(This article is free for everyone, to thank all the people who have been enjoying and sharing my content in the last years! 😁)
Hello, dear aspiring F1-Analysts,
A back-to-back F1 weekend, and a Sprint one this time. The only thing that makes Mexico and Brazil similar is the high altitude - and even that is true up to a point: 2200m for the former, 'just' 800m for the latter. Apart from that, the characteristics of the two events are extremely different: from the very long straight and slow corners of Mexico to the shorter straights and faster corners of Brazil; from a dry weekend to a potentially wet one, from one that suited Ferrari to one in which McLaren's excellent downforce could make the difference.
Let's analyse the data that we have so far!
Track Characteristics
How to read: the track map shows its layout divided into three sectors (S1 in Red, S2 in Blue, and S3 in Yellow). The zones in which the DRS can be used are highlighted in green. In the race, a driver who crosses the DRS Detection Zone within 1s of the preceding driver can use the DRS in all zones up to the next DRS Detection Zone.
The Interlagos track features two DRS-assisted 'straights' (the one out of T12 is in theory a very long corner, but it's taken full-throttle anyway), a few slow corners, and a myriad of medium-speed ones. Downforce, therefore, is very important to brake into T1, taking T1/T2 at high speed and being slingshot out of T3. A more loaded setup might give you no worse chance of overtaking into T4, as it partially compensates for the loss of downforce due to dirty air up to T3. The more loaded setup offers practically no drawbacks until T12, as the T4 to T12 corners will benefit from any extra grip the car can produce. Overtaking is doable, but not taken for granted: expect some thrilling battles, like almost every year!
Characteristics of each sector:
Sector 1 (red): The strongest braking point, then the very fast (and iconic) Senna Esses
Sector 2 (blue): The slowest one: a few medium-speed corners (T4 to T7) followed by slower ones (T8 to T10). The higher the downforce, the more competitive the car will be here. Drag is not a problem.
Sector 3 (yellow): A braking point (T12) followed by a full-throttle section. The lower the drag and the higher the engine power, the quicker the car will be here.
Pirelli is bringing softer compounds to Brazil than last year: C3 to C5 instead of C2 to C4. Other main differences are the increased mandated inflation pressure (+1psi Front and Rear) and the reduction in the maximum camber angle allowed (0.25deg less front and rear). The track was also resurfaced about 2 months ago: the track data that teams have will be partially obsolete, and with just one practice session before the Sprint Qualifying it will be hard to find the right setup! The track has average characteristics: traction, cornering, and braking are all important, but none of crucial per se.
Wing Levels
What it means: teams can use different rear wings. A more loaded rear wing will produce more downforce at the expense of more drag: the car will have slightly better traction, better cornering, and much better braking, but also a lower high-speed acceleration and top speed. Generally, it will have less tyre wear, but it will also empty its battery quicker. A more loaded wing plane is a plane with more camber (more curvature) and a higher angle of attack (the angle of the wing relative to the airflow). The wing load can be increased through the lower and upper plane, independently: the DRS only acts on the upper plane, so running a more loaded upper plane and a less loaded lower plane will generally make that car's DRS more effective.
Medium-high downforce wings are normally chosen for Brazil: running a bit more drag is normally not a death sentence, while the additional downforce is useful in sector 1 and crucial in sector 2. There is still some variability among teams: let's take a look
In terms of overall load, we have the following overall grouping:
Higher load: Aston/Alpine
Medium load: McL/RBR/Merc/Ferrari
Lower load: Williams/RacingB
RacingBull's pretty unloaded wing, in particular, is a curious choice: they won't be running that in any wet session! The Sprint nature of the weekend allows teams to change the setup after the Sprint: as the Sprint should be dry while the Race wet, expect teams to switch to more loaded wings after the sprint.
McLaren's wing is very interesting: the team has brought a new design at the 4-to-last race! Their commitment to this championship is impressive, however, it might be a design to be evaluated for the next season: the wing features a relatively shallow lower plane and a very loaded upper plane. As most of the downforce and drag are generated by the upper plane, it should give the car low drag once the DRS is active. A way to improve the car's straight-line speed and overall performance which does not exploit a grey area like their previous 'mini-DRS' (which was however only used on the medium-low load wing)
Single Lap Pace
Best Laptime per Driver
How to read: the graph shows the difference between each driver's fastest lap in the session. The letter to the right of each driver indicates the compound used.
PIA set the fastest time, but NOR was just 0.029s behind. McLaren had a healthy gap (0.25s) to anybody else. Behind them was the LEC/VER/SAi group, then RUS more distant (+0.544). GAS and BEA were not that far behind (+0.7s), and they set their best lap on Mediums!
Over a single lap, McL > Ferrari > RB > Mercedes > Alpine > Haas > RacingB > Williams > Sauber > Aston (considering the quickest lap by each team). Aston's demise after their wonderful 2023 start never ceases to amaze.
Aero Map
How to read: Average speed on the horizontal axis: the further to the right a team is, the better its performance (the lower the lap time). Top speed on the vertical axis: the upper a team is, the lower that car's drag or the higher that team's engine mode. Therefore, this plot not only shows who was fastest (those on the right) but also why! (due to very low drag, if they are in the upper portion, or despite that, if they are in the lower portion).
Keep in mind that only McL, Ferrari, RBR, and Mercedes set their fastest laps on Softs, which should shift them to the right slightly compared to the others. With their new rear wing, McL seem to have found the aerodynamic efficiency (low drag despite high downforce) they've been looking for since 2022: their top speed was excellent, higher or equal than any other top team, without sacrificing their downforce (in fact, they were quickest in S2). Red Bull reached the same top speed but was slower overall. Ferrari and Mercedes had a 3km/h top speed deficit. Haas combined excellent top speed with good downforce (Williams too, but to a lesser extent). Instead, Sauvber was held back by their high drag.
Top Speeds
How to read: the higher a team's top speed, the lower that car's drag or the higher that team's engine mode.
The same top-speed data shown previously is now sorted from highest to lowest. A 7km/h difference between fastest (Haas) and slowest (Sauber): moderate-to-high value, indicating a good variability in aero setups.
Best Sectors
A summary to remind you of the properties of each one:
Sector 1 (red): The strongest braking point, then the very fast (and iconic) Senna Esses
Sector 2 (blue): The slowest one: a few medium-speed corners (T4 to T7) followed by slower ones (T8 to T10). The higher the downforce, the more competitive the car will be here. Drag is not a problem.
Sector 3 (yellow): A braking point (T12) followed by a full-throttle section. The lower the drag and the higher the engine power, the quicker the car will be here.
McLaren set a 1-2 in both Sectors 1 and 2; only in Sector 3 did their dominance come to an end. NOR gained 0.07s over the next fastest team (RedBull) in S1, and PIA 0.13s (vs LEC) in S2. Their advantage in the twisty S2 highlights the car's excellent downforce, which looks even more impressive once their high top speed is factored in. Ferrari struggled in S1, while they were closer in S2. The opposite holds for VER and RUS. In S3, instead, LEC was quickest; NOR was just 0.02s behind, and next was BEA (thanks to the very low drag of the Haas). VER, instead, struggled there: 0.14s lost to LEC here.
Best vs Ideal Lap
How to read: the graph shows, for each driver and each car, the ‘Personal Ideal Lap’ (the lap time obtained by the sum of that driver’s or team’s best 3 sectors, which might have been achieved in different laps) in black, and the ‘Personal Best Lap’ (the best lap time that the driver or team has effectively achieved in the session) in green. Consequently, the Personal Ideal Laptime is always equal to or lower than the Personal Best Laptime. If the two coincide, it means that the driver or team has produced its best sector times all on the same lap. The farther the Personal Best Laptime is from the Personal Ideal Laptime, the more potential lap time that one driver or team has left on the table. The coloured bars indicate the gap to the absolute best sector time. The ‘Overall Ideal Lap’ is shown at the bottom of the figure, and is the sum of the lap times of the overall best sectors, independent of which driver or car achieved them
NOR, BEA and GAS lost the most time compared to their ideal lap. In fact, by combining his 3 best sectors, NOR would have taken pole!
Once each team's quickest sectors are combined, McL's dominance becomes even clearer. Haas would have been 5th fastest, right behind Mercedes.
Minisectors
How to read: the analysis compares the fastest laps of each of the three fastest teams. Each segment is coloured based on which driver was fastest there. Any track can be decomposed into the following sections: braking, braking into the next corner, cornering, exiting the corner, and travelling along the following straight.
PIA vs LEC vs VER
PIA got pole, yet dominated just 1/4 of the track: this means that when he was still very quick even in the parts of it in which he was not fastest, losing little time. He had an excellent approach to T1 and exit from T2, being slingshot from T3 to gain significant time in the following straight. LEC gained out of T4 and in the following segment, and crucially out of T12, which allowed him to reduce his delta time up to the finish line. VER, instead, had the best braking into T1, T4, T8, T10, and T12. He was particularly quick in the T6 to T8 segment.
Race Pace
Long Runs
How to read: the chart shows the distribution of lap times during each team's long runs. A long run only includes segments of at least 5 consecutive laps run on the same compound without pitting or slowing down.
Sprint weekend again, so any long run must be crammed inside the FP1 session: as such, only some teams do proper long runs, and the data is less representative than usual.
Among the top teams (Excluding Alonso's flying laps at the start of the stint), the order was Ferrari (M) > Aston (M) > Mercedes (S/M) > McL (M) > RBR (M). Considering RBR's terrible qualifying performance, they were likely running much less fuel than other teams (and possibly more power). As usual, RBR did the long runs on very high fuel and a low engine mode: PER was 1.5s/lap slower than SAI which is unrealistic, and VER was slower than PER too. Before the Sprint, some guesswork is needed to predict the running order. After the Sprint, the pecking order will be much clearer.
Overview of all teams:
Even if GAS's fastest lap is removed, his average would still be in line with LEC: unrealistic. Still, Alpine has made significant progress, as Mexico's and Brazil's qualifying shows!
Pace Last Year
How to read: The upper plot shows the synthesis of each driver's pace during the race. The lower plot shows the (smoothed) evolution through the laps. Each bar contains the central 50% of the distribution: the shorter it is, the more consistent the pace. Inside it, the solid line indicates the MEDIAN (how quick was the TYPICAL lap), while the dashed line indicates the MEAN (how quick was a lap ON AVERAGE). The whiskers include all the laps from a driver which are not uncharacteristically slow for that driver: the lower whisker, in particular, shows that driver's quickest lap. The mean lap time is indicated below each drive's name, and below that is the gap to the quickest driver. The bottom line indicates the tyres used.
VER was quickest in last year's race, but NOR was just 0.08s/lap slower! The two dominated the pace: the next quickest driver (PER) was over 4 tenths per lap slower. LEC retired in the formation lap, and SAI was uncompetitive too. One of the last strong showing from Aston.
The most widely used strategy was Soft/Medium/Soft: the Hard was not used. This year Pirelli is bringing one-step softer compounds to compensate.
My prediction
Sprint
Taking into account the starting positions and expected pace:
McL
Ferrari
RedBull (VER)
Mercedes (RUS)
Haas (BEA's best lap was deleted, and I expect Haas' pace to be superior to Alpine, RacingB, and Williams. MAG is not starting from very far back, too)
Alpine, RacingB, Williams
Aston
Sauber
Qualifying
Using the SQ results, and correcting them based on how much pace each team left on the table:
McL
Ferrari
RedBull
Mercedes
Haas
Alpine
RacingB, Williams
Aston, Sauber
Will this prediction be confirmed? And what is yours?
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Mirco/Formula Data Analysis