to pull as much airflow around the sidepod as possible.
As the airflow gets displaced around the rear tyre's contact patch, the tyre rotating onto the ground created a squirting effect. These vanes in the floor ahead of the tyre help pull airflow from the top surface of the floor. This will improve the sidepod and underfloor's overall efficiency.
Mercedes has also joined the monkey seat brigade. This may only be for high downforce tracks, but it also helps slightly with improving the pressure differential across the hot side of the turbo. This reduces the turbo's back pressure, which will allow the turbo to spin faster for the same exhaust gas pressure and in turn means that you will get that little bit better performance from the MGU-H.
FERRARI
Ferrari arrived with what you could describe as small developments, but it is not always what you can see that makes the difference. There is a lot of stuff under the bodywork that can have a huge impact.
On show was a revised bargeboard package. For Ferrari this is one component where it won't learn too much from by looking at other teams' cars.
Ferrari has gone out on a limb with its design in this area, and it appears to be working well. With the new regulations, the bargeboards have become a much more important part of the package and are now responsible for probably in excess of 10% of the overall downforce of the car.
This is achieved by scavenging better airflow out from underneath the front of the chassis, which in turn improves the performance of the front wing, and inducing vortices around and under the leading edge of the underfloor - which again improves the performance of the underfloor and diffuser.
Ferrari also had a slightly revised front wing. Although the front wing's visual concept is similar to what we saw in 2016, the detail has altered significantly.
The wider front tyres have resulting in a review of how the airflow is swept around their outside. The outer upper wing cascade is about as intricate as we have seen.
Ferrari has also introduced a Mercedes-style rear crash structure. This component is a requirement of the regulations in both volume and rear-most position. It is how you get from the gearbox to this rear crash area that the design can influence, and on the way how slim it can be made while still passing the crash test.
Ferrari has a spoiler behind the monkey seat, making it into a twin-element component. This will improve its overall performance and, as I said above in reference to Mercedes' version, possibly help with the efficiency of the turbo.
In line with quite a few other teams, Ferrari has also introduced a twin element T-wing. The upper element produces some downforce in its own right, and the lower element acts like a bit of a turning vane and helps the main rear wing's performance.
In an effort to get a better brake temperature balance across the front axle of the car, Ferrari has introduced asymmetric brake cooling.
This can also help with heating the tyres across an axle slightly differently. Turn 3 at Barcelona heats up the left-hand-side tyres very easily, but when you arrive at the next right-hander at Turn 4, you can very easily lock up the inside front.
RED BULL
As for Red Bull, qualifying suggested it had closed the gap to the top two, but in race conditions the team seemed to struggle.
Even that is far from conclusive, because Red Bull lost Max Verstappen on the opening lap, and Daniel Ricciardo was almost half-a-second slower than him in qualifying.
I'm pretty sure Red Bull has closed on Mercedes in the manner the qualifying gap suggested, but in the race that pace was nowhere to be seen.
After the first 10 laps Ricciardo was 25s behind the leader and some of that was down to the first-corner incidents. If you add that to his qualifying deficit of just over a second multiplied by the 56 laps that were still to run, you get Ricciardo's total race deficit.
Red Bull had some front suspension modifications and new bargeboards, but it will need a much bigger package than this to get in the game. Compared to the Ferrari and Mercedes bargeboard packages, this is still in its infancy - as in reality is the rest of the car.
Yes, Red Bull is suffering from the power deficit of the Renault engine, but the car is also suffering.
It has been left behind this year, and in a year when everyone was expecting the aerodynamic changes to play into Adrian Newey's hands.
Even with the step made in Spain, Red Bull and Renault still have a long way to go. And there's nothing to suggest we're going to see anything more than a two-horse race up front for the next few grands prix at least.
HOW MERCEDES OUTFOXED FERRARI
Vettel definitely had the faster car in the first stint, but the thing I don't understand is why he pitted on lap 13 - earlier than the other frontrunners.
If you have upwards of two seconds on whoever is chasing you, then the chance of the undercut working is fairly slim, so why not leave the decisions to the chasing car? If you pit first you show your hand and it allows the other car to go in a different direction with their tyre choice, and that's exactly what happened.
This, combined with Valtteri Bottas, who was struggling for pace and taking on the job of a trusted number two (I wonder what Raikkonen would do in the same circumstances?) by holding Vettel behind him for those few vital laps, brought Hamilton back into contention. Pitting for his second stop at the end of the virtual safety car period cost him less time, which brought him into shooting distance. He still had to look after his soft tyres for 30 laps, no easy task in a car that has been harder on tyres than the Ferrari.
During this last 30 laps Hamilton was on the faster tyre and reeled Vettel in quickly. Passing is never easy but with the use of a stupidly longer DRS zone (which in my opinion just reduces the skill level required to be a top-class Formula 1 driver) he was through and disappeared fairly quickly to take the win.
It was a good call from the Mercedes team to pit Hamilton during the VSC period and calling it at the last minute meant Ferrari had no time to react, as Vettel was past the pit entry.
As we saw when Hamilton breezed past Vettel to take the lead, Ferrari needs an engine update pretty soon. Otherwise, the long straights of Montreal are going to make it a tough Canadian Grand Prix for Ferrari next month.
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