Monday 12 July 2010

How Vettel's recovery could have been greater

Sebastian Vettel had an absolute nightmare opening lap at Silverstone. A poor start and contact with Lewis Hamilton gave the German a puncture and he went straight on at Becketts. By the time he had dragged his RB6 back to the pits and changed to a set of hard tyres he found himself nearly a lap down on his team mate and race leader Mark Webber. His pace was then pretty steady, though his plan was now to do 51 laps on the same set of tyres. For a significant points haul to be possible, he needed a field bunching safety car period and pieces of Pedro de la Rosa meant that this occurred with 24 laps left.

As the train of cars gathered, Vettel found himself the second last car in the quene. Only the Force India of Vitantonio Liuzzi was behind him as the cars behind in the order were in front on track but a lap down. We had seen that the soft tyres were working well early in the race and of course they would have become easier to run as the track gained more and more rubber. By pitting, Vettel would have lost 1 position but gained fresh rubber. We seen how this can be such a big help in the closing stages of a race with Kamui Kobayashi in Valencia.

He did get himself up to 7th but i feel that he should have pitted as the sacrifice of losing 1 place would have probably been outweighed by new tyres and he could have well cleared cars quicker and perhaps could have got as high as 5th realistically. There was little to lose and i feel it was definitely a feasible strategic option. They were still important points but in a championship so close, every race is important to make the most of and certainly the operational side of Red Bull remains a weak side of the team after the front wing controversy of Saturday and the failure to call Vettel in on Sunday

9 comments:

  1. It's quite a long penalty for a pitstop at Silverstonr though, even if he were to get a two second per lap advantage on new rubber he'd have need about 10 laps just to make up for the stop. I'm not sure that was feasable.

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  2. Had he done it under the SC though he could have made it to the back of the quene. The sacrifice of stopping would have been 1 position to Liuzzi

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  3. Very interesting point.
    What about the new SC rules, which say that the driver must now slow down to the SC speed. Does this mean that if Vettel pitted and was then, say 10 seconds behind Liuzzi, he would be able to make up that time by going quicker than the SC?
    Cheers.

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  4. Vettel did well. Do you think Webber would stay at Red Bull? I know he has a contract for 2011 but it could all change? What was the point in giving Yamamoto a third chance in an F1 Car?

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  5. The SC rules were changed so that the delta time would be the pace of the SC but they changed their minds before the race and reverted to the old time. The thing is though, the Delta time only applies for the lap you are on when the SC is deployed so on the next lap you can start going quicker and catching up so Vettel could have caught up.

    If things worsen, Webber could walk. If he does though it'll be a likely retirement as other teams have no space.

    There is a rumour that an e-mail was mistakenly sent to the HRT boss that was critical of him so it might have been punishment for Senna after it seemed it was more to do with money

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  6. I checked out the rules. I think it's once the cars have bunched up behind the safety car, then one is free to go at their own pace as you suggest. In that case, I agree with you Connor, it was worth the gamble for Vettel.

    However, note, that the Force India with it's F-Duct is quite difficult to overtake. Alonso had a lot of problems with Liuzzi, and Vettel had to barge past Sutil. So, there was no guarantee it would have helped Vettel, and if Liuzzi proved to be stubborn, then it may actually have worked against Vettel (to pit for fresh rubber during the SC period). But a good point you bring, that others have overlooked.

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  7. Yeah, the Force India is quick, they seem to be positive about the performance their F-Duct brings so he would have needed to get by him quickly to make it work

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  8. I seem to recall that Vettel was stuck behind a backmarker who was staying 30+ seconds off the back of the train. The backmarker (was it Yamamoto?) only caught the train on the lap before the safety car pitted. Perhaps this is the reason why they didn't adopt what otherwise would have been a good strategy. I was watching the live timing and saw the gap was huge until the last minute.

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  9. Yes that is a fair point, it was Chandhok. He had caught up 1 lap before the SC came in so would have needed to make up 20 seconds in 1 lap but probably was still feasible but it did indeed reduce the margins for Red Bull

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