Di Resta's race - tyre content

[Bobster]

So, in this era of tyres that go off with little warning and generally
don't last, how did Paul di Resta manage to do a one stop, overtake
his team mate who was on a two stop strategy, do over 50 laps on the
prime and 15 or so on the option? OK... the latter part is maybe easy
to explain because his car would have been light then.

IIRC Gary Anderson was saying that maybe we're back to a situation
we've seen in the past (and not with Pirellis) that the tyres start to
grain and go off but if you get through that they start to come back
to you again and, at some races, you can recover the time that would
have been taken up by the pit stop.

Of course, the Force India has been pretty good with it's tyres this
year, but even so Di Resta's race should be raising eyebrows, no?

[Brian Lawrence]

Anderson was saying during 'The Forum' that the other teams must have
been asleep during the race - they didn't notice what di Resta was doing
and didn't adapt their strategies accordingly.

OTOH if there had been dry & full length practices Force India would
probably have qualified better and taken a more conventional approach to
race strategy.

--

Brian W Lawrence
Wantage
Oxfordshire

[Bobster]

On Jun 11, 12:51 pm, Brian Lawrence <Brian_W_Lawre...@msn.com> wrote:
> On 11/06/2013 06:32, Bobster wrote:
>
> > So, in this era of tyres that go off with little warning and generally
> > don't last, how did Paul di Resta manage to do a one stop, overtake
> > his team mate who was on a two stop strategy, do over 50 laps on the
> > prime and 15 or so on the option? OK... the latter part is maybe easy
> > to explain because his car would have been light then.
>
> > IIRC Gary Anderson was saying that maybe we're back to a situation
> > we've seen in the past (and not with Pirellis) that the tyres start to
> > grain and go off but if you get through that they start to come back
> > to you again and, at some races, you can recover the time that would
> > have been taken up by the pit stop.
>
> > Of course, the Force India has been pretty good with it's tyres this
> > year, but even so Di Resta's race should be raising eyebrows, no?
>
> Anderson was saying during 'The Forum' that the other teams must have
> been asleep during the race - they didn't notice what di Resta was doing
> and didn't adapt their strategies accordingly.

But could they? You can adapt to an early stop, but it's harder to
adapt to a late stop.

> OTOH if there had been dry & full length practices Force India would
> probably have qualified better and taken a more conventional approach to
> race strategy.

Well yes. If you make Q3 you're almost certainly going to be starting
on the option tyre. If you ran the prime in Q3 that's certainly going
to tip the opposition off that you're up to something.

[larkim]

On Tuesday, 11 June 2013 12:09:41 UTC+1, Bobster wrote:
> On Jun 11, 12:51 pm, Brian Lawrence <Brian_W_Lawre...@msn.com> wrote:
> > Anderson was saying during 'The Forum' that the other teams must have
> > been asleep during the race - they didn't notice what di Resta was doing
> > and didn't adapt their strategies accordingly.
>
> But could they? You can adapt to an early stop, but it's harder to
> adapt to a late stop.
>

Perhaps a little difficult, but not impossible for a team who started
on the softer tyre and then moved to the harder compound to see what
di Resta was doing and then try to make their tyres last to the end of
the race - making the tyre last in the same way that di Resta did, but
on a lower average fuel level, so presumably slighly lower energies
going through the tyres.

It would depend on whether they sent the driver out for their second
stint with the instruction "destroy these tyres over 25 laps, you'll get
another set with about 25 to go". It might be difficult to make the tyres
last longer if you have consciously taken all of the life out of them
over the expected plan "A".

So perhaps di Resta's afternoon was all about "rolling the dice". On the
basis of starting 17th, things couldn't go any worse, so he "had a go".

If it had failed, no-one would have noticed - he'd have just had to pit again
as everyone else was doing.

Matt