Sebastian Vettel's Press Conference Quips

This season many of the Vettel haters have suddenly started to like him. This is one reason why...

The 2015 F1 Supergrid

Lewis Hamilton swept the board in 2015, claiming the most wins, the most podiums, the most poles and the most fastest laps - as well as the world championship of course. No surprise then that he heads up the 2015 'Supergrid' - but there are a few surprises behind, as our analysis of the underlying speed of each driver reveals...

How do you judge driver performance over any single season in Formula One racing - particularly one where the top ten in the drivers' championship finished in team order? Looking at the points table will tell you so much - but a different picture emerges by drilling down into the underlying pace of each driver over the 19 races.

We compared every driver's best lap, at each race, to the outright fastest time, which is expressed below as 100. Those tallies are then added up and divided by 19 - or fewer if they were not present, like Fernando Alonso in Australia - to produce an index for each driver over the entire season.

Hamilton, as noted, heads the field, with Nico Rosberg close behind - and a clear gap between Mercedes and the rest of the pack. Marussia meanwhile are comfortably at the back - indeed the scale has had to be adjusted accordingly. In between those outliers, though, the data is far more interesting - and it doesn't make great reading for some...




The driver makes the difference

Perhaps the key detail revealed by the Supergrid is just how much difference the driver makes in F1 racing. Mercedes are streets ahead of the opposition admittedly, but behind them the chart reads Ferrari, Williams, Ferrari, Red Bull, Williams, Red Bull, Lotus, Toro Rosso, Force India...

The relative gaps between team mates are also expressed far better over a season than just one race. Where points scored in each race can depend upon a multitude of factors - race strategy, traffic, tyre conservation, rapid pit stops, one moment of brilliance or bad luck - looking only at the ultimate speed of each driver paints a revealing picture of who excelled, and who struggled, in 2015.


Who comes off worst?

If beating your team mate is the first job for any driver, two were markedly off the pace in 2015 - Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa.

Both men actually followed their respective team mate home in the championship - Raikkonen was fourth on 150 points (128 behind Sebastian Vettel) while Massa was sixth with 121 points, just 15 behind Valtteri Bottas.

But in terms of underlying pace, both men had a clear deficit to their partner. Taking the average percentages used for the Supergrid, both men have a deficit of 0.55 percent. That might seem miniscule, but it's the largest gap between team mates of the entire field - and in a sport where inches can make the difference, it highlights the fact the two veterans have significant ground to make up in 2016.

There is one caveat: the rain-hit race in Austin has an impact for both drivers. Raikkonen's crash just before mid-distance meant he was not out on track when conditions were at their best - and his score for that race suffers as a result (the best times are typically set in qualifying, but due to Hurricane Patricia the fastest times in Austin came during the race). As for Massa, he too fared badly as Williams struggled massively for handling - which had an exaggerated effect on his score as team mate Bottas escaped the same fate by only managing four laps, which meant we discounted the race from the Finn's overall score.

Who else struggled?

It's perhaps not overly surprising that Pastor Maldonado fares badly compared to Romain Grosjean in our Supergrid. The Venezuelan had the worst qualifying head-to-head of the entire field, for example, trailing Grosjean 17-2. He was well beaten in the championship too, scoring 27 points to Grosjean's 51.

What is more surprising is that his Supergrid deficit to his team mate - 0.31 percent - is actually smaller than those of Marcus Ericsson, on 0.37, and Daniil Kvyat, on 0.36.

Like Raikkonen and Massa above, Ericsson is not helped by his weekend in the USA - an electrical issue forced his retirement mid-race, meaning he too was unable to profit from the best conditions of the weekend in the closing stages. Even without that, though, the Supergrid reveals a clear speed deficit to Nasr - not revealed by their qualifying head-to-head, where Nasr beat Ericsson 10-9.

Kvyat is another odd case. On the face of it, the Russian had an impressive first season with Red Bull - he out-scored Daniel Ricciardo 95 points to 92, and beat him in qualifying one third of the time.

Even so, Kvyat came under pressure from his Red Bull bosses to improve, particularly in the early races - and the data for the Supergrid confirms he was struggling. In the first six races, Kvyat's deficit to Ricciardo was 0.61 percent - among the highest in the entire field. Crucially for the young Russian, he began to close that gap as the season progressed - over the last three races, for example, it was down to 0.12 percent, and indeed he was the faster of the two Red Bull drivers in Brazil.

Effectively, the data shows why Red Bull put more pressure on Kvyat than Ricciardo, despite the former being ahead in the championship - but it also shows that Kvyat improved markedly, which bodes well for 2016.

The closest fights of the field

Statistically speaking, the three closest intra-team battles of 2015 came at Toro Rosso, Force India and McLaren. Of the three, McLaren pair Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button had the tightest fight - indeed there was almost nothing to separate the two former world champions.

In this instance, Australia has been discounted given that Alonso was not able to race in the season-opener. Momentum swings between the two drivers over the other 18 races - Alonso had a clear deficit to Button in Canada and Austria, for example, but equally was far faster in Bahrain, Monaco and the USA. Overall, there was just 0.01 percent difference between the two, with Alonso having the slight edge. As expected, of course, McLaren ended the season comfortably behind every other team bar Marussia.

Next up are Force India. The team's two drivers matched each other almost exactly over the first six races, before Hulkenberg found a slight edge in Canada and the following few races. Perez, however, had the upper hand at the season's end, out-pacing Hulkenberg in Japan, the USA, Mexico and Abu Dhabi, meaning there was just 0.05 percent difference between the pair's season-ending averages.

The third closest fight, meanwhile, came at Toro Rosso - and interestingly it is Carlos Sainz, not Max Verstappen, who has the slightest of edges. As with McLaren and Force India, the advantage between the two swings one way and then the other throughout the course of the season, but it is Sainz - whose score in Russia was disregarded following his massive practice crash - who emerged ahead, just 0.09 percent in front of his fellow rookie.

(source: f1.com)

Pirelli confirm supersoft tyres for Bahrain and China ‘16

Supersoft tyres will be available at the Bahrain and Chinese Grands Prix for the first time next year, Pirelli have announced. As per the new 2016 regulations, under which three compounds are offered at each race, teams will also be able to use medium and soft tyres at both rounds.


As part of the new 2016 rules, every team must save at least one set of the supersoft tyre for Q3. Those who qualify inside the top ten will have to give the tyre back to Pirelli at the end of qualifying, while those who do not make the cut can carry the extra set into the race.

Teams must also have at least one set of mediums and one set of softs available for the race - although they are only obligated to race with one of those two compounds (should they also choose to use the supersoft compound during the race).

With 13 sets of tyres in total made available over the weekend, teams have free choice over their individual allocations for the remaining 10 sets.

The 2016 tyre choices so far:
1. Australia – supersoft, soft, medium
2. Bahrain – supersoft, soft, medium
3. China – supersoft, soft, medium

(source: f1.com)

Max Verstappen with BBC (video)

Have a look at this video!

Renault 'in much better shape' for 2016

Renault are adamant they have learned lessons from their 2015 downturn, and believe new measures they have already put in place mean they will hit the ground running next season.


Remi Taffin, Director of Operations, says the French manufacturer effectively tripped themselves up in 2015 by being too hasty in their bid to close the gap to the front. He is confident a subsequent 'return to basics' will produce a much clearer direction for the future.

"We arrived at the first winter test [of 2015] believing that we had made a big step forward between seasons. We genuinely thought that we had done a good job," Taffin explained.

"It was the case in certain areas, but we were caught out in three principal ways. The first was a significant reliability problem with the pistons. We had another part inside the PU electronics that we could not put our finger on and it continued to be a source of problems.

"The final element is that we braked so late for 2015, taking decisions until the last possible moment. The specification of PU for the first race was determined very late in the day and quite simply we braked too late, and we weren’t ready.

"We wanted to make up the gap so badly that we pulled the rug out from under our own feet... but this particular cocktail of problems did allow us to learn a lot and make sure that the same issues will not reoccur in the future.

"We end the season much more knowledgeable and information-rich - unfortunately we did not get the results we wanted, but everything has allowed us to prepare in the short term for 2016 and longer term beyond that.

"We are in much better shape now than we were at this point last year, for sure."

Taffin said Renault will also step up their work with highly-regarded Ilmor Engineering to aid the development of their power unit.

"They [Ilmor] were able to bring different concepts to the table, such as a different combustion concept, and now we will continue with them into 2016," Taffin said.

"We will continue to develop a lot in-house but with partners such as Ilmor we have a greater bandwidth and a richer experience and expertise. We did not see the full extent of the collaboration in 2015 for various reasons, but now they are under our control and we have a clearer direction we should see this more in 2016 and beyond."

Renault confirmed earlier this month that they will return to Formula One racing as a works entrant in 2016, having agreed a deal to acquire a controlling share in Lotus.

(source: f1.com)

The Fastest Lap in F1 History: Montoya at Monza

Fastest avarage speed ever on a lap in Formula One history.

Performance analysis - which team won the development race?

Mercedes may have been the undisputed class of the field in 2015, but in the race to develop their car over the entire season, four others teams managed to out-gun the Silver Arrows. We crunched the numbers to see who fared badly - and who emerged as the surprise winners...


Before we get to the reveal, the maths. We took a team's fastest overall lap from each weekend over the season - taken from whichever of their drivers was quickest - and expressed it as a percentage of the overall fastest time, which more often than not was the Q3 pole lap.

Doing it this way helps to eliminate variables - like one driver having a bad weekend, or a spate of unreliability or crashes - and drill down into each team's underlying pace on each race weekend, and across the season.

It also allows us to look at which teams improved - or lost ground - over the 19 races. Discounting the first race, in part because not every team was present and in part because Australia isn't always the most representative race, we took each team's average from races two, three and four, and compared that to the final three Grands Prix.

So who were the biggest gainers? Did McLaren get on top of their numerous issues, for example? And did the likes of Ferrari, Williams or Red Bull close on Mercedes?


GAINING GROUND







1. Force India

Early season average: 102.29%
End of season average: 101.27%
Gain: 1.014%

The stats don't lie: Force India gained the most ground of any team between the start and end of the season - and by some margin too.

In this regard, the team's poor start to the year played a significant role. Budget issues meant they missed much of pre-season, and were off the pace when the season began - although Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Perez managed to rescue several points finishes.

The focus though was on the 'B-spec' car that was eventually introduced in Silverstone. Once optimised, this proved a massive step forward, with Force India's raw pace a match for Red Bull and Williams over the final three races.

2. Marussia

Early season average: 106.57%
End of season average: 106.24%
Gain: 0.323%

The slowest team on the grid typically have the biggest potential to improve, but even so Marussia deserve credit for closing the gap to Mercedes over 2015. Using a modified version of their 2014 car, and with obvious budget constraints, the team made steady progress over the season. With a new car for 2016, and Mercedes power, the ingredients are there to make a bigger step over the winter.

3. McLaren

Early season average: 102.90%
End of season average: 102.74%
Gain: 0.157%

Whatever the measure or statistic, this was a dismal season for the team from Woking. The Honda power unit was the obvious point of blame, as the 'size zero' concept led to numerous and insurmountable (at least in the short term) issues. McLaren did at least make progress relative to the outright pace, but their end-of-season average was still worse than every team bar Marussia.

Next year will be critical.

4. Red Bull

Early season average: 101.43%
End of season average: 101.27%
Gain: 0.154%

Like McLaren, Red Bull's progress over the 2015 season was hardly remarkable - but the latter did at least have less overall ground to make up. The good news for Red Bull is that they were a clear match for Williams by the end of the year, behind only Mercedes and Ferrari. Improve the power unit situation, and they should make a major jump forward in 2016.

The bad news? Red Bull's struggles weren't all engine-related - indeed a glance at the early season averages shows there was very little to separate the team from sister outfit Toro Rosso early on. The fact the gap grows between the two teams suggests Red Bull were able to start getting on top of the RB11 - which could bode well for next year.


NO CHANGE





5. Mercedes

Early season average: 100.00%
End of season average: 100.00%

A victim of their own success, at least in this one regard - Mercedes' crushing dominance in 2015 meant they 'gained' little ground over the season. They improved outright of course, bringing a relentless stream of upgrades throughout the season. But they also set the pace in 18 of 19 races this year, meaning their average was almost always 100 percent.

The one exception was Singapore, where Sebastian Vettel was legitimately fastest. In all other races, Mercedes had a pace advantage. That shows what a good job Ferrari and Vettel did to triumph three times, but it also emphasises the scale of the task every other team has to overhaul the Silver Arrows.

Such dominance might not always translate to fantastic racing, but there are encouraging signs in the data. Lewis Hamilton set the outright pace in 11 of the first 12 races (Nico Rosberg was faster in Spain), but then trailed his team mate in all of the last six. If Rosberg can keep that momentum up, we could have a fantastic fight for the title next year.


LOSING GROUND





6. Ferrari

Early season average: 100.58%
End of season average: 101.67%
Loss: 0.085%

Ferrari fell very slightly behind Mercedes over the course of 2015, although by a very small margin.

The team's high point came in Singapore, where Sebastian Vettel set the outright pace - as mentioned above, the only occasion all year where Mercedes didn't end up leading the way The German was typically the faster of Ferrari's two drivers, which meant his Q1 exit in Abu Dhabi - the result of a team miscalculation rather than a speed deficit - may have hurt their end-of-season average slightly. Even so, this was a good year for the Prancing Horse, as the team clearly established themselves as Mercedes' closest challengers.

7. Toro Rosso

Early season average: 101.77%
End of season average: 101.93%
Loss: 0.161%

Toro Rosso were a very close match for sister team Red Bull in the early stages of the season, a testament both to the STR10 chassis and the ability of their two rookie drivers, Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz, who were two of the stars of the season.

They couldn't hold that pace over the year, however, and slipped back slightly. In the final three races, they were effectively in their own mini class - some way behind Mercedes, Ferrari, Williams, Red Bull and Force India, but equally some way ahead of Lotus, Sauber, McLaren and Marussia.

8. Williams

Early season average: 101.03%
End of season average: 101.25%
Loss: 0.225%

Williams made the call to halt development of their 2015 car once third in the constructors' championship was secured - which was reflected in the data, as the team dropped back into the clutches of Red Bull and Force India. The loss of momentum was especially evident in Abu Dhabi, where Williams were the fifth-best team in terms of pace. There are other slight concerns, like a number of pit stop errors and the fact they were nowhere when it rained in Austin - but the decision to focus on 2016 will only be vindicated one way or another when the new season starts.

9. Sauber

Early season average: 101.92%
End of season average: 102.45%
Loss: 0.528%

Sauber started the year fairly strongly - they had the same pace as Red Bull in Malaysia for example - but dropped away notably as the year progressed. Unfortunately for the Swiss squad this isn't exactly a new trend. Arresting the dynamic in 2016 might require changes to the typical methodology, but ending the season as the slowest team bar Marussia and McLaren is proof that action needs to be taken.

10. Lotus

Early season average: 101.64%
End of season average: 102.26%
Loss: 0.619%

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Lotus suffered the most during a season in which financial concerns dominated the team's outlook and potential. The team actually started very strongly, with the arrival of Mercedes power a significant benefit. Romain Grosjean too was in superlative form, somehow even capturing a podium at Spa-Francorchamps - a race where the team were the third fastest, in theory at least.

Performance plummeted, however, and by the final three races Lotus were fighting to stay ahead of Sauber and McLaren. A takeover by Renault should do much to alleviate the same sort of drop off next year.


The 2015 'Swingometer'

(source: f1.com)