Fixed the charts, and with regards to the lower order teams, I expect it to be due to the big strategy differences of inside and outside the top 10 with regards to available tyres. Of course I tend include only the stars of the race in these
2012 Formula One Pirelli Tyre Analysis
- Thread starter tooncheese
- Start date
Fixed the charts, and with regards to the lower order teams, I expect it to be due to the big strategy differences of inside and outside the top 10 with regards to available tyres. Of course I tend include only the stars of the race in these
Thanks tooncheese.
Interesting that quite a few of those paired comparisons go in opposite directions on the two different compounds. It is a very fluid time at the moment.
Interesting that quite a few of those paired comparisons go in opposite directions on the two different compounds. It is a very fluid time at the moment.
You know I would really like to contribute to this thread but the sad fact is I am massively colour blind so much so I can no longer play snooker, unfortunately the charts mean nothing to me so I'll just stick to reading the comments...
Can you get error bars in Excel plots? It would make the plots a bit messier, but perhaps not as messy as the pure scatter plot that jez posted, whilst giving an indication of the spread of points. I can't say I've ever seen an Excel plot with error bars though..
Great work guys!
Great work guys!
I've tried a few things and with the Bahrain data at least, Galahad suggestion seems to work best. In the first chart below you can see the lines that were previously shown* along with two new ones.
What I have done is taken the median values of the extrapolated data for each car - up to the maximum number of laps any one car did on the compound. This still gives a bit of a wobbly line so I have added a second order polynomial trend line. The green is the new medium tyre line and the black is the new soft tyre line.
This works ok for Bahrain but I am a bit concerned about the method, if say ten drivers only do a handful of laps on the compound because you can get some very high or very negative values from this extrapolation (Bruno Senna & Narian Kartikeyan would have obliterated the lap record on lap 39 on the mediums for example).
If there are enough real samples, this is ok because I am using medians and not averages so I am thinking we can manage this if there is an issue.
Then I tried a stock chart as Brogan and sushifiesta suggested.This maybe gives more information but bearing in mind that what I am looking for with this line is a simple summary, I don't think this does the job.
Any further suggestions most welcome
* I "found" another 119 laps for the medium sample. Last year when I set up the sheet no one was using the primes much so I only built the sheet to cater for 500 total prime lap samples (up to 800 for the option). In Bahrain, there were 619 usable prime laps so the earlier data missed the Caterham, Maroussia and HRT data along with about half of Senna's prime laps.
What I have done is taken the median values of the extrapolated data for each car - up to the maximum number of laps any one car did on the compound. This still gives a bit of a wobbly line so I have added a second order polynomial trend line. The green is the new medium tyre line and the black is the new soft tyre line.
This works ok for Bahrain but I am a bit concerned about the method, if say ten drivers only do a handful of laps on the compound because you can get some very high or very negative values from this extrapolation (Bruno Senna & Narian Kartikeyan would have obliterated the lap record on lap 39 on the mediums for example).
If there are enough real samples, this is ok because I am using medians and not averages so I am thinking we can manage this if there is an issue.
Then I tried a stock chart as Brogan and sushifiesta suggested.This maybe gives more information but bearing in mind that what I am looking for with this line is a simple summary, I don't think this does the job.
Any further suggestions most welcome
* I "found" another 119 laps for the medium sample. Last year when I set up the sheet no one was using the primes much so I only built the sheet to cater for 500 total prime lap samples (up to 800 for the option). In Bahrain, there were 619 usable prime laps so the earlier data missed the Caterham, Maroussia and HRT data along with about half of Senna's prime laps.
With tooncheese busy revising for his exams, it is my turn to write up the tyre analysis from the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix.
Last year, along with Malaysia, Barcelona stood out as a tyre killer. Bahrain this year also had the same excitement / problem (delete to taste) but we had no data from there for last year and Malaysia being wet this year, Barcelona was the only real chance to see a real comparison of 2011 and 2012 performance under extreme conditions.
Last year, the soft tyre was over 2 seconds a lap faster in race trim than last year's hard. Today, the 2012 soft tyre was if anything a little slower than the 2012 hard. Combined with the EBD ban, the pace was over 2s / lap slower than last year.
Where the 2011 race saw a breathless series of sprints to take advantage of the raw pace of the option, the 2012 combination led to a softly softly approach on the hards.
Everyone started on the option tyre. Unlike last year, this time many teams did this to get it out of the way. The front runners did manage to find some pace with Maldonado, Alonso and Raikkonen faster for longer than the others.
Hamilton started at the back of course, so he had the opportunity to take it a bit easy in the first few laps. The benefit of this can be seen in his (thin black) line which is still horizontal when he pitted on lap 16. In reality, it looks from this that he could have gone longer.
As you can see, Alonso was quickly running out of grip when he pitted. Maldonado went a lap longer because he was suffering less. The earlier stop gave Alonso an extra two seconds over Pastor when the battle resumed on lap 12.
Williams then took the initiative. With both cars now finding a lot of pace on new hard tyres, they gambled and ran just 13 laps in their second stint bringing Maldonado in on lap 24 which turned out to be two earlier than Alonso.
Pic had something to do with Alonso's 1.5s advantage becoming a 6.5s deficit, maybe a couple of second, but the two laps on fresh tyres were much more significant. Maldonado's outlap was a 44.1, Alonso's two laps later was a 46.6. On the Williams' flying lap as Alonso prepared to pit, Pastor did a 1.27.9, fully a second faster than Alonso's equivalent first lap on the fresh tyres two laps later.
Williams could well have paid a heavy price for such an aggressive move. Ferrari's hopes perked up when they saw the Williams again stop on lap 41, leaving 25 laps to do to the finish. They thought that they could scrape home while Pastor hit a cliff.
In the end, the Ferrari's tyres went first.
As for the rest, the Lotuses obviously got the results and this was because they also found good speed on the hard tyres. Grosjean in particular had a very good long run, pitting on his 25th lap on the hards. This was curious given he left himself only 15 laps for his final stint. He would have been faster to have done 20 laps on each set...
Other notable lines are from Perez, who banged in some super fast times when recovering from Kimi's tap on lap 1, and Vettel who finished 6th in spite of all sorts of obstacles due to the very fast times he was able to do late in the race on the prime rubber.
Last year, along with Malaysia, Barcelona stood out as a tyre killer. Bahrain this year also had the same excitement / problem (delete to taste) but we had no data from there for last year and Malaysia being wet this year, Barcelona was the only real chance to see a real comparison of 2011 and 2012 performance under extreme conditions.
Last year, the soft tyre was over 2 seconds a lap faster in race trim than last year's hard. Today, the 2012 soft tyre was if anything a little slower than the 2012 hard. Combined with the EBD ban, the pace was over 2s / lap slower than last year.
Where the 2011 race saw a breathless series of sprints to take advantage of the raw pace of the option, the 2012 combination led to a softly softly approach on the hards.
Everyone started on the option tyre. Unlike last year, this time many teams did this to get it out of the way. The front runners did manage to find some pace with Maldonado, Alonso and Raikkonen faster for longer than the others.
Hamilton started at the back of course, so he had the opportunity to take it a bit easy in the first few laps. The benefit of this can be seen in his (thin black) line which is still horizontal when he pitted on lap 16. In reality, it looks from this that he could have gone longer.
As you can see, Alonso was quickly running out of grip when he pitted. Maldonado went a lap longer because he was suffering less. The earlier stop gave Alonso an extra two seconds over Pastor when the battle resumed on lap 12.
Williams then took the initiative. With both cars now finding a lot of pace on new hard tyres, they gambled and ran just 13 laps in their second stint bringing Maldonado in on lap 24 which turned out to be two earlier than Alonso.
Pic had something to do with Alonso's 1.5s advantage becoming a 6.5s deficit, maybe a couple of second, but the two laps on fresh tyres were much more significant. Maldonado's outlap was a 44.1, Alonso's two laps later was a 46.6. On the Williams' flying lap as Alonso prepared to pit, Pastor did a 1.27.9, fully a second faster than Alonso's equivalent first lap on the fresh tyres two laps later.
Williams could well have paid a heavy price for such an aggressive move. Ferrari's hopes perked up when they saw the Williams again stop on lap 41, leaving 25 laps to do to the finish. They thought that they could scrape home while Pastor hit a cliff.
In the end, the Ferrari's tyres went first.
As for the rest, the Lotuses obviously got the results and this was because they also found good speed on the hard tyres. Grosjean in particular had a very good long run, pitting on his 25th lap on the hards. This was curious given he left himself only 15 laps for his final stint. He would have been faster to have done 20 laps on each set...
Other notable lines are from Perez, who banged in some super fast times when recovering from Kimi's tap on lap 1, and Vettel who finished 6th in spite of all sorts of obstacles due to the very fast times he was able to do late in the race on the prime rubber.
Brill! 
I don't know for sure, Galahad...
In Q1, they were saving hard tyres so they could do a 3 stop with new hards at each. That was one of the reasons why he was able to breeze past the McLarens (more than once!) in the race.
Vettel said about Q3 was that they felt that even if they went for a lap, they would be only be fighting Rosberg for 7th (ie they didn't have the pace on the option tyre), so they did an early out / in sequence to be the first of those that didn't post a time. He said on Saturday that they wanted to keep the choice available to start on the hard.
In the end, I think they figured that they had to use the soft, it makes the most difference getting off the line and they could bin it as soon as they wanted. They just werent on the pace with either tyre. On the hards, while they had durability, they didn't have the speed that Maldonado, Alonso the Lotuses and Perez were showing.
It was a practical solution to the situation they faced and they used the tyres better than most to end up where they did.
Something else nearly happened in Spain that was interesting: Kimi catching Alonso and Maldonado in the last 18 laps, making up an entire pitstop in the process.
I had forgotten that the Williams and Ferrari had overtaken the Lotus at the start of their final stints, as Kimi sought to extract a few more laps from his third set. When he pitted for the last time, he had been overtaken so was behind them on the road.
He then very nearly caught Alonso with tyres that were on for four less laps, with Alonso also suffering from the fact that his final set of hards had been used in Q1* and Kimi on new hards.
In other words, in 18 laps he almost made up a pistop by having tyres that were 7 laps younger.
* I wonder if the race result would have been different if Fernando hadn't burned the hards in Q1 setting a lap that was nothing more than a sighter...? If he had new hards at the final stop, his last stint would have been as much as 5 seconds quicker perhaps.
I had forgotten that the Williams and Ferrari had overtaken the Lotus at the start of their final stints, as Kimi sought to extract a few more laps from his third set. When he pitted for the last time, he had been overtaken so was behind them on the road.
He then very nearly caught Alonso with tyres that were on for four less laps, with Alonso also suffering from the fact that his final set of hards had been used in Q1* and Kimi on new hards.
In other words, in 18 laps he almost made up a pistop by having tyres that were 7 laps younger.
* I wonder if the race result would have been different if Fernando hadn't burned the hards in Q1 setting a lap that was nothing more than a sighter...? If he had new hards at the final stop, his last stint would have been as much as 5 seconds quicker perhaps.
I'm a bit out of touch with all this, but it seems to me that something interesting has happened in the last two races (Canada today and Monaco) that we have rarely seen with the Pirelli tyres - drivers gaining an advantage by pitting later. The two main cases I can think of are Hamilton vs. Vettel after the first round of stops today, and Alonso vs. Hamilton at Monaco. Off the top of my head, it seems that new, cold softs are slower than old, warm supersofts for a lap or two, but I'm not sure of the compounds involved in the cases we've seen.
sushifiesta, I was unable to do the Monaco analysis, but Canada should be up at some point tomorrow, I can post some Monaco graphs too if you like.
It was more of a comment than a request, anything you have the time to post is great!
Welcome to the Tyre Analysis for the 2012 Canadian Grand Prix. The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve often hosts a spectacle of on-track action, but this time it was all about the tyres and the strategy. The track temperature was fluctuating wildly, in and out of the tyres optimum performance zone, whist the degradation levels meant a one or two stop race was a viable option.
And for newcomers, the spreadsheet works by collecting data from the raw lap times, 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.
For the second race in a row the Super-Soft will be the option, and the Soft the Prime tyre. The lack of high-speed made it an easy decision for Pirelli, as the tyres only have to survive small lateral loads.
The option tyre first, as that it what the majority of drivers ran their first stint on, and at first glance it seems that the Red Bull’s and McLaren’s had particularly bad tyre wear. From the graph it seems clear that they could not have made the one-stop work. Alonso and Ferrari on the other hand had no such issues, and were looking good whilst the rest of the leading pack flocked in for new rubber. Ferrari were clearly reacting, but I think they could have easily done another six or seven laps on those tyres, whilst they would be in a bad position come the end of the race the newer rubber would prove crucial.
An honourable mention to some of the teams lower down the order, who managed to keep the option tyres alive for a very long time, Maldonado was on his (new) super-soft tyres from lap 29 through to the end. Räikkönen and Perez also took advantage of the rubbered-in track to post long stints.
I’ve left a few more curves in for the Prime tyre to show how the pattern was similar all down the field, except for Jenson Button. His nightmare in a bubble car saw his tyres begin to fade three times quicker than the drivers he is usually racing against. The car was clearly set-up badly, possibly due to the lack of Friday running through various issues.
Alonso’s long run on the Soft tyre was very impressive, but it seems that when he put them on they were already second-hand! I don’t know exactly how long they were used for, presumably only a few laps, but a few laps were the difference between his F2012 crossing the line 1st and 5th.
It is also worth noting how it took several laps for the tyre to reach its peak performance, something usually reached after 3 or 4 laps.
Here is a more detailed and specific look at the top three’s tyre experiences, with the dots been the raw data.
If there is something else you want me to have a look at just say, and I will post the graphs.
Put together you can see how the Soft tyre behaved like a perfect option, initially faster, before descending into the pit of despair that is degradation.
Unfortunately there is no data from last year due to the rain, so no comparisons can be made with the old compounds.
In two weeks time, at Valencia, the Soft and Medium tyre will be used, and hopefully there will be sufficient difference in the compounds to mix it up or do anything at all that makes the racing less dull.
Thanks for reading.
tooncheese, jez101, sushifiesta
And for newcomers, the spreadsheet works by collecting data from the raw lap times, 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.
For the second race in a row the Super-Soft will be the option, and the Soft the Prime tyre. The lack of high-speed made it an easy decision for Pirelli, as the tyres only have to survive small lateral loads.
The option tyre first, as that it what the majority of drivers ran their first stint on, and at first glance it seems that the Red Bull’s and McLaren’s had particularly bad tyre wear. From the graph it seems clear that they could not have made the one-stop work. Alonso and Ferrari on the other hand had no such issues, and were looking good whilst the rest of the leading pack flocked in for new rubber. Ferrari were clearly reacting, but I think they could have easily done another six or seven laps on those tyres, whilst they would be in a bad position come the end of the race the newer rubber would prove crucial.
An honourable mention to some of the teams lower down the order, who managed to keep the option tyres alive for a very long time, Maldonado was on his (new) super-soft tyres from lap 29 through to the end. Räikkönen and Perez also took advantage of the rubbered-in track to post long stints.
I’ve left a few more curves in for the Prime tyre to show how the pattern was similar all down the field, except for Jenson Button. His nightmare in a bubble car saw his tyres begin to fade three times quicker than the drivers he is usually racing against. The car was clearly set-up badly, possibly due to the lack of Friday running through various issues.
Alonso’s long run on the Soft tyre was very impressive, but it seems that when he put them on they were already second-hand! I don’t know exactly how long they were used for, presumably only a few laps, but a few laps were the difference between his F2012 crossing the line 1st and 5th.
It is also worth noting how it took several laps for the tyre to reach its peak performance, something usually reached after 3 or 4 laps.
Here is a more detailed and specific look at the top three’s tyre experiences, with the dots been the raw data.
If there is something else you want me to have a look at just say, and I will post the graphs.
Put together you can see how the Soft tyre behaved like a perfect option, initially faster, before descending into the pit of despair that is degradation.
Unfortunately there is no data from last year due to the rain, so no comparisons can be made with the old compounds.
In two weeks time, at Valencia, the Soft and Medium tyre will be used, and hopefully there will be sufficient difference in the compounds to mix it up or do anything at all that makes the racing less dull.
Thanks for reading.
tooncheese, jez101, sushifiesta
One more thing, but this should be fairly self explanatory.
I've done a very crude analysis of what happened with Hamilton, Alonso and Vettel at the first round of pit stops. Basically it looks to me that all three of them lost somewhere in the region of 2s on their first lap on the soft tyre after their first pit stop compared to their ultimate initial pace. Hamilton also seemingly managed to be much quicker on his in lap than Vettel managed on his - 1.2s quicker in fact, and he spent less time in the pit lane than Vettel despite his slow getaway (did Vettel have a problem we didn't see?)
From the numbers, Alonso should really have been a bit more than a second clear of Hamilton when he was coming out the pit lane. It didn't seem this much from what I remember, but I guess he had to take it so gently round the corner after the pit exit that Lewis was quickly on his gearbox and then past shortly afterwards.
I've attached a screenshot of my little spreadsheet. It probably won't make any sense to anyone else, but the critical rows I've highlighted yellow - Hamilton gained 2.6s on Vettel in the two laps containing both their pit stops, and Alonso gained 1.8s on Hamilton in the three laps containing both their pit stops.
Comparing to what tooncheese posted, I don't quite see this dramatic warm up effect, although you do see that it isn't until a few laps in to the stint that the tyres are fastest. I suspect the initial laps are excluded because of their proximity to pit stops, the battling that was going on between the three and also due to the times being fairly anomalous (fair enough). It's interesting that the time all three drivers pitted matches the cross over point in lap time between the option/prime at lap 17 in tooncheese's plot, and indeed matches the optimum time to pit for a two stop strategy. Nice!
From the numbers, Alonso should really have been a bit more than a second clear of Hamilton when he was coming out the pit lane. It didn't seem this much from what I remember, but I guess he had to take it so gently round the corner after the pit exit that Lewis was quickly on his gearbox and then past shortly afterwards.
I've attached a screenshot of my little spreadsheet. It probably won't make any sense to anyone else, but the critical rows I've highlighted yellow - Hamilton gained 2.6s on Vettel in the two laps containing both their pit stops, and Alonso gained 1.8s on Hamilton in the three laps containing both their pit stops.
Comparing to what tooncheese posted, I don't quite see this dramatic warm up effect, although you do see that it isn't until a few laps in to the stint that the tyres are fastest. I suspect the initial laps are excluded because of their proximity to pit stops, the battling that was going on between the three and also due to the times being fairly anomalous (fair enough). It's interesting that the time all three drivers pitted matches the cross over point in lap time between the option/prime at lap 17 in tooncheese's plot, and indeed matches the optimum time to pit for a two stop strategy. Nice!
Similar threads
