Italian Grand Prix Review: Ferrari's New pain(t)
Aggressive Williams Strategy, Tyre Degradation Analysis of front-runners. Roaring Dutch lions, podium for George, overtaking fest from Carlos, Lewis and Checo.
RACE START:
For Charles, starting on the softs is the correct strategy, since George in Mercedes usually gets the better launch. Seb vettel had the quickest reaction time and was fastest to 50 kmph from lights out.
Reigning world champion had the second best launch on his fresh soft tyres. Meanwhile, his teammate Perez struggled with the launch. Starting from P19, 7-time world Champion Lewis had a excellent start, but had to take an evasive action before the turn 1, which left him towards the back of the field.
On the front row, starting for the second time in his career George got a better launch relative to pole sitter Charles but that was not enough to make the charge into the first corner stick as the Monegasque covered the inside line.
As seen on start replays, Lando had a poor start due to anti-stall kicking in.
TYRE DEGRADATION:
Performance difference between different compound is pretty clear as the softs are the best choice, followed by mediums and hards as Pirelli suggests. The data shows softs are ~0.5s quicker than mediums in race trim, which in turn is around ~0.4s quicker than hards.
Only few drivers extended their stints on softs and hards, which led to some outliers as observed in the chart where performance improved towards the end of stint. Ignore that.
COULD CHARLES HAVE DONE ANYTHING DIFFERENT TO WIN?
Before the race, Max took new engine parts and had a 5-place grid drop penalty. After a myriad of penalties applied, Max started from P7 with a car carrying a loaded rear wing than the norm. This helped him stay closer to the cars ahead during the corners. Also, a nice side-effect is the car slides relatively less and he was able to conserve his tyres longer.
As the trend suggests Charles on softs was losing lap time much more than other cars and especially Max. Even if we compare the performances on mediums, Charles was quicker at the start of the stint and as the laps progressed his laps times exceeded Max’s. Knowing Charles had to pit again and Max he nursed his tyres and coasted to victory. Similar to the last few races, Ferrari lacked the race pace to keep the threat of Max winning at bay. Maybe the next race at Marina Bay offers Charles some reprieve.
Tyre Strategies:
It was a mixed grid with Checo, Carlos, Lewis starting from P13, P18, P19 on the grid. Whenever a faster car starts out of position, the strategy is to run the car in clean-air conditions as much as possible to utilize the pace of the car without getting stuck in traffic. A few ways to do it is either overcut or undercut your competition and run longer stints or use a tyre-offset strategy.
Carlos, Lewis, Checo’s race:
All 3 drivers started on medium compound similar to most of the grid, which meant they have to do the work on-track and that’s exactly what these top drivers did. Sainz made the most overtakes of 13, followed by Lewis with 11 and Checo with 6.
During the safety car period, George pitted for new softs and if Carlos had stayed out with his old tyres, he would’ve come out ahead of George securing the podium position. Historically at Monza, Safety car takes about 5 laps to get back to green flag conditions. But since Daniel’s car had a gear issue, it took marshals extra effort and time to clear out, prolonging the caution period.
This time the safety car rules are followed correctly, more details in this Twitter Thread
Safety car Regulations 🧵People have been asking "Why didn't the Safety Car pickup Max Verstappen the race leader, but instead picked up George Russel?" Regulations are clear that SC will pickup whomever is behind them, regardless of if they are the leader or not. Max was in the pits at this time. https://t.co/N5DpHUMkNCDr Obbs @dr_obbs
Nyck De Vries - Driver of the Day:
Even though this chart is a little busy, it shows how competitive Nyck de vries race pace is. Starting from P8, Nyck had several faster cars behind him and he had to keep up with them in order to score his points. Williams gave him the alternate strategy to start on fresh soft tyres which would provide him an advantage on the long straight due to the grip level.
On softs his race pace was comparable to the Zhou behind him, even better than Ocon’s lap times futher back. On lap 18, Gasly pitted for an aggressive undercut which didn’t work out for him. Next lap, Nyck pitted to cover off others and switched to mediums, which is one of the recommended strategy by Pirelli. Zhou and Ocon made their pit stops to hards hoping the mediums would degrade faster, leaving the Dutchman vulnerable towards the end of the race.
For most of the race, Nyck was in the DRS-endowed train of cars preventing others to overtake him on the straights. We also witnessed high attrition as both Astons, Daniel and Fernando had car issues.
His incredible effort secured him points on his debut and his performance earned him Driver of the Day honors. He even out shined fellow Dutch man in Tracing Insights Fan ratings with a perfect score of 10/10
😍Poster for #ItalianGP - Monza Circuit - The Temple of Speed You can now buy this along with several other circuit designs at tracinginsights.creator-spring.com/listing/monza-… DM me for customization or other questions #F1 #Formula1 #TeamLH #essereFerrari #matplotlib #GivesyouWingsHow ratings are calculated:
How Tyre Degradation is calculated:
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