Cs98 wrote: ↑09 May 2024, 11:59
Sphere3758 wrote: ↑09 May 2024, 11:41
Cs98 wrote: ↑09 May 2024, 10:32
Sainz was faster than Piastri in the half upgraded McLaren, enough to pass, yet the fully upgraded McL in the hands of Norris was faster than Sainz.
Only a big upgrade would explain such a performance difference.
As for Sainz not being the "reference driver", might need to re-evaluate that considering he was catching Leclerc at the end. Leclerc was on slightly older tyres, but deg was almost zero.
I dont remember a recent occurance where Piastri matched Lando's race pace, so quantifying the upgrade using their pace differential is not a sound argument imo.
Charles spent a big portion of the last stint around 2s behind Max, trying to protect his tyres by not getting too close. His pace in relatively free air, that Carlos had after he passed Piastri, might have been better. Lets also not forget that he had to "restart" his hard tyres twice : behind the VSC and the SC.
Anyway, historical data makes Leclerc the reference driver for Ferrari. The same way that Lando is the reference driver for McLaren.
My point does not rely on Norris and Piastri being equally fast. Norris was a solid second faster than Piastri on the restart. Some of that is driver, a small bit of it was tyres, and a decent chunk of it would no doubt be the upgrade. 0,4s is not unreasonable at all IMO, given Piastri also had a few bits on his car.
As for Sainz and Leclerc.
Data would suggest they've been quite evenly matched in the SF24, and that they were so in this race as well. Both stints were very close on pace. Holding out hope that Leclerc has another 2-3 tenths in the bag strikes me as delusional when it's disregarding the times in the race in favour of "historical data". He clearly didn't have that pace here relative to Sainz.
There is a very small amount of useful data for both Sainz and Leclerc in terms of
pure race pace for the 2024 season.
In Bahrain Leclerc had a significant issues regarding the brakes, negatively impacting his pace in the race
In Jeddah Sainz didn't race
In Australia Leclerc was stuck behind the McL at the start and was put on a suboptimal strategy (in terms of pure laptime) to get track position on Norris (which worked)
In Suzuka Leclerc started way back, was stuck behind traffic and once again run a suboptimal strategy to gain positions (which worked)
Even China was partially compromised by the traffic in the first stint and Sainz had tyres 4 laps older in the second stint.
In Miami, both Leclerc and Sainz were stuck behind Piastri in the first stint. Leclerc then had tyres 8 laps older in the second stint, while Sainz spent multiple laps behind Piastri once again.
I agree that specifically in Miami there wasn't a huge difference between the pace of the two drivers (even though we don't have a reliable benchmark due to what happened in the race), but it is also true that historically, on average, Leclerc has been quicker.