140 replies to this topic

[AlexS]

based on race pace, kimi finished about where he should have. it would've been worse if his tires had fallen completely off at the end and he lost out to jenson as well. 

 

That is wrong, The supersoft tires completely fell off in 2 last laps of first stint. So unless you can say that 1 more laps in either softs would bring the disaster there is no way that Kimi would be slower or equal.

[Mauseri]

OK, after a lot of hesitation, I'm afraid I have to join the conspiracy-theorists.

 

The only reason I can see for Kimi's very late pitstop in Austria, is that Ferrari were using him to hold up Perez and protect Alonso's position.

 

And it worked!

Indeed. Keeping Kimi out longer gives a buffer for Alonso. It is possible to use the second driver to enhance the points score expectation of the first driver. Take Kimi early in to improve his track position, it leaves a door open for the tyre saving Force India and maybe McLaren cars to attack Alonso.

[Oho]

What would he you have said if he had fallen off the cliff and lost 5 places 5 laps from the end?

 

So Ferrari fired a preemptive slug in his head..

[KnucklesAgain]

So Ferrari fired a preemptive slug in his head..

 

Or they have data on Kimi's tyre use.

[Seanspeed]

That is wrong, The supersoft tires completely fell off in 2 last laps of first stint.

That's quite an exaggeration.

I do think they should have pitted him earlier, though. And Alonso. Staying out longer and sacrificing potential track position in order to be quick at the end is fine, but not if you'll have to overtake cars and cant because of a weak power unit.

But alternatively, I suppose that this power unit weakness is also a potential reason to want to be strong at the end, so you're not having to defend from Mercedes-powered cars, which would be a losing battle unless you could actually keep them behind with pace.

I think Ferrari are always thinking about the long game with strategy, but might be wiser to worry about prioritizing track position a little more until their power unit isn't such a weakness.

[ardbeg]

I was very surprised to see Ferrari wait so long after the cars just behind pitted. We have seen the result of going 2-3 extra laps so many times this season and they should have seen it also. Made no sense in Spain and made less sense in Austria.

[Jovanotti]

Or they have data on Kimi's tyre use.

...and he has this knowledge, too, as I guess they would've discussed their race strategy beforehand. Nevertheless, he asked the team to pit. The tyre usage argument makes no sense, and his stints on the prime were comparatively short anyway.

[AlexS]

 

That's quite an exaggeration.

Perez catch and threatened Kimi three/two laps from pitstop and passed in last Kimi lap with several other cars over him, Ricciardo etc. If that is not the tires in the cliff i don't know what is it. So what you call an exaggeration? maybe i am missing your point.

Edited by AlexS, 24 June 2014 - 20:03.

[KnucklesAgain]

...and he has this knowledge, too, as I guess they would've discussed their race strategy beforehand. Nevertheless, he asked the team to pit. The tyre usage argument makes no sense, and his stints on the prime were comparatively short anyway.

 

Like I said in another post, I also think the call was a mistake, but you will agree that things in F1 are complex and subject to short-term change, that despite appearances no F1 team is made up of idiots, and that the team has all kinds of data and sims. All I ask is to consider this and to not call them names without at least some info from the team.

[Cesc]

Some people have lost the wheels totally in this thread, we are here to discuss the strategies instead of your stupid conspiracy theories, no one even brought the theories up until a Alonso / Lewis fan ran into the thread and started to talk about it.

 

YES, Fernando has been superior to Kimi so far, there is no denying that. I still feel though that the gap between Fernando and Kimi isn't as big as the point difference suggests, mainly because Kimi has had awful lot of bad  luck and all so amazing strategies so far in the season.

 

Sometimes I wish people could take their colored glasses off and think rationally instead of just agitating fellow readers. So please if you have no real contribution into this thread, stay away with your ''Kimi should learn to drive'' comments. If you can't drive you don't end up 3rd at   Monaco. 

 

The thing is that the very creation of this thread is jdoing what you are complaining abiout some fellows....

If Kimi was faster, he wouldn't be so sensitive to strategy variations. When you are slow, there are no possible strategy that can benefit you in the long run, and they look always awful.

[Kimble]

Please go and calculate what would have happened to Alonso if he had Kimi's strategy these last 2 races.

[Fortymark]

Kimi to Motorsport Magazin: "I wanted to stop earlier but team said no, I don't know why" about Austria's pit stop strategy.

 

What on earth ferrari?

 

Ferrari + Austria is not a good combination when it comes to treating their drivers fair and equal.. 

[Kenstate]

Ferrari + Austria is not a good combination when it comes to treating their drivers fair and equal.. 

 

 

Please go and calculate what would have happened to Alonso if he had Kimi's strategy these last 2 races.

 

 

man, you kimi fans just slurp it all up......

 

how does this even turn into a discussion when they were pitted less than a lap apart and fernando ends up in a different zip code?

Edited by Kenstate, 24 June 2014 - 21:24.

[Seanspeed]

Perez catch and threatened Kimi three/two laps from pitstop and passed in last Kimi lap with several other cars over him, Ricciardo etc. If that is not the tires in the cliff i don't know what is it. So what you call an exaggeration? maybe i am missing your point.

The times are there to see. They were fine still. It was Perez speeding up(being on the good race tires), not Kimi slowing down dramatically.

Edited by Seanspeed, 24 June 2014 - 21:21.

[BillBald]

The times are there to see. They were fine still. It was Perez speeding up(being on the good race tires), not Kimi slowing down dramatically.

 

I think it's about the positions he lost by pitting later, rather than the time he lost.

 

Kimi's fans have been criticising the team all season, and often with very little reason. But I think this time they have a point.

[turssi]

OK, after a lot of hesitation, I'm afraid I have to join the conspiracy-theorists.

The only reason I can see for Kimi's very late pitstop in Austria, is that Ferrari were using him to hold up Perez and protect Alonso's position.

And it worked!

It was cear that Ferrari used his car tô slow down the opposition. What I don't understand is how Kimi lets out PR statements saying he does not know why they didn't bring in the car earlier.

[Seanspeed]

I think it's about the positions he lost by pitting later, rather than the time he lost.
 
Kimi's fans have been criticising the team all season, and often with very little reason. But I think this time they have a point.

I was only talking about the notion that Kimi's tires had fallen off a cliff.

It was cear that Ferrari used his car tô slow down the opposition. What I don't understand is how Kimi lets out PR statements saying he does not know why they didn't bring in the car earlier.

Interesting idea, but I doubt it. They brought Alonso in quite late as well. And there's no way they thought Kimi was going to be able to stop the likes of Mercedes and company on fresh tires.

Edited by Seanspeed, 25 June 2014 - 13:10.

[redreni]

OK, after a lot of hesitation, I'm afraid I have to join the conspiracy-theorists.

 

The only reason I can see for Kimi's very late pitstop in Austria, is that Ferrari were using him to hold up Perez and protect Alonso's position.

 

And it worked!

 

It's an intereting one. Thinking about people like Magnussen, Ricciardo and Hulkenberg, I don't think Alonso needed to pit any earlier because he could stay out longer and still cover them, so it made sense to do so to avoid running into tyre problems later. But the strategy of relatively late first and second stops could have bitten him when it all played out between him and Perez, had it not been for the fact that Kimi sat in front of Perez for four laps before Alonso's first stop, allowing Alonso to keep his gap to Perez steady.

 

And thinking about Kimi, we can say with hindsight that he had nothing to gain by holding Perez up, as Perez was obviously way faster than him to the point where he wasn't racing him. If we're being charitable, we could interpret this that Ferrari wanted Kimi to hold up Perez in the hope that he would end up getting ahead of Perez himself, when Perez put the option tyre on in his second or third stint. But if that's the case, they can't have been thinking hard enough about what was going to happen between Kimi and Ricciardo, or Kimi and Hulkenberg. Because if he covered their stops, he could have stayed ahead of them, probably until the end.

[skyfolker]

I mean, it's kinda ridiculous for people to suggest that 'okay yeah, kimi SHOULD'VE beaten magnussen in 7th' when he finished 16 seconds up the road and they were both running in clean air after the first stop. remember, the undercut doesn't actually improve your overall race time. in fact, because it deviates from the optimum pace, it actually hurts your final time only people don't see the effects of it until later in the stint. It's only used as a tool for faster cars (which kimi was not) to release ahead of slower cars

No,only Magnussen ran most of his race in clean air,it was the opposite for Raikkonen.Undercut will improve overall race time if it manages to provide running in clean air.Despite issues with brakes,Raikkonen looked faster than Magnussen until Magnussen's 1st pit stop,but couldn't overtake him because of lower straight line speed and his DRS wasn't working.
 

Oh make no mistake, ferrari definitely should've pitted RAI ahead of alonso one lap earlier. I was just arguing for the people who were criticizing the fact that they left RAI out there 5 laps later than RIC, HULK and MAG........RAI did a 28 and a 26 lap stint for his softs. if he had pitted ahead of ALO, it would've been 28 and 27 laps, so pretty even on the 2nd and 3rd stints. Ricciardo did a 33 lap stint, Hulk ended up doing a 32 lap stint and magnussen 31. I'm not in the ferrari garage, but maybe they felt that rai could only do 28 laps max on the softs?

edit: and btw, with the faster pace that MAG and the others were running, kimi would've had to undercut them on lap EIGHT just to stay ahead. and that was 7 laps from when kimi actually pitted.

If Raikkonen managed 28 laps in 2nd stint,there's no reason that he couldn't have easily managed 30+ laps in his final stint.
 

how does this even turn into a discussion when they were pitted less than a lap apart and fernando ends up in a different zip code?

Only through the 1st pit stop sequence Alonso gained 5s on Raikkonen,most of his 2nd stint Alonso was in clean air,while whole of Raikkonen's 2nd stint was spent in turbulent air(as it was the case for most of the 1st stint),2-3s behind Ricciardo(and probably that gap wasn't representative of his pace because Raikkonen had to back off because of problems with brakes).It's obvious why it's being discussed because it's not the first time Raikkonen loses positions and time because of Ferrari's pit stop strategy.

Edited by skyfolker, 25 June 2014 - 13:18.

[redreni]

I mean, it's kinda ridiculous for people to suggest that 'okay yeah, kimi SHOULD'VE beaten magnussen in 7th' when he finished 16 seconds up the road and they were both running in clean air after the first stop. remember, the undercut doesn't actually improve your overall race time. in fact, because it deviates from the optimum pace, it actually hurts your final time only people don't see the effects of it until later in the stint. It's only used as a tool for faster cars (which kimi was not) to release ahead of slower cars

 

No, but it increases the race time of the car you undercut, plus any cars that end up stuck behind him, because (if it works) you spend the remainder of the race holding them up. It's not a contest to see who can do a really fast race time, it's about beating the other cars. So it does depend if you're going to get overtaken.

 

I don't think it would have been possible to undercut Magnussen necessarily, because he pitted pretty early in the race. But in my view the normal thing in Kimi's position would have been to do what Magnussen and Ricciardo did, i.e. react to the Hulk's pitstop on lap 9, and come in on lap 10.

 

The reason for that could be the one the conspiracy theorists put forward, namely that he was being left out to prevent Perez from running his normal pace and eating into Alonso's gap. Or it could simply be that they felt they would run out of tyres if they had to run 61 laps on two sets of primes, and they therefore could not prevent the cars behind from undercutting them, and would simply have to hope the cars ahead ran out of tyres before the end. I suppose it's better to get passed at the stops than to run out of tyres at the end and fall out of the points entirely. But when you look back at it it was a bit of a "nothing ventured, nothing gained" strategy to have taken, for a pretty meagre reward. Would it have been that much of a disaster if they'd pitted on lap 10, run ahead of Ricciardo and Hulk, and then got overtaken at the end by Ricciardo, Hulk and Button?

[redreni]

 
If Raikkonen managed 28 laps in 2nd stint,there's no reason that he couldn't have easily managed 30+ laps in his final stint.
 
 

 

Yes, but the decision whether to react to the Hulk's pitstop on lap 9 had to be taken before they knew how many laps Kimi was going to manage in the second stint. Maybe he did more laps than they thought would be possible? And as you yourself pointed out, he did those laps running at less than his potential pace, because he didn't have track position. If he had pitted earlier and given himself better track position, he would have had to run a faster pace in order to keep the other cars behind, and may not have been able to run that number of laps.

 

I do agree with most of what you say, however. All I would add is the reason Kimi lost time in the first stint is that he qualified behind Magnussen while Fernando qualified ahead of him, and the reason he lost time on the first pitstop sequence is that he had the second choice of when to stop, which is normal if you are behind. So some of these little disadvantages come from not being quick enough on Saturday.

Edited by redreni, 25 June 2014 - 13:45.

[BillBald]

I was only talking about the notion that Kimi's tires had fallen off a cliff.

Interesting idea, but I doubt it. They brought Alonso in quite late as well. And there's no way they thought Kimi was going to be able to stop the likes of Mercedes and company on fresh tires.

 

They could afford to bring Alonso in late, because it wasn't going to lose him track position.

 

I'm really not sure why you are talking about Mercedes. The cars Kimi was racing would have had difficulting overtaking him, if he'd just stayed ahead of them by pitting earlier.

[zottzell]

Yes, but the decision whether to react to the Hulk's pitstop on lap 9 had to be taken before they knew how many laps Kimi was going to manage in the second stint. Maybe he did more laps than they thought would be possible? And as you yourself pointed out, he did those laps running at less than his potential pace, because he didn't have track position. If he had pitted earlier and given himself better track position, he would have had to run a faster pace in order to keep the other cars behind, and may not have been able to run that number of laps.

 

I do agree with most of what you say, however. All I would add is the reason Kimi lost time in the first stint is that he qualified behind Magnussen while Fernando qualified ahead of him, and the reason he lost time on the first pitstop sequence is that he had the second choice of when to stop, which is normal if you are behind. So some of these little disadvantages come from not being quick enough on Saturday.

Wooa there's no reason for logic in this thread driven by the power of hindsight, if's, but's and maybe's:)

[BillBald]

Wooa there's no reason for logic in this thread driven by the power of hindsight, if's, but's and maybe's:)

 

Yes, why on earth weren't we saying all this before the race?

[Seanspeed]

They could afford to bring Alonso in late, because it wasn't going to lose him track position.
 
I'm really not sure why you are talking about Mercedes. The cars Kimi was racing would have had difficulting overtaking him, if he'd just stayed ahead of them by pitting earlier.

The idea posited is that Kimi was left out in order to slow down cars for Alonso's benefit. So we're talking about the cars *Alonso* was racing. If Kimi pitted earlier, he wouldn't have been in their way at all.

And no, leaving Alonso out wasn't going to lose him track position but it could well have increased his gap to these cars he was racing. Or trying to race at least. haha

[AlexS]

I was only talking about the notion that Kimi's tires had fallen off a cliff.

 

Last Kimi lap entering the pits was over 1.4 sec slower than Alonso's. While his other laps were less than a second difference. For example their second pit were almost comparable. I agree that the cliff was not seen in the other laps with caveat that what is made once again clear is the irregularity of Kimi lap times.

Edited by AlexS, 25 June 2014 - 17:29.

[Logiso]

I usually like to try and add balance to a discussion, and personally I don't think it mattered what strategy Kimi did he would have ended up finishing 10th. Our car doesn't have a great top speed or great tyre management so it makes it harder to do something radical.

 

1) Magnussen pitted on lap 10, which was almost as early as any team pitted even though AFAIK their tyre degredation isn't the best. For Kimi to pit before him he would have had to pit 6 laps earlier than he did, and I think Ferrari wouldn't have expected them to pit that early. Also, chances are Magnussen pitted to cover the potential undercut by Ferrari. At that point after K-Mag pitted, it seemed Kimi had better pace, but with the Merc engine it would be difficult to pass unless they went longer by enough to create a significant enough pace advantage to be able to overtake.

 

2) Kimi lost 1.5s to Alonso's inlap the lap earlier, and lost another 1.5s on the outlap. It was shown on the coverage why he lost 1.5s on the inlap(being overtaken by 2 cars), and presumably that caused the 2nd loss of 1.5s. If it wasn't for that, he would have come out ahead of Ricciardo and possibly Kvyat. Could they have pre-empted that? I have no idea what Kimi was saying on the radio about strategy, but looking at the gap to Perez which triggered that whole event, he was closing in on him at about half a second a lap and started the lap half a second behind. With the benefit of hindsight, they could have seen that coming but it's very plausible they would have expected Kimi to hold him off for 1 lap at least.

 

3) The fact he had fresher tyres should have meant he was faster over the rest of the race distance relative to the cars that undercut him, but he actually dropped back. It doesn't look like the undercut caused him to come out behind cars that were slower than him and ruin his race, the argument is about whether he could have held off other cars and held them up. Possibly, but seeing as Hulk got passed by Ricciardo - so 1 of the fastest cars on a straight overtaken by the slowest eventually, it seems even more inevitable that Kimi would have suffered the same fate, and lost time and potentially lost out to Button. That's obviously with the benefit of hindsight, at the time they were trying to take a more optimal route to finish the GP faster

 

4) It's also possible that seeing as Kimi criticized them at Spain for preferring the car behind, they are now much more cautious about doing that, even if it's to Raikkonen's detriment. I have to question Raikkonen's motives behind criticizing his team publicly. Alonso defended his team's strategy even in Abu Dhabi 2010, and doesn't ever seem to isolate himself from the strategy decisions. Raikkonen should surely be in a similar mould as an experienced driver, and also someone who doesnt care about what the public thinks of him? The team isn't criticizing him for his poor pace at the moment, so it seems weird that he then criticizes them.

 

Bottom line: Could they have done a better job on Kimi's strategy? Yes. The ideal lap to pit would have been the lap Alonso pitted and they probably could have left him out an extra lap. But some of the comments here aren't well founded at all, it wasn't really an option to just undercut K-Mag, they had the right idea with their strategy but just pushed it 1 lap too far. I personally feel that Kimi has caused some of the problems himself by not being quick enough and criticizing the team, the engineers are the guys he should be working very closely with and instead he seems to be wanting to discredit them(rightly or wrongly). Alonso has deserved priority over Kimi this season, just because he has been the quicker driver at practically every race and that is the source of Kimi's problems. Just my opinion, backed up with facts where possible.

Edited by Logiso, 25 June 2014 - 17:15.

[Astro]

Maybe they were controlling Raikkonen's position with Red Bull (Ricciardo). It would have worked nicely if they had been able to hold position, since Kimi would have enjoyed fresher tires during the second stint.

 

The gap with Ricciardo (1.9s) was being mantained until lap 14 (Alonso's inlap). In that lap Ricciardo chip away 0.5s for the first time, which was still manageable, but unfortunately Kimi had a slow inlap (1.8s slower than Ricciardo) due to the overtakes from Rosberg and Perez, and maybe shot tires. The times in the pits were 0.4s faster for Ricciardo, but Kimi had lost too much time already, so he came out 1.5s behind Ricciardo. After that, Ricciardo was able to increase the gap little by little until the second round of pits and at that point it was game over (or probably after the first round).

 

Just an another possible explanation of what they were trying to do, independently if it was right or wrong (sorry in mentioned before). After all the WDC is lost, so maybe they are focusing on battling it out against Red Bull and Williams for the WCC.

[Seanspeed]

Last Kimi lap entering the pits was over 1.4 sec slower than Alonso's. While his other laps were less than a second difference. For example their second pit were almost comparable. I agree that the cliff was not clear in the other laps with caveat that what is made once again clear is the irregularity of Kimi lap times.

There was nothing 'irregular', though. You're comparing to Alonso's times for some baffling reason when you should be comparing it to Kimi's own times.

He hadn't hit any cliff yet. It only looked bad because Perez was on the prime race tire and the leaders were barging through with fresh tires. Certainly it was nearing the end of the tire's optimal life, but he never actually went over the cliff.

[Kimble]

Why are we even questioning the state of the tyres? Did you see the race? He had no grip that final lap, even the commentators noticed it.

[Seanspeed]

Why are we even questioning the state of the tyres? Did you see the race? He had no grip that final lap, even the commentators noticed it.

I'll just copy/paste this here since it sounds like you missed it:

"It only looked bad because Perez was on the prime race tire and the leaders were barging through with fresh tires. Certainly it was nearing the end of the tire's optimal life, but he never actually went over the cliff."

Certainly Kimi didn't have great grip anymore, but his tires weren't shot or anything. He was just trying a bit too hard and made a couple little errors as a result.

Edited by Seanspeed, 25 June 2014 - 17:48.

[AlexS]

There was nothing 'irregular', though. You're comparing to Alonso's times for some baffling reason when you should be comparing it to Kimi's own times.

 

You are wrong because i can't compare the Kimi inlap with others laps, it is a completely different time.

 

But i can compare the difference between Alonso normal laps and Kimi normal laps

 

and the difference between Alonso inlap and Kimi inlap. If the inlap difference is much different than the normal laps difference might mean that is when tires were shot for good.

 

The fact that Kimi asked to pit earlier shows that he was already feeling the car go away.

[Kimble]

“For me it was very bad timing for the pit stop. My tyres were not good and I lost two places on my in lap. I needed to really stop earlier but I don’t know the reasons why we stopped at that point but it obviously cost us some places. With the speed that I had there was no way to get anything back. Obviously that was not very good.”

[Seanspeed]

You are wrong because i can't compare the Kimi inlap with others laps, it is a completely different time.
 
But i can compare the difference between Alonso normal laps and Kimi normal laps
 
and the difference between Alonso inlap and Kimi inlap. If the inlap difference is much different than the normal laps difference might mean that is when tires were shot for good.
 
The fact that Kimi asked to pit earlier shows that he was already feeling the car go away.

You can compare Kimi's times with his own. You refuse to though, because it doesn't paint the picture you want to see.

No doubt the tires weren't great anymore, but they had not fallen off any cliff. Things were made to look worse than they were by the circumstances I've explained.

[Ragingjamaican]

 

 

Kimi's fans have been criticising the team all season, and often with very little reason. But I think this time they have a point.

 

Not really, despite him not being at the top of his game, Raikkonen and his fans definitely have several reasons to criticize the team this season.

 

The amount of problems he's had outside of his control has actually been astonishing.

 

From what I can remember, he's only had one clean free weekend, and that was in Spain, we all know what happened there.

[Hanzo]

This thread has a very valid point to discuss. But the fact that people are using this thread to slip that Ferrari is screwing Kimi instead of "having the courage" of opening another thread to discuss that exact matter, tells me that they don't really believe that much in that possibility.

It does not make sense to think that they are screwing Kimi "a little bit here or a little bit there". It is a case of Ferrari screwing him on purpose or not.

Many are convinced that the team is doing it, but for some reason they did not open a thread yet to discuss that matter and explaining the reasons. Instead of that, we have those "acusations" in pretty much every Ferrari related thread...

[redreni]

 

3) The fact he had fresher tyres should have meant he was faster over the rest of the race distance relative to the cars that undercut him, but he actually dropped back. It doesn't look like the undercut caused him to come out behind cars that were slower than him and ruin his race, the argument is about whether he could have held off other cars and held them up. Possibly, but seeing as Hulk got passed by Ricciardo - so 1 of the fastest cars on a straight overtaken by the slowest eventually, it seems even more inevitable that Kimi would have suffered the same fate, and lost time and potentially lost out to Button. That's obviously with the benefit of hindsight, at the time they were trying to take a more optimal route to finish the GP faster

 

 

I would like to see Ferrari at least attempting strategies that will allow them to run ahead of the likes of Force India. If those teams want to overtake a Ferrari, I would much prefer it if they had to do it on the track. I realise there's a risk, if you're too aggressive with making early pitstops to make or cover off undercuts, you can end up being mugged at the end. But is it really too ambitious for a team of Ferrari's stature, when running seventh (effectively eighth due to Perez's pace on the primes), to adopt a strategy designed to maintain position? I worry slightly about the mindset that leads a Ferrari strategist to be more worried about protecting one point and making certain of at least a point, than about trying to maintain track position and tell Kimi to try to attack Magnussen. These are difficult times for Ferrari, but we might as well have a go because, in the broader context of the history of the marque, these results are completely worthless anyway, so if you adopt a conservative strategy, you're conserving something that isn't even worth having.

 

If you look at Kimi's laptimes in clear air, they weren't too bad. The time he lost to Hulk and Ricciardo, he lost at the stops. In the second stint he kept the gap around 2-3s. In the third stint, he emerged five seconds adrift and held the gap steady for a dozen laps, closed to within 4s and then held that gap steady as well. He did have newer tyres, without which he would presumably have been a bit slower, but sufficiently slower to actually get overtaken? Maybe by Ricciardo, because Ricciardo's real pace was a lot quicker than Hulk's, he was just being held up. But I really think Ferrari showed the Hulk far too much respect by being afraid to cover him and say "go on, then, overtake us", for fear of losing one point.

[Mauseri]

Why are we even questioning the state of the tyres? Did you see the race? He had no grip that final lap, even the commentators noticed it.

But that final lap did not change the outcome of the race. He should have stopped 6 laps earlier to stay in front of Hülkenberg, Ricciardo and Kvyat, and in touch with Magnussen.

 

The other pit stop cycle race was going against Perez and Button, but there was no chance to resist that by doing a long first stint with softs. Maybe stopping earlier would have helped against Perez too, since he would have had fresh tyres and post fast lap times during those 6 laps where his pace was going down. For Magnussen it worked almost.

 

Lap chart.

Edited by Mauseri, 26 June 2014 - 09:38.

[skyfolker]

Yes, but the decision whether to react to the Hulk's pitstop on lap 9 had to be taken before they knew how many laps Kimi was going to manage in the second stint. Maybe he did more laps than they thought would be possible? And as you yourself pointed out, he did those laps running at less than his potential pace, because he didn't have track position. If he had pitted earlier and given himself better track position, he would have had to run a faster pace in order to keep the other cars behind, and may not have been able to run that number of laps.

Of course it's easier now to speculate when should they have pitted him and how long those stints should have been.We can not know what data Ferrari used to plan their strategy,and it's possible that they didn't expect those softs to last so long,but even if Raikkonen was pacing himself when he was in the traffic and made those tyres last,that doesn't mean that if he had to run faster to keep position after being pitted earlier tyres wouldn't last as long because he'd have an advantage of track position/clean air with less sliding than when he's in the traffic and brake cooling would be better(if there would be any need to run faster at all-just running in clean air would help his pace enough to safely keep those other cars behind).Also,his and Alonso's tyre wear seemed similar during 1st stint,and Alonso ran even more laps in 2nd stint, without significant time loss,and I wouldn't say that he was pacing himself.
 

[AlexS]

 

You can compare Kimi's times with his own. You refuse to though, because it doesn't paint the picture you want to see.

I compared and answered you just refuse to read what i wrote. You also refuse to analyse the inlap.

No way Perez would pass Kimi so easy - and the thers bunched up over him - if his tires were not shot.

[Seanspeed]

I compared and answered you just refuse to read what i wrote. You also refuse to analyse the inlap.
No way Perez would pass Kimi so easy - and the thers bunched up over him - if his tires were not shot.

I read what you wrote. And its ignoring the most important 'comparison'. Impossible to analyse the inlap time when Kimi was getting roughed up, so it wouldn't have been representative of what he'd have done in clear air.

Kimi's tires weren't great, never denied that. But they weren't shot or fallen off a cliff or anything.