Monaco F1

[ted]

Nico and Seb could not believe their luck.

[Neilk]

Shocking. Since you can't pass on that track, why get new tires? Just wow...

[sand_man]

I wonder if Ham was called in? Or if he radioed in that he couldn't go the distance on the tires that he had? I wonder if telemetry was showing that on the restart (caution to green) Nico would own him (stronger car)? And if he was called in, does he have the option to use his own common sense/judgement to say "NO, I'm staying out"?

Too much wondering...

[javadog]

Lewis was thinking that the others had stopped. Some idiot in the pitwall figured they had time to get him in and out.

Add those together and you have a really lousy outcome.

JR

[ted]

Rosberg wins Monaco as Mercedes destroy Hamilton’s race | GRAND PRIX 247

Immediately after the race Mercedes head of motorsport Toto Wolff made no effort to hide the fact that his team had made a major gaffe, “We thought the gap was different to what it was. A complete misjudgement, I am so sorry. We screwed it up for him.”

[Noah930]

Originally Posted by sand_man

I wonder if Ham was called in? ... And if he was called in, does he have the option to use his own common sense/judgement to say "NO, I'm staying out"?

I believe he was called in. Wasn't his decision. I wonder about that second part, too. What happens if a driver ignores his race engineer? Plenty of instances of that happening. But to a certain degree, as a driver you expect your engineer to be working on things in your best interest.


I also wonder about the Verstappen-Grosjean crash. Granted it was Verstappen who hit Grosjean, but did Grosjean brake early for St Devote?

[Deschodt]

I could not believe my eyes when they called HAM in. Considering you almost cannot pass here, why even try it, time or no time ???

Rosberg owes Verstappen a drink, his bonehead move on Grosjean (hello 5 grid spot penalty) offered Mercedes a chance at the absolute dumbest pit call of the season ! Wait is he old enough to drink ? ;-)

I thought hamilton's stopping on track, slamming the #3 panel when parking the car, and taking his time to get out was "interesting" - by that I mean childish and whiny, but he did answer interview questions fairly well so he actually went up in my book (and I don't like him). He was robbed of a victory, so he had the right to be pissed off... Oh to be a fly on the wall in that debriefing ! Still, a couple days after I signed $150M contract, I would try and put things into perspective and play it cool with my team... It's not like anyone's *truly* challenging him for the championship... It's minor miracle (of clusterfuc#s such as this one) that he's not 100pts clear already! I mean, does anyone here believe ROS and VET have a shot at the title ?

PS: How does RIC get away with no penalty for his pass in Kimi ? You hit the rear of a car with your front tire, make him slide and pass him and that's OK??? IF so the next few races are gonna turn into NASCAR !!

[nostatic]

Toto said they don't have GPS at Monaco so they had to depend on "algorithms." My wife, who is a recent convert to F1 and an artist, not mathematician, said, "if he has a 19 second lead and the pit differential is 22 seconds, what kind of algorithm makes that work out?"

The other point she made is that you can't pass at Monaco, so there is zero reason to bring him in even if he has the pit differential covered.

I love my wife...

[Deschodt]

Mercedes is using common core math :-)

[Noah930]

Originally Posted by Deschodt

PS: How does RIC get away with no penalty for his pass in Kimi ? You hit the rear of a car with your front tire, make him slide and pass him and that's OK??? IF so the next few races are gonna turn into NASCAR !!

Because the guest race steward was Mr. LeMans, Tom Kristense n. That move would have been fair in sportscar racing. But I don't think Ricciardo should have gotten away with it in F1.

[Deschodt]

Here's your 3rd place :-)

[tchanson]

Originally Posted by nostatic

The other point she made is that you can't pass at Monaco, so there is zero reason to bring him in even if he has the pit differential covered.

This.

I am mystified at the rationale of this call, for any reason whatsoever. (1) He was in the lead (2) his tires weren't gone (3) he was under no threat from his second place teammate and if he was (4) team orders would have quashed that threat and in any event (5) its impossible to pass at Monaco.

It reminded me of Monaco '92, when Senna, in a slower McLaren, on clapped out tires he started the race with, held off Mansell in a far superior FW14B on fresh rubber for many laps and a win:



Mansell Vs Senna - Monaco Grand Prix 1992 by roro83139



Ham's no Senna, and his little post race pout(s) continue his descent into becoming F1's Kardashian.

But he did get hosed today by his own team for no apparent reason or fault of his own.

.

[450knotOffice]

Originally Posted by tchanson

Ham's no Senna, and his little post race pout(s) continue his descent into becoming F1's Kardashian.


.

Wait. I hope you're not implying that Senna was a good sport by ANY stretch of the imagination. I watched him through his entire career, and while he was an unmatched talent, he was a prima donna of the highest order. In fact, I don't think I've seen anyone in F1 EVER act worse toward his fellow drivers than the master himself.

Great driver, but he was a major league ass with no parallel. Schumi's antics paled in comparison, as do Hamilton's.

Great video you posted, by the way. Entertaining, to say the least. I miss those beautiful engine sounds.

[javadog]

Like I said, there were a couple of things at play, here. Hambone was on his radio complaining about the state of his tires. He knew they were going to be even worse, on the restart, as they were going to cool off beacause of the safety car. He had been watching the TV screens, as drivers often do, and thought he saw his team in the pitlane. His assumption was that Rosberg had stopped. He couldn't see him directly, since he had such a lead, so he figured a stop was okay.

I can't say what the team thought the gap was, as I wasn't watching what they were on the pit wall. They thought they had enough of a gap to get him in and out. Obviously, they were wrong. Whether it was just that the gap was never sufficient, or that it went away when they went from the virtual saftey car period to the safety car period and the drivers could pick up the pace, I don't know. I'm sure they will figure it out.

JR

[javadog]

Originally Posted by TheMentat

rain is pretty much the ONLY thing that will make it interesting!

Originally Posted by Geneman

Its a yawm as usual no place to pass.. Qual is everything

Originally Posted by URY914

After turn one the race is over.

You guys should just quit watching TV. If you don't enjoy watching a driver throw an F1 car around the streets of Monaco, just for the sake of seeing what they can do with one, you need to find a new hobby. Gardening, perhaps. Nobody *****es about the lack of passing in the World Rally series, because everyone enjoys seeing the drivers pushing their cars to the ragged edge and beyond. This race is the same. The nuance are a little more subtle but they can be seen, if you watch closely. For me, watching what an F1 car can do is secondary to the actual positions on the track. They may not be as fast as they were in 2004 but they are still mind-bendingly quick.

Watch the entry to the swimming pool chicane a few times...

JR

[Iciclehead]

When is Grosjean going to get thrown out of F1? I mean, his brake check that took out Verstappen is unbelievably unsafe and, considering his penchant for doing this kind of stuff, ought to get him thrown out of F1 permanently.

What is this now...his 6th significant accident causing venture?

Unbelievable....and it was the root cause of the Hambone hash....

Dennis

[sand_man]

Originally Posted by tchanson

It reminded me of Monaco '92, when Senna, in a slower McLaren, on clapped out tires he started the race with, held off Mansell in a far superior FW14B on fresh rubber for many laps and a win:

I remember it well! My father and I were both standing on our feet yelling at the TV as that race unfolded!!!! AMAZING!

[yellowperil]

Originally Posted by javadog

You guys should just quit watching TV. If you don't enjoy watching a driver throw an F1 car around the streets of Monaco, just for the sake of seeing what they can do with one, you need to find a new hobby. Gardening, perhaps. Nobody *****es about the lack of passing in the World Rally series, because everyone enjoys seeing the drivers pushing their cars to the ragged edge and beyond. This race is the same. The nuance are a little more subtle but they can be seen, if you watch closely. For me, watching what an F1 car can do is secondary to the actual positions on the track. They may not be as fast as they were in 2004 but they are still mind-bendingly quick.

Watch the entry to the swimming pool chicane a few times...

JR

Well said, jaydog. It's always a great race. I think seeing Jarno Trullii, in his Renault, coming through the swimming pool section, curb to curb, was racing at it's very best. (2004 when he won)

[Don Plumley]

Originally Posted by javadog

You guys should just quit watching TV. If you don't enjoy watching a driver throw an F1 car around the streets of Monaco, just for the sake of seeing what they can do with one, you need to find a new hobby. Gardening, perhaps. Nobody *****es about the lack of passing in the World Rally series, because everyone enjoys seeing the drivers pushing their cars to the ragged edge and beyond. This race is the same. The nuance are a little more subtle but they can be seen, if you watch closely. For me, watching what an F1 car can do is secondary to the actual positions on the track. They may not be as fast as they were in 2004 but they are still mind-bendingly quick.

Watch the entry to the swimming pool chicane a few times...

JR

I agree - especially with all the improved in car coverage, these dudes must be scraping their balls on the Ti skid plates. Those walls, full commitment, plus playing with a steering wheel with more buttons than an XBox controller. In one of the pre-race pieces, I think it was Jackie Stewart saying that there are tens of thousands of race licenses in the world, but only six of the F1 drivers are of the caliber to be a World Champion. It's a gift to watch these guys drive an impossibly complex machine in anger.


BTW, did you catch the radio from Verstappen after tucking behind Vettel and passing people - priceless!

Verstappen lost places as a result of the botched pit stop, but found an inventive way of clawing them back.

With Sebastian Vettel, running in third, arriving to lap the back markers, Verstappen pounced on the opportunity to slip in behind the Ferrari as others moved out of the way of the former world champion.

"If I stay with Vettel it's easier for me to overtake," said Verstappen on team radio.
"Agreed", came the response.

Back to the Ham incident - I read the press conference transcript a few times and was blown away at the maturity and calm. I'm sure it was equally surreal for Nico and Vettel. I'll give him hitting the sign and collecting himself in the car. There's no room in Monaco to bury your face in a towel away from the cameras. You go right from the car to the Royal Box in full view. The man had a lifetime achievement taken from him - to be the winner of the Monaco Grand Prix. He built an incredible lead over Nico in the same car. He's simply a faster driver on a tougher track. I have a year's worth of empathy for him.

[javadog]

A little more of an explanation that I just found on Motorsport.com:

..."Hamilton didn't simply consolidate his lead, he extended it, and indeed by lap 63 he was 19.6s ahead of his teammate.
However, at Monaco you are always in the hands of the gods, as it is a venue that tends to produce drama, and very often in the closing laps. It was while he was on his 64th lap that Verstappen crashed at Ste Devote, and F1's first Virtual Safety Car was called for.

Like all the other drivers Hamilton slowed as required, and on that lap he lost around 14s relative to his previous laptimes, crossing the line with a 1m33.047s lap. His pursuers spent more of that lap at the slower speed, so by the time Rosberg crossed the line the screens suggested that he was 25.7s behind Hamilton.

By then race control had decided to turn the VSC into a regular safety car (the VSC was only in place for 30 seconds), something that the teams knew could happen. Initially at least, it doesn't make any difference to the drivers, who run at the same speed in either case.

It was at this stage that on a giant TV screen Hamilton caught a brief glimpse of the Mercedes crew standing in the pitlane, the guys having dashed out 'just in case', as is the usual routine.

He knew he wasn't making a pitstop, so his immediate conclusion was that Rosberg had, and that quite possibly Sebastian Vettel and other top runners had too.

His first thought was that when the cars were released after the safety car he could find himself stranded on old soft tyres – with low temperatures and pressures – with Rosberg heading a gaggle of rivals on supersofts. At this stage there were still some 15 laps to run, and thus quite a long time for him to hold out.

Hamilton thought Rosberg had stopped

That's what instigated a conversation with the pit wall in which he expressed his concerns about the tyres. It's here where there appears to have been a miscommunication – Hamilton thought Rosberg had pitted, and the team didn't realise that's why he was so agitated about the tyres.

They were suddenly not working from the same script.

Instead of reassuring him that neither Rosberg nor Vettel had pitted, the team heeded his tyre concerns. They did the sums and decided that there was sufficient time for him to pit and resume still safely ahead of Nico and Vettel.

In effect there was nothing to lose – it would give him a little extra comfort zone for those last few laps, and probably allow him to pull away from Rosberg once again, since the German would still be on his well worn softs, and stop any chance of the two of them getting into a fight that could end in tears.

In theory you could view the decision to stop as a safe, conservative choice.

"You rely on the team," said Hamilton. "I saw a screen, it looked like the team was out and I thought that Nico had pitted. Obviously I couldn't see the guys behind so I thought the guys behind were pitting.

"The team said to stay out, I said 'these tyres are going to drop in temperature,' and what I was assuming was that these guys would be on options and I was on the harder tyre. So, they said to pit. Without thinking I came in with full confidence that the others had done the same."

What you have to remember that even at safety car speeds a lap of Monaco passes very quickly, and the tyre conversation, the calculations and the decision to pit all happened in a matter of seconds. The big problem was that in the Swimming Pool area Hamilton caught up with the safety car, which had been busy waving other drivers through.

He had to slow to Bernd Maylander's speed for a couple of corners, while Rosberg was still going as fast as he was allowed to under the rules – and that was a crucial difference. Right at the end of the lap, just before he was due to pit, the gap had shrunk.

The problem was simply that for some reason the Mercedes strategy management system didn't recognise that, even though, as Toto Wolff noted, the final confirmation to come in was made "50 metres" before the pits.

Realisation hits Hamilton...

Only when he came blasting out of the pits – and saw Rosberg and Vettel passing by on the track – did Hamilton realise what had happened. The team had got its sums very badly wrong.

"The verdict is that often in life simple things have a big impact," Wolff told Motorsport.com. "And in that particular case the system showed us wrong data, and based on those data we decided to pit. We thought that we had a gap, but we didn't have a gap, and because in Monaco you have no GPS it makes the whole thing more complicated.

"He thought that we had pitted Nico, but he didn't realise the others didn't pit, he didn't see that. Our data said we had the margin, and when he said the tyres were gone and they will not come back, it just added up to a whole lot of information, and that made us pit. But the main call was that we had the margin.

"We got the wrong call at the wrong time, him saying the tyre temperatures dropped. We thought we had a gap but the gap wasn't there..."

Wolff's reference to the FIA's GPS system – whose information is incorporated into the teams' own calculations – is an intriguing one.

It's obvious why Monaco's environment makes GPS less effective, but the FIA and the teams back it up with other sources of position information such as loops in the track (there are around 20), and dead-reckoning algorithms.

Frozen data

For some reason Mercedes didn't pick up on that crucial end-of-the-lap delay behind the safety car, as Wolff explains: "We thought we had 3.5 seconds on top of a normal pitstop. And that disappeared. Somewhere the data got frozen, and we have to find out where. The numbers just didn't add up any more. The safety car stopped him a little bit..."

In essence the Mercedes sums were based on Hamilton's expected VSC speed, but the presence of the real safety car in front of him at that crucial time meant that he was slower than he should have been.

It's worth noting that Hamilton's lap 65 – which basically included the pitstop – was 2m11.321s. In contrast Felipe Nasr, who came into pit entry just four seconds later, but crucially did not have to slow for the safety car, did his lap in 1m59.948s.

And Daniel Ricciardo, who came into the pits another 31s after Nasr, completed it lap in 1m59.200s. In other words, somewhere Hamilton lost around 11s relative to the time he should have done.

Forgetting the question of what the data said or didn't say, it would seem that no one at Mercedes physically saw that he'd got caught like that. The only man who knew was Hamilton himself, sitting behind the safety car, but he didn't realise that the precious seconds he was losing were so crucial.

At least a bit of that time went astray in the pitlane itself – his first stop had a pit time of 24.181s, and the second was 25.495s, so some 1.3s went just there, probably as he was held for Nasr passing by. Certainly enough to have got him out ahead of Vettel, if not Rosberg...

It's worth noting that Mercedes had no reason to fear a Vettel pitstop, because Ferrari had decided straight away that the German should stay out.

"We were nervous at the beginning thinking about them pitting," said team boss Maurizio Arrivabene. "We were looking at the window, and at one stage the guy working for us on strategy said, 'Stay cool, they are doing a kind of show, and we stay out.' In any case he said. 'If they come in, we stay out.'

"He was really, really straightforward on this, and he was right. I know that we were lucky, I'm not telling to you something different, but in my opinion they were a bit too much convinced about their power. I recognised that they are very intelligent, they are stronger than us, but this time we were smart..."

"We are all humans," said Wolff. "Sometimes you need to make decisions within a fraction of a second, and this time we made a decision and it was the wrong decision. We have to analyse it properly, see how we can avoid it in the future, apologise to Lewis, and apologise, and apologise."

In the end it was a self-inflicted problem for Mercedes, especially given that the stop was so unnecessary.

Niki Lauda summed it up best: "There was no challenge, there was no stress, there was confusion among the strategy people about what to do, and this is the end of it.

"We have to analyse it first and then see what we can improve on these matters. I feel sorry for him because we screwed his race up."