Posted on 04/11/2013 5:05:59 PM PDT by Chode
Shanghai Formula 1
Race Date: | 14 Apr 2013 |
Circuit Name: | Shanghai International Circuit |
First Grand Prix: | 2004 |
Number of Laps: | 56 |
Circuit Length: | 5.451 km |
Race Distance: | 305.066 km |
Lap Record: | 1:32.238 - M Schumacher (2004) |
Cloudy 19C Cloudy 24C Cloudy 20C |
It will be interesting to see how Vettel’s tire strategy plays out.
Good race strategy by Ferrari and Alonso, not so great on RB although Vettel almost had a podium. I kept telling him to pit, but he pitted too late (I guess he couldn't hear me through the TV yelling at him to pit.....). Lewis was really pushing on that last corner, I'm glad he didn't lose it and he hung on for third.
i heard something about the teams getting an extra set of practice tires from now on though
Jeeez, I hope so. Tires are (relatively) cheap (for F1 teams) and limiting their number per race just doesn't save a lot of money.
Just finished watching the dvr of the race. I can’t say I counted all of the top 5 DRS passes, but my rough guess is maybe 6. On none of them did the car that was passed use the DRS in the next zone or next lap to regain their position. I did see Button deploy it once after he was passed, but could not overtake.
As I suspected, most of the time the car that passes with DRS checks out, as they are the superior car anyway.
I will admit that at Shanghai, with that long straight, if the car behind deploys the DRS, the driver in front is a sitting duck.
I don’t think you can re-pass with DRS in the same zone because if you don’t activate it in the detection zone, you can’t use it for the deployment zone. So the car in front would never use it for that zone. However, in some of the modern tracks like Malaysia and China you have two zones very close together. The car that was passed in zone 1 can deploy in zone 2. I saw that happen with Button once this weekend, but he was not able to make the pass in zone 2.
In Malaysia, it looked like drivers were deliberately not deploying in zone 1 and waiting to do so in zone 2 so as not to have that happen.
and yeah i saw what happened to Button
if you are in the zone and behind i think you should be able to use DRS otherwise it's an inequitable gift to the passing car
why not just blueflag the car in front and be done with it, it's just not racing to me to give advantage to a passing car that the car being passed has option to use...
Well I look at it differently. I don’t see it as an inequitable gift to the passing car, I see it as a means of getting slower cars out of the way and letting the best machines race each other. How many times in past years did we see this: some guy is in 4th, because of a pit sequence or lucky qualifying run, but he cannot keep pace with the leaders and is losing a half second per lap. Five cars are faster than he is, but they are stacked up behind because they are not so much better they can pass easily. They, too, are losing a half second per lap and their chances of a podium are toast. There is no way pit or tire strategies can make up the time they lost on the track because of being stuck in line.
With DRS, they make the pass, check out on the slower car, and the race is on to catch the leaders. Without DRS, Vettel doesn’t get out of 8th after his last stop and he’s stuck sniffing Hulkenberg’s exhaust for the last 7 laps instead of storming to within a few car lengths of a podium.
I go back to my original point about DRS; if it were an “unfair” advantage to the hunter, he would then become the hunted to the same car on the next lap. It almost never happens. His car has to be the better machine just to get within one second in the DRS detection zone. Once he makes the pass, in the next two laps he proves it because the trailing car never gets within that one second window again unless the pit sequence and tire strategies make it possible.
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