Fans, it’s Ja…
I’m James Vowles,
the Chief Strategist for the team,
and I’m here to answer your questions
about the Australian Grand Prix.
In order to explain why we stopped
Lewis where we did in the race,
let’s use what we call the Race Planner.
This is a plot that tries to give a
good overview of the race.
Along the x-axis represents
the laps of the race,
from left to right as an
increasing lap number.
On the y-axis represents
the gaps between the cars in seconds.
The further up the plot you are,
up the top of the plot you are,
the further ahead on the road
you are relative to the cars behind.
So, on this you can see Valtteri
right at the top of it and behind
that Grosjean as one of the last lines
we have shown.
And what we are looking for
here is where cars have stopped
in the race and why they have
stopped in the race.
So, every now and again
you’ll see a sharp line downwards,
that represents a pit stop.
That represents a car coming
through the pit lane,
which in Melbourne is
around about 20 seconds, just over.
When we look at Vettel’s race,
he had Verstappen right behind him,
around 1.6 seconds behind for all
of that first stint and I am sure
they were looking for the
first opportunity to cover a
potential undercut from Verstappen
and they made the decision around
about lap 14 to do that.
You can see that behind,
there’s Grosjean in that sort
of brown coloured line,
but Grosjean came in on that
lap and it put Vettel in free air.
And Vettel was very, very fast.
They successfully covered any undercut
risk against Verstappen but also
were starting to come into Lewis’
window very, very quickly.
Indeed, his outlap was quite a
bit faster than Lewis already and
that Medium compound had a
warm-up slope.
What that means is,
it’s quite difficult for the
first few sequences of corners
but as you go certainly into the
second lap where you are driving it,
it becomes faster and faster.
So, there was a severe and
genuine risk that in a few laps
or certainly in a lap,
Vettel would be in Lewis’ window.
We opted to make sure we covered
that off by stopping Lewis, and
give him enough time on track
to deal with the warm-up and
understand what he could do
in terms of management to
absorb that gap to Vettel.
As you go forward in the race,
you will see later in the race
Sebastian dropping off quite
dramatically relative to the
other cars in front of him.
That’s tyre degradation.
And this plot clearly shows you
how he falls away from the front
of the field. And that’s why
these plots are very, very
useful to give you a very quick
overview of the race.
On inspection of Lewis’ car after
the race, we noticed some damage
over what we call the tyre seal area.
If you look at this image,
you will see the broken carbon
just in front of that rear tyre on
that floor region. That area is
quite sensitive aerodynamically,
it’s both for downforce and
also for balance of the car.
And we believe we sustained it
during the course of the race
while riding over some of the kerbs.
Lewis already had a very long stint
on that Medium tyre after
covering off the threat of Vettel’s
undercut, so he was already
having to manage those tyres
quite significantly, hindering his
progress through the race and
really had to look after that.
But, furthermore, that floor damage
wouldn’t have helped, it would’ve
caused the rear to be more unstable
than it normally would be,
and he did a fantastic job
bringing that car to the end of the race.
We’ve had a question to find
out what Valtteri had in his
porridge that morning.
I don’t personally know,
I didn’t have porridge that morning,
but what I can tell you is this.
Valtteri was on it all weekend.
You would’ve seen in Qualifying
he was there in contention for
pole position and it was Lewis’
fantastic last lap that
really put him ahead.
Come the race, again
his start was perfect,
he was able to take the lead of the
race and from then,
he just lap after lap just
pulled a small margin relative
to the others behind.
His race became easier at the
point where Lewis had to
cover the risk of undercut from
Vettel and from then onwards,
he had a few seconds of margin
relative to both of those cars
behind where he was able to use
the remainder of that Soft tyre
and build an 8-lap differential on tyres.
That 8-lap differential
was quite significant,
it allowed him to then manage the
tyres less to the end of the race
and just keep building that gap
relative to the cars behind.
He did a fantastic job, he brought
the car home and at the end of the race,
you would’ve seen he had enough
tyre performance left
to also do the fastest lap.
For 2019 you are now awarded
a point for the fastest lap of the race
if you are within the top 10.
This was one of the hotly debated
subjects within the team all the
way until Sunday morning,
trying to forge the right plan
of risk versus reward.
The facts are there are 21 races,
21 points, which is nearly a
race wins’ worth.
And you can’t let your rivals
run away with that.
This could be a close-fought season
and that may make all the difference.
But, it is risk versus reward.
If, for example, you decide to
do an extra pit stop for the sole
purpose of being able to get
the fastest lap of the race,
there is risk involved in that.
Perhaps you don’t get a wheel
connected to the car correctly
and the car goes out, and it’s a DNF.
Perhaps, the driver accidentally crosses
the white line on entry or exit.
Either one of those has huge
repercussions and all of a sudden
your race wins’ worth of points is
meaningless relative to the one you
were going for. The converse is again
at the end of the race, asking a driver
to push and extract performance
for the fastest lap of the race
isn’t without risk.
They can go off the track,
they can make a mistake and
they can risk the car.
On this plot, what you will
see is across the race all of
the lap times are just getting
faster and faster.
The reason why is as the fuel
mass comes off the car,
that’s a more important effect
than the tyre degradation.
So, less fuel in the car,
less weight and the faster
the car goes. So, what it
is really showing you is the
fastest lap of the race is going
to be set in the dying stages of the race,
the last few laps when the car
is at its lightest.
Both Valtteri and Lewis
did a great job managing
the tyres and just trying to
keep as much rubber available
on them as they could, such
that they could go for the fastest
lap at the end of the race.
Valtteri ultimately had tyres
in a slightly better condition and
didn’t have the floor damage
that Lewis did, and did a fantastic
job scoring the maximum
number of points available
to him that race.
Thank you very much for all
of your questions,
I’ve enjoyed answering them.
Please send all your questions
in for the Bahrain Grand Prix,
which will be the next race
debrief that we do for you.
