planetf1.com

Marcus Ericsson was probably the best for me today. Massively outperformed his teammate and fought viciously. My other two votes went to Vettel and Gasly.

At one point Hamilton was over 25 seconds behind Seb. He finished 6 behind.
I thought that was a very impressive performance.

You can say the same for everybody behind Vettel as he was nursing his tyres.

So nothing impressive about it.

Vettel lapped the field up to 5th so not really.

Ericsson, Gasly and Vettel.

_________________

Reasonably straight forward this time around, went with Vettel and Gasly.

Daniel and Max votes? People should stop voting just to throw the results off... Max ruined his own race and could have very well ended Lewis's in the process. How on earth can he get two votes?

Yeah, I don't understand that. Danny was the only person at RBR who did not cover himself in shame yesterday, and he had no real chance to show any merit.

It’s hilarious to me if Vettel doesn’t win this. Managing the tyres the way he did, soaking up the pressure of a faster car hunting him down..
Gasly didn’t make any mistakes but who is to say that the car wasn’t intrinsically capable of getting him to 4th? Disregarding the retirements of those ahead of him.

Vettel finished really where he should have done (I voted for him anyway because he put in a great drive). Ericsson finished way above where he should have. For me he is clearly the stand out driver of the day.

It's about the objectives. Gasly ended P4, he was almost 1 min behind Hamilton. But he had no reason to push since the 4th was his objective. In the hindsight, Hamilton better did the same and have his engine preserved. But he did push since his objective was to finish higher than P3. He was fighting Vettel. Firstly, he needed the gap to Vettel to be as smallest as possible in the case Vettel was to pit 2nd time and come out on the fresh rubber behind him, so to defend the P2. And when Vettel stayed out, he was pushing to close the gap to Vettel as much as possible in the case Vettel's tires start falling off. Well, on the end Vettel managed his tires, and Hamilton's 6 seconds to Vettel turned out to be a completely useless achievement, a waste of machinery. But it was a try. The top 3 pushed as hard as possible till the checkered flag.

Who is to say that the yellow tyres weren't intrinsically capable of lasting that long on the Ferrari?

(Vettel was one of my dofd - I just don't see the logic here.)

About the tyres - Pretty much all the simulations.

The Honda engine is quick we all saw that from testing.

Well, we often saw Pirelli tyres lasting much longer than Pirelli announces.
We all saw that last season.

The days where Pirelli's tyres hit the cliff have gone.
Vettel's times really didn't drop off to any large extent at all.
He was in the 1m35's on lap 24. Still in the 1m35's on lap 55.
More gradual degradation than any kind of cliff these days.
Still, an excellent drive from Vettel to avoid the 2nd stop which undoubtedly would have cost him 1 or 2 places.

The amount of fuel burnt off in all those laps should make for a decent gain in times. Instead, he went from a 1:24.6 on lap 20 to finally a 1:27 at the end. It was indeed gradual, there is no real cliff. But Hamilton did a low 1:24 after he came out and he still was able to do a low 1:24 at the second to last lap.

Basically the Mercedes at the end was capable to go 1.5-2s faster than the Ferrari and that was all because of worn tyres.

So the tyres "lasted" in a way, but not in a way that they were still actually good for racing, just for hanging on for dear life.

_________________
Go Vandoorne - Verstappen - Vettel!

The last few laps that Seb did whilst under attack from Bottas were slower because of the way he was defending, using his battery power etc to help against DRS rather than achieve the best lap time he could.
I'd be surprised if he couldn't have still been doing the 1m35's without the Bottas pressure.
The point being that the cheese tyres we've had previously look to be in the past.

Yeah but he only had to defend against DRS in the second-to-last and last laps. He was doing high 1:25's well before that so that's still more than 1.5s faster than the Mercedes could go at that point.

But I agree, there is no real cliff anymore. I guess it makes for harder decision making about strategy. But I vastly prefer it.

_________________
Go Vandoorne - Verstappen - Vettel!

I normally only pick 1 driver but this time I couldn't decide between Vettel and Gasly so picked both.

_________________
PF1 Pick 10 Competition

2013: 5th Place
2014: Champion
2015: 3rd Place
2016: 4th Place
2017: 9th Place
2018: Currently 12th

Wins: Abu Dhabi 2017
Podiums: 2nd Canada 2015, 3rd Monza 2016, Hungary 2016 and Barcelona 2015