After the rain three weeks ago in Malaysia, we return to normal proceedings for the 2012 Chinese Grand Prix Tyre Analysis. As ever special thanks go to Jez101 and Sushifiesta.
The spreadsheet collects data by taking the raw lap data, and it can work out how much fuel has been burned, and it also takes into account tyre age and condition at the start of the stint. Unusual lap times due to close proximity to other cars or errors are filtered out.
This week Pirelli chose the yellow Soft tyre as the Option and the white Medium tyre as the Prime. Interestingly a variety of tyre strategies were used amongst the top drivers, most likely due to the smaller gaps between the compounds.
Firstly let’s look at how the Soft Option fared. At a glance it appears to have encountered a relatively low degradation, especially when you compare it to last year’s soft compound. A feature of the Shanghai circuit that came to light this year is how it can negate most performance gains for a driver or car, and this appears to be the case with tyre management as well – all of the top drivers are experiencing very similar wear patterns.
Unfortunately for Massa he is not one of them. He used a new set of soft tyres for his final stint, and theoretically should have had a little more grip than when Alonso used his. Despite that his degradation is considerably worse than his teammate. Since these narrow front tyres returned in 2010 Felipe has struggled to achieve the same speed or wear as Alonso, and it does not seem to be changing any time soon.
Of the drivers in that small group the only person who stand out to me as having bad wear is Schumacher. It seems likely that if he lasted the race he would have attempted a three-stop strategy, whereas the smoother style of Rosberg was able to manage a two-stop race.
Moving on to the Prime tyre now, this year it is the preferred race choice, unlike last year when it was the tyre that was only run as the teams were obliged to. Once again it is very tricky to say any one driver had a good or bad time on the tyres. As we know from watching the race Räikkönen had very severe tyre trouble and Vettel claimed to have tyre issues. Both will be examined in a special feature later on.
Unsurprisingly the 2012 Pirelli’s are coping with the stresses of Formula 1 much better than the marshmallows of early last season; it seems unlikely that those crazy races will ever be seen again. Apart from that I don’t think that there is too much more to be taken out of this graph, feel free to add your own observations.
On lap 47, 19 laps into his stint on used primes (so lap 22 on the graph), Räikkönen suddenly was unable to hold off the queue of drivers behind him. However the graph does not show the expected sudden acceleration in wear. I think that his tyres had started to run close to the cords as many as 5 laps earlier, and that once one driver had passed him, he was unsettled or pushed out of position which opened the floodgates and left him in 14th only four laps later. Clearly Lotus pitted Kimi far too early for the second stop; Grosjean who stopped four laps later was able to finish sixth and not too far off fifth-place Vettel. This may be a sign that Romain is smoother on his tyres than Kimi, which could pay dividends at high wear tracks.
On to Vettel now he spent the last 5 laps of the race being overtaken by three cars, all on much newer rubber than him. The Red Bull strategy – after seeing him move nowhere from 14th – was to pit him a few laps early and undercut the rest of the field whilst they were still on much older tyres. However this meant that his last stint would need to be long, 25 laps in fact. And at almost the same point as Räikkönen, Vettel started to lose places. Whilst I try to avoid opinions on these posts, I think that he should not feel hard done by losing that second place, it was on borrowed time that he would have to give back.
Lastly when comparing the Pirelli compounds for this year and last year, it is startling to see just how close they are. 2011 spec compounds were up to 1.5 seconds apart, for 20 laps this year there is not 0.5 seconds between the tyres. In my opinion this means the Soft and Medium tyre should not be paired again, as the Medium is much more durable, and only a fraction slower.
In Bahrain the Soft and hard will resurface again, however the scorching desert sun should make things more interesting.
You are welcome to post your own observations and requests, and I will link to our behemoth spreadsheet if you wish to have a look.
Thanks for reading!
TC, Jez and Sushi.
