[Merged] Mercedes v Ferrari v Red Bull - 2018 edition
Post subject: Re: [Merged] Mercedes v Ferrari v Red Bull - 2018 edition
The ERS deployment was on screen last season. Part of the reason why Vettel couldn't overtake Hamilton on the restart at Spa last year was the Mercedes was able to switch its ERS deployment to a different mode that allowed Hamilton to deploy more on the run to Le Combe. This was evident from the on screen graphics. Vettels however were preset and his car deployed the same every lap.
I think Ferrari fixed that this year however. It was also partly why we saw Mercedes breeze by other cars at certain points such as Hamilton on Vettel in Austin and Spain.
If Spa isn't wet then it looks to be very cold at least. Forecast is just 13-17 degrees, who has the advantage in cooler conditions?
Johnson wrote:
Mercedes I think. They are able to generate heat into their tyres more quickly, which is a disadvantage in the dry but an advantage in the wet. It was a reason given for their reversal of fortunes in Hungary qualifying
WHoff78
So am I right in thinking that Mercedes (Lewis) will be lucky if we have rain or cooler conditions this weekend, and Ferrari if we have warmer track temperatures. Actually, that last one probably wouldn't be chalked up to luck because it is more likely to be warm and dry? Just trying to keep up.
Mod Blue
WHoff78 wrote:
Can we please just leave this there? It's very tiresome and only stirs up more arguments.
sandman1347 wrote:
That's just clearly not the case though. Ferrari have the upper hand and have had it for most of the season. Yes, it is certainly close and yes, Mercedes certainly have had a highly competitive package for most of the year but Ferrari clearly have the upper hand in terms of just the car's level of performance. The people in and around the sport are not in disagreement about that. So what we have in this thread is just an inability on the part of our forum to engage in the thread's stated purpose (to discuss the performance level of the cars as the season progresses) because people are using the thread for a different purpose.
I don't think that's the case. I think people have been discussing it. It's just that you seem to get frustrated whenever people put forward an opinion you disagree with. This is a thread discussing the relative performance of the cars, but you seem to want it to be a thread discussing how much better Ferrari is than everyone else. And not everybody agrees with that position.
Opinions differ. That's what forums are largely for. You don't have to agree but you can't dismiss an entire thread as a joke simply because others don't share your views
Well let's examine that statement of yours. You seem to be trying to draw an equivalence between my activity in the forum and yours. Let's explore that. One point where it definitely seemed that Mercedes had the upper hand was after the first race. Hamilton had set pole in Australia and he had been the fastest during the race as well. Let's take a look at what I had to say after the race to push my biased agenda:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=14879&start=280
"One thing is clear though. Ferrari are no match for Mercedes. The gap between them is substantial."
........Hmmm.....That's kind of an odd thing to say considering the way you seem to want to portray me, isn't it? The fact is that I am actually discussing the performance level of the cars while YOU are in here trying to make it seem like the Ferrari isn't what it is (the best car currently). You are completely disengenuous and you are not willing to be objective. Please stop trying to conflate my behavior with yours.
Except the point being made was about you getting frustrated because people dare to have a different opinion. I'm not the one calling the thread a joke, so not sure where you are coming from with your talk of drawing an equivalence.
We don't agree on the cars' relative performance, that's fine. But only one of us is dismissing the entire thread as a joke because of it. Just accept that others have different opinions. The fact that there are several people on both sides of the fence shows that it's not quite as clear cut as you would have it. And the discussion that ensues is the whole point of a forum
I think you've missed my point. I have no problem with people having an honest opinion that is different than my own. In fact I welcome that. I have a problem with people disingenuously arguing against things that are empirically evident because they are seemingly incapable of being objective on any F1-related topic. A thread like this shouldn't be about "My driver is better than yours" but that's basically what every thread is about for the majority of PF1 forumers unfortunately. We cannot have an honest discussion about the cars because too many of our forumers are not willing to be honest about them. That is why I feel the thread is a bit of a joke.
It's the cornerstone of the thread for some.
This has to be the funniest post I've ever read on here
This has to be the funniest post I've ever read on here[/quote]
Agreed. This quote was from a few weeks ago...
Mod Blue wrote:
It was said as a joke to some degree, but more importantly to put a slightly different perspective on the discussion when you consider the scenario before it occurs – without being influenced by how are particular favourite drivers or teams perform in such conditions.
I will leave it after this, but do feel it is very relevant to the discussion and comparison of the cars. We know that rain can affect how the cars perform relative to one another, but also that it is very challenging for the drivers and therefore greatly increases the variability in their performance and the impact that they can make, hence the old adage that rain separates the men from the boys. We don't know to what degree each of these variables affected the final outcome, but can gauge some measure from how the team mates performed relative to one another. Think it is fair to say that the conditions in Hungary, with heavy rain ahead of Q3 were about as challenging as the drivers can face – minimal practice in the given conditions and having to go out and set their qualifying laps, which suggests that the drivers influence on lap times will only be more important.
If we get rain all weekend in Spa, the drivers will have time to get more comfortable in those conditions and we may well see a truer reflection of how the cars perform in wet conditions. Of course, cars vary track to track and I have no doubt weather conditions will vary over the weekend, but it will still be interesting to watch.
KingVoid
I honestly don't think that there will ever be a race or a qualifying session in which Hamilton finishes P1 where you don't chime in with an excuse of some sort to try to chalk it up to the car or anything other than his driving. One race it's that the car is just better in the wet, then it's that the team used a wet setup, then it's the track suited him better, then it's that the stewards favored him...You always have some kind of excuse man. Doesn't that get tiring?
That's a bit rich coming from you, as you automatically assume that Ferrari have the fastest car whenever Vettel is even slightly faster than Bottas (Bahrain, China). Because of course, as we know Vettel can't possibly just be a better driver than Bottas.
sandman1347
KingVoid wrote:
Odd that you would take a single paragraph out of context (and from a totally different thread) and paste it into this thread to make a reply. In Bahrain and China BOTH Ferraris qualified better than BOTH Mercedes. It's not just about Vettel and Bottas. The pace during the race in Bahrain was somewhat close but in China Ferrari were miles ahead both on Saturday and Sunday.
This is the problem with you; you fail to acknowledge even things that are really not debatable. You take positions that are too unreasonable to even begin a legitimate conversation from.
If Ferrari was "miles ahead" in China, Vettel would not have been undercut by Bottas. A good example of a team being miles ahead of the rest would be in Spain, where Hamilton was already over 10 seconds ahead when Vettel did his pitstop. Vettel was slightly faster than Bottas in China at most.
In Bahrain, Bottas was outright faster than Vettel on Sunday.
In Australia 2017, Mercedes had more qualifying speed while Ferrari had better tyre wear on Sunday. Who had the better car that weekend?
Ferrari botched their pitstop in China while managing the pace up front. They handed Bottas the lead. Once Vettel came out behind him, he hounded him the rest of the way. If it wasn't so difficult to overtake there, Vettel would have won easily.
In Bahrain, Vettel gapped Bottas so I'm not sure how you can claim that Bottas was faster. He was slower but got superior tire life. In the end, he finished behind Vettel despite having much fresher tires down the stretch. You are intentionally trying to misrepresent the events of that race.
Your claims about Australia in 2017 basically sum up your flawed perception of the sport. What makes you say that Mercedes had a better car in qualifying in Australia 2017? Is it simply the fact that Hamilton took pole? Do you not realize that the pole position is not purely down to the car but it's a combination of the car, driver and timing/conditions, mistakes, etc.? Did Vettel not qualify ahead of Bottas int hat race? Wasn't Vettel all over Hamilton from the moment the lights went out? Australia is also a track where overtaking is extremely difficult while Bahrain is a track where overtaking is quite doable. So you are attempting to draw an analogy using totally inappropriate data points.
The one thing we agree on is that Mercedes were definitely quicker than Ferrari in Spain but of course that would never be a problem for you to admit. It's only when Ferrari are faster that you struggle to deal with reality.
Vettel's pitstop was 0.9 second slower than Bottas, he ended up 1.2 seconds behind, so no the pitstop alone does not explain why Bottas was able to undercut Vettel.
Maybe the reason to why Vettel gapped Bottas at the start of that race was precisely because he was taking more life out of his tyres? Bottas was catching Vettel and in his undercut window before Vettel pit. Bottas' race pace forced Vettel to pit early. Bottas did a 33.7 on medium tyres which remained the fastest lap of the race until the end. The only reason Mercedes lost that race was because they backed off around lap 40-45 to save tyres. This allowed Vettel to build a small gap. That's because at the time, Mercedes thought that Vettel would pit again.
Your claims about Australia in 2017 basically sum up your flawed perception of the sport. What makes you say that Mercedes had a better car in qualifying in Australia 2017? Is it simply the fact that Hamilton took pole? Do you not realize that the pole position is not purely down to the car but it's a combination of the car, driver and timing/conditions, mistakes, etc.? Did Vettel not qualify ahead of Bottas int hat race? Wasn't Vettel all over Hamilton from the moment the lights went out?
Vettel + 0.3s
Bottas +0.3s
Raikkonen + 0.9s
That were the results in qualifying. I have zero doubt that if these results were reversed, with Vettel in place of Hamilton and Raikkonen in place of Bottas, you would agree that Ferrari had the best qualifying car. Hamilton was 3 tenths faster than Vettel on both his first and second run.
If anything, you could make a much better case that Ferrari wasn't really faster than Mercedes in qualifying at Bahrain 2018. The drivers were much closer together timewise.
Australia is also a track where overtaking is extremely difficult while Bahrain is a track where overtaking is quite doable. So you are attempting to draw an analogy using totally inappropriate data points.
If anything, the fact that overtaking is more difficult around Australia only means that race pace is more important around Bahrain, and Mercedes had the best race pace at Bahrain 2018.
No they didn't. That's the problem here. You don't seem to know what race pace is. Mercedes had the better race strategy, sure but not better race pace.
As for China, Ferrari out-qualified Mercedes there by about half a second if I recall. Vettel was controlling the pace at the front and had about a 3 second lead throughout most of the first stint. The problem Ferrari had was that they underestimated the impact of the undercut. They were EASILY faster than both Mercs throughout the race. Do you actually want to argue about that? If you are trying to claim that Ferrari weren't faster in China then I simply won't continue this discussion because there's no point.
F1_Ernie
Wasn't the undercut alone worth 2 seconds, add in the pitstop , Vettels in lap mistakes, pit entry mistake. Ferrari was quicker in that race, a collection of mistakes that lead to Bottas leading doesn't suddenly make the cars equal.
2016: 24th place
Wins: Spain 2016, Canada 2017, Malaysia 2017
Podiums: 2nd Germany 2016, 3rd Mexico 2016, 3rd China 2018, 3rd Japan 2018, 2nd Mexico 2018
F1_Ernie wrote:
Vettel being quicker than Bottas doesn't make the Ferrari faster than the Mercedes, either. The average lap time difference between Bottas and Vettel in that first stint was just over a tenth. I don't know how we can say that Mercedes didn't have a better car in qualifying in Australia, putting the near 7 tenths difference between Lewis and Kimi as all driver, while at the same time pointing to a 1 tenth per lap difference in China and declaring the Ferrari was easily the quickest car there. From what I can gather, the narrative seems to me to be that whenever the Ferraris are quicker, it must be down to the car, whereas whenever the Mercs are ahead it's down to the drivers. Seems a fairly glaring double standard to me.
Who said the Mercedes didn't have a faster car in qualifying in Australia?
Based on the performance level over the weekend here at Spa, Ferrari still have the clear edge. It's not large but it's there. They are superior in terms of traction in slow speed sections of the track as well as straight line performance and they seem to be able to just about match Mercedes through the fast cornering sections (at least on race day). It's close enough that things can swing back and forth from here but Monza should be a Ferrari circuit as should Singapore. If Vettel can score 50 points in the next 2 rounds, Ferrari will steal the momentum from Merc completely.
Mercedes dominated Monza last year. Both drivers were some 30secs ahead of Vettel. But Ferrari somehow has made huge gains on engine side this year that Monza should be good track for them.
Either Vettel is making the difference or Ferrari is. The Ferrari/Vettel package have been the quickest for some time now.
In looking at Raikkonen's massive uptick in performance in 2018 I don't think there is any question about where the performance is coming from.
Asphalt_World
This is the constant issue I have with following F1. Car or driver performance.
This is not picking on LH or SV, but using today's race as an example. The comment straight after the race from the C4 commentator was that Mercedes did not quite give him the car he needed.
The commentators also made many mentions about the excellent drive from SV today.
It's like the drivers get the plaudits for winning and the car gets a bashing when they don't.
This then gives the fanboys on social media and alike to bash their favourite drivers team when they are off pace a little and then do nothing but praise the driver when they win.
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. [Lord Acton]
My own Google Earth Motor Sport file. http://www.mediafire.com/?jzm1ieatytv
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Asphalt_World wrote:
Exactly. While the pace differential remains small it could easily be the driver just as much as the car making the difference. I'm not saying it is in this case but everyone always rushes to the car A finished ahead of car B so car A must be faster line of thinking.
I think it's true that people tend to give credit to the car but I also think you have to use your eyes and ears to assess the situation. Some races it's close enough to where it's not clear where the real differences are coming from. In races like Canada, it was very debatable who or what was making the difference. Today, in looking at the ease with which Vettel coasted by Hamilton on lap 1 and then built and controlled the gap at the front, I'd say quite confidently that the Ferrari was a bit stronger. Not in a different league or anything so dramatic but stronger and clearly so.
The area where I think this thinking really gets out of hand is in qualifying. Qualifying is literally the attempt to lay down a single blistering lap and people act like the car is always the determining factor. It's just illogical. I remember watching Senna set pole in cars that weren't the fastest for years. Being able to discover more pace for one lap is an area where a driver can make a massive difference. Slight mistakes or changes in track conditions can be the whole difference.
On a broad level though, it is entirely true that fans and even media tend to chalk up the results to the cars by default. This creates the conditions where winning tends not to count for much. In fact, when a driver starts to dominate the sport, ironically, their performance starts to be ignored...
Hard to tell, not a good start from Merc left the door open for Ferrari this time.
Might be the first time since 2013 the Mercs are really challenged, the second half off the last 4 years have been Merc all day, let's hope this continues
Today Ferrari was better.
I was particularly surprised at how much time Vettel was gaining on Hamilton in the bus stop chicane. That bodes well for Ferrari in Monza.
Don't they say that many a true word is said in fun?
Why is it that every time Hamilton is quicker or does better it's down to the car as we see recently in the wet conditions, but when Vettel is quicker or does better than the cars seemingly are equal, now I do find that funny.
Gumption
Every time Rosberg outqualified Hamilton it was only because he 'had his car setup for qualifying'. Every time Vettel won a championship it was only because 'he was driving a Newey Rocketship'. Whenever Button had beat Hamilton it was because of Whitmarsh giving Button Hamilton's data. Schumacher's titles were only due to unlimited testing and custom tires. Many of these you've stated yourself before. Every top driver gets scrutiny whether deserved or not. Why should Hamilton be an exception?
Let's see if the posts on this page bear out that impression?
AnRs wrote:
Mercedes-Benz wrote:
Based on the performance level over the weekend here at Spa, Ferrari still have the clear edge. It's not large but it's there. They are superior in terms of traction in slow speed sections of the track as well as straight line performance and they seem to be able to just about match Mercedes through the fast cornering sections (at least on race day).
Four posts in half a page, all saying that Ferrari has the quicker car and not mentioning Vettel. Where's the supposed popular sentiment that the cars are equal and Vettel made the difference?
The reality is that when either driver wins people tend to assume it's the car. Which it usually is. Formula 1 is 80% car, 20% driver at most.
The Ferrari was fastest in every session with both Raikkonen and Vettel, except the wet Q3. I think at this point only the most blinkered would still argue that the Ferrari doesn't have the edge.
Except I don't think anybody ever said Hamilton won because of the car in recent wet conditions. You're arguing against a position that doesn't exist.
I'd say it's the opposite, in any case
Lojik wrote:
In Q2 Vettel led Hamilton by just under 5 hundredths of a second. Are we saying that proves an advantage for Ferrari?
I'd say the Ferrari did look slightly faster during the race. But I also think track position made the difference and if Hamilton hadn't lost the lead at the start he may well have managed to hang on for the win. I suspect it would have played out much like last year did
I disagree. The Ferrari was really good out of the last chicane and at La Source. I think Vettel would easily have been able to stay around a second behind and likely would have had multiple good runs at Hamilton down the Kemmel straight. Even if he had been unable to get past this way, and I think that's unlikely, Ferrari would have just undercut at the first pit stop and taken track position that way.
The Ferrari was able to be faster than the Merc and much better on its tyres.
is that so different to last year, though?
Only if you assume that this years Ferrari isn't relatively better than last years.
Do we know that's the case? I seem to recall people claiming that the Ferrari was quicker last year but Vettel couldn't find a way past. How do we know that wouldn't have happened again here?
We don't, it's all conjecture, you just go with what you think is most likely. There would be almost zero discussion on this forum if we could only talk in absolute fact.
"Just undercut" you dont think Mercedes would have been on top of that to cover it. That's exactly what happened last year, they pitted Hamilton the VERY first lap the pit window opened, i.e. he wouldn't come out in traffic.
Hamilton had a good chance to win if he survived the start and the SC restart. But that is a huge IF. Given that Vettel nearly overtook him twice last year with a big power disadvantage, he would have sailed by Hamilton at the SC restart given his power and how well his car was exiting the chicane and La source.
Hamiltons only hope to win this was surviving the start somehow and there not being a SC.
In these cars there are 2 or 3 tracks where its better to start in P2. Spa and Russia definitely.
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