[Jeeper1941]

Originally Posted by mayankk

OK.
But Kvyat was going to pass on him very soon. Those tyres were right at the edge of the cliff, so to speak.

Speculation.

From F1 Fanatic: "His best lap of the race was a 1’55.316. He lapped within a second of that through his entire stint on the medium tyres, with the exception of the Virtual Safety Car period and lap 39, three laps before his tyre collapsed at the exit of Raidillon."

Both Rosberg’s and Vettel’s tyres looked like they disintegrated. And even if the tyres were old we'd expect to see a drop off in performance; not a complete loss of tread.

See graph below; which shows Vettel's lap times.

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2015/08/2...tyre-blow-out/

And from F1.com:

Alain Permane (Lotus): “If Pirelli tells us the tyres last 40 laps, they can’t possibly blow up after 28 laps. For us a one-stop strategy was only a backup plan, but we considered it as well.”


Andy Green (Force India): “If Vettel’s tyres had been worn out, he’d have come into the pits. As soon as the rubber is worn below 30% the lap times go up by two to three seconds and tyre temperatures drop from 140°C to 110°C. You’re driving on ice in that case, you won’t even get anywhere near critical wear. Your team would call you in long before that happens.”


Maurizio Arrivabene (Ferrari): “A one-stop race was our plan A. We decided that at 11am, using the data the engineers had collected during the practice sessions. There was a Pirelli engineer standing in our garage and he wasn’t just chewing bubblegum. He would have intervened if the data had shown anything suspicious. Our strategy was aggressive, but not risky.”


http://www.formula1.com/content/fom-....html#lapchart

[MavericK46]

Originally Posted by arun_kun

What a snooze fest. Happy for Grosjean, hope lotus taken over by Renault. Those bunch are awesome guyz and they need to be on the grid for a long time.

Kimi's luck is as bad as mine . Felt pretty bad for Vettel. He defended his position brilliantly. Move on to Monza. If SPA is any representative, ferrari have much difficult times.

There was talk of Ferrari bringing a significantly upgraded ICE to Monza. Fingers crossed for that !

And couldn't agree more with Jeeper1941 !
Pirelli's response to Rosberg's tyre failure was vague at best and now with what happened to Vettel in the race, Pirelli need to own up to the issue and fix it before Monza. A delamination around the Parabolica would be downright dangerous.

[mayankk]

Originally Posted by Jeeper1941

Speculation.

-----------------SNIP----------

Entirely!!
I am just going by what I heard on the commentary.
Like I said, I am saddened that he lost the place(s) to tyre failure, rather than being piqued by a insurgent Lotus.

[asr245]

If I was Pirelli, I would walk withdraw my application for further participation, not listen to anyone on what kind of tires to make & give hard parameters to teams on what they can & cannot do. The negative publicity is not doing me any good, specially after I was asked to make tires a certain way & if the teams ignored my earlier request for not more than half distance on mediums.

If I am lying & responsible for those failures, I would still walk away from the sport from which I get no applause but all the blame, publicly. Kind of like RBR blaming Renault.

[anachronix]

Embarrassingly boring race at one of the most iconic F1 circuits. The cars looked visually slower as well through the high speed sections!

Except for the young guns, everyone was trying to bring their cars home slow and steady! Bernie has turned F1 into such a farce from the pinnacle of racing.

[arun_kun]

Yes, Ferrari and Vettel pushed the life of the tyre to limits. But, there is no reason for Pirelli tyre to disintegrate like that. Yes, there can be performance drop as we have seen with Kimi in 2012 China, but no excuse for such a structural failure. It would been right to blame Ferrari if they dropped out of points because of tyres falling off the cliff. But this is squarely on Pirelli.

Vettel has every right to be furious.

[vinitbhavi]

The race engineers would have been observing the tire pressures and temperatures. There would have to have been some indications / alarms going off the deteorating pirellis. Did they know this and still decided to gamble. You cannot overcome physics however big a racing team or a tyre manufcturer one is. Blaming the tires squarely IMHO may not be the right thing to do. The team decided to gamble and they paid for it.It could have gone either way.

[aneezan]

Boring race. I had a feeling it was an umpteenth repeat.
I really had the guns going for Vettel/Ferrari. They were praying for rain. Poor him.
Somehow, I also thought Perez would stick on at the top, but I think the pressure was too much to handle. And Kudos to Grosjean.

Not a Mercedes fan, so in the end a forgetful race for me. Awaiting the next.

[Hatari]

A blowup mid corner at Eua Rouge would have been catastrophic. But Ferrari were the only team to gamble on the one stop. That gives an indication that it was extreme.

Had to be a downside. The attached pic of a tire through Eau Rouge shows how extreme it can get.

[jfxavier]

Originally Posted by RoadSurfer

All along, I hoped the rains come down. Only thing that makes the race interesting these days. What a pity!!!

I am not a Lewis fan. But he keeps on doing these small things. Like, he slowed down considerably before the second pit stop so that the gap to Rosberg came down from about 9 secs to 2.5 secs. And then he showed what a gem of a driver he is to again increase it. Only to show how much better he is to Rosberg (this is my opinion though).

Another race hoping against hope, that Honda have something up their sleeves. They are frustratingly slow. I wonder what Alonso is feeling.

Originally Posted by Jeeper1941

Another bad race. The drivers did what they could, but there was never any hope of challenging the Mercs, despite following one at the end of the first lap. Also a damning indictment on the sport if we can't expect to do 28 laps on a set of medium tyres. Farcical.

The race was pretty boring, despite Verstappen's over eagerness to pass everyone everywhere and Williams' comical pit stop blunder. I take some satisfaction from McLaren's continuing struggles, but the lack of development at Ferrari can't be ignored

Originally Posted by ron_9191

Yes I remember that, it was the one Verstappen overtook Nasr using the outside line on the Blanchimont turn.

Seriously but F1 needs to evolve a bit more where it gives room for everyone to improve their cars equally. I am not a McLaren fan but felt really bad for Button and Alonso. Two world champions in the worst possible situation. Many thought that Honda and McLaren was a match made in heaven, but now they should get that Honda engine plonk it where it belongs, on a lawn mover.

And the curious case of McLaren Honda development continues.
The ERS issue is evident from the times below.
McLaren is able to charge the ES over a few laps and deploy the stored energy on a single fast lap.
Looks like they can be competitive if they sort out the ERS issues.
But they dont seem to have enough tokens for that this year.
What a shame..
F1 is so restrictive on development now a days.

[Jeeper1941]

Originally Posted by mayankk

Entirely!!
I am just going by what I heard on the commentary.
Like I said, I am saddened that he lost the place(s) to tyre failure, rather than being piqued by a insurgent Lotus.

Ok gotcha!

Great column by David Coulthard on the BBC about this tyre fiasco:

http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/formula1/34043197

I agree with DC entirely. I don't understand why Pirelli would want to be involved with F1. It's not about the prestige anymore. It's not even about transferring F1 tyre technology to road cars, as Pirelli aren't doing that anymore, I mean why would anyone want a tyre that degrades after 100km on their road cars?!

[MadiMaama]

OT, RIP Justin Wilson. He succumbed to head injuries after a crash in the Indycar race in Poccono Speedway. Tough and dark days for motorsports

[jfxavier]

• Is the driver controlled starts getting to the drivers. Seems like some are too nervous to even get their car to the grid correctly at the end of the formation lap.
• Lewis Hamilton's Spa performance was flawless, especially the laps in qualifying. Looks like the 2015 podiums are going to be similar looking affairs. Only the 3rd place needs a closer look to see who else made it.
• Verstappen drove exactly like one would expect a teenager to, livening up the race at times.
• Lotus cars were technically impounded for breach of contract with one of their reserve/ test (read pay) drivers. However, the outrage and anger when Monisha was facing a similar music earlier was missing. Why?
• After seeing the start, it looks like Nico has a difficult time memorising the start procedures.Maybe after the newborn child's arrival Nico will be a much more relaxed and confident man. But maybe it will be too late for any title challenge this season.
• A few cars had terminal issues which forced them to retire, but not a McLaren Honda. I think after the two consecutive races that both cars completed we can say that the reliability issues have been sorted out. Now, the overall performance is something else. Looking at the max. speeds and best lap times it seems that Honda is struggling with energy recovery systems mainly. The ERS upgrades cannot pass as a reliability upgrade obviously, or Honda does not want to disclose the details of the upgrade to other teams.
• "Undercut" seems to be the better strategy with tyres. Hamilton said his tyres felt fine till he was told the stop would go to Rosberg instead should he not take it. He immediately took the choice to make the pit stop before Nico.
• Pirelli is under fire for their tyre failures this weekend (including GP3) but lack of testing and the need for producing highly degrading super grippy rubber also must have played a part in this debacle.
  In November 2013, Pirelli requested that there should be rules to govern the maximum number of laps that can be driven on a set of tyres, but the teams didn't agree. That proposal, if accepted could have limited a maximum distance equivalent to 50 per cent of the grand prix distance for the prime tyre and 30 per cent for the option, meaning a max. of 22 laps on the medium compound and not 28 as aimed by Ferrari for Vettel.
• Interestingly, there was a sausage kerb installed at Radillon prior to the race weekend, but the drivers complained about this on Friday saying it could launch a car into the air – so it was subsequently removed. This led to track limits being breached time and again during the race by a significant number of the drivers. However, the race stewards ignored it. Of the 43 laps, Vettel ran wide more than 50% of the time at Radillon. Maybe he will change his opinion about not going off track after watching the videos. Maybe the story would have been different had the stewards punished the track limit breaches like at Silverstone.
• Looks like Monza could be a minimum two stopper.

[RoadSurfer]

Originally Posted by jfxavier

And the curious case of McLaren Honda development continues.
The ERS issue is evident from the times below.
McLaren is able to charge the ES over a few laps and deploy the stored energy on a single fast lap.
Looks like they can be competitive if they sort out the ERS issues.
But they dont seem to have enough tokens for that this year.
What a shame..
F1 is so restrictive on development now a days.

jfxavier, thanks for the time charts. They provide very interesting insights.

If we do a simple calculation by subtracting the best sector time of McLaren from the respective sector best time, the figure is 1.907 secs. For Ferrari, this comes out to be 2.824.This shows the potential in the McLaren package. Just that they are not able to keep up the consistency.

I desperately want to see McLaren improve from here on. Just imagine what the 2016 season would be if Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren & Redbull (read Renault) are within 0.5 secs of each other. And then each of these teams have a real special talent as their first driver. 2016 could turn out to be the most exciting season we have seen for a long time.

[anachronix]

There is more I guess...

http://www.skysports.com/f1/news/124...an-they-fix-it

Originally Posted by jfxavier

The ERS issue is evident from the times below.