The Official 2018 Canadian Grand Prix Thread **SPOILERS**
Discussion
Date(s): Friday 08 June 2018 - Sunday 10 June 2018
UK Broadcast Timings (and local time)
All sessions are live on Sky F1 with highlights on Channel 4.
Circuit Gilles Villeneuve
Live timing for all sessions available here:
https://www.formula1.com/en/f1-live.html
Lap times, PU component use, technical reports and Stewards' decisions for the weekend will appear here:
https://www.fia.com/events/fia-formula-one-world-c...
Weather forecast:
http://www.myweather2.com/Motor-Racing/Canada/Circ...
The tyre choices:
2017 Qualifying
2017 Race
Fastest Race Lap: 1:14.551 (L64, L. Hamilton; Mercedes)
Alright Red Bull Racing, fun’s over boys! Back to reality now. Or is it?
A totally different challenge to Monaco. And it’s welcome too.
This track is top 5 in the calendar for the amount of time spent full throttle per lap, with a lot of heavy braking thrown in. The brakes and energy recovery systems are working very hard during the lap. Locking the front wheels is a problem frequently seen here when drivers don’t have absolute confidence in the car’s performance on the brakes, or indeed under pressure in the race.
Aero efficiency is the name of the game here, and you would see all teams running skinny wings to help with the straight line speed, with some bringing special spoon shaped rear wings for optimum downforce. The less wing needed to run for a given downforce level, the better also the fuel consumption - you can begin to appreciate how some cars might perform better than others in the race compared to qualifying. Speaking of qualifying, who will have a big meeting with the Wall of Champions?
The track is classified as a low degradation one from a tyre perspective, with Pirelli bringing the same tyre compounds as Monaco. There are no real high speed corners, however, due to the heavy braking demands and acceleration from low speed for this track, you would expect the tyres to be more under stress than Monaco. Despite the softer tyre compounds it seems Pirelli have not quite nailed their brief in creating tyre performance variation that models the race here in 2010, and as such teams have managed to 1-stop in recent years.
The low working range of the hypersoft should suit the track but will it last half the race? There should be less graining than Monaco for a start, once the track grips up after the cars have run in the first practice session. Funnily enough, graining was the problem that allowed that interesting race back in 2010. More importantly, will this tyre be too close in performance to the one step harder ‘ultra-soft’, to enable top teams to qualify on it for Q2? Will there be enough degradation to force teams in to a 2-stop and thus leave more room for creativity? These questions will hopefully be answered after Friday.
Another story for the weekend is the planned introduction of new engines by the manufacturers for this race. The manufacturers will now have a good idea about the reliability of their first spec of engines raced thus far, which were supposed to maintain the same power levels of their last spec from 2017, and so will start to focus on performance for this update. Rumoured power increases for the different manufacturers range from 15-30hp.
If everyone had the same level of power increase, it just might maintain the status quo, so the performance of the different cars will be interesting to compare with the previous races. One hopes Renault and Honda have a bigger jump than Mercedes/Ferrari. And will Ferrari be affected by the recent rulings on oil burn/ERS? Was it timed by Merc to perfection, just as new engines are going to be introduced? If Ferrari lose engine performance, then surely this Championship will turn into a 2 horse race? Ferrari had introduced the new spec to their customers at Monaco, so all above board and got some valuable data as to how the updated unit is performing.
This update is also supposed to be important for the ongoing talks between RBR and Honda. If Honda can match Renault with this update, they will have the confidence of RBR. Already, Renault have indicated that they are not yet ready to introduce a better spec MGU-K they have been working on for 2 years due to reliability concerns. This set back aside, will this be the update that launches RBR’s WDC title challenge this year? The noises coming out of Renault doesn’t fill one with optimism that this will be the case, with the RBR drivers also facing future engine component penalties. The Monaco win was a real boost to Ricciardo in the Championship standings, leaping to 3rd position in the table - all 3 drivers at the top now share two wins each. And if the Honda is going to be as powerful as it is rumoured, Toro Rosso should be leading the midfield here.
Last year, Hamilton cruised to the win while his main challengers tripped over themselves. Will they get their collective arses in gear this time? The track has one of the shortest run to the first corner but somehow we’ve had at least one (very) fast starting driver changing the complexion of the race for the last couple of years. Vettel in 2016 and Verstappen last year. Will Hamilton win this GP to equal Michael Schumacher for most wins (7) at this track? Or will the Ferrari, RBR drivers and indeed, Hamilton's team mate have something to say about that?
UK Broadcast Timings (and local time)
All sessions are live on Sky F1 with highlights on Channel 4.
| Session | Day | Sky F1 | Channel 4 | Session Start | Local Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Practice 1 | Fri | 1430 | - | 1500 | 1000 |
| Practice 2 | Fri | 1845 | - | 1900 | 1400 |
| Practice 3 | Sat | 1545 | - | 1600 | 1100 |
| Qualifying | Sat | 1800 | 2255 | 1900 | 1400 |
| Race | Sun | 1730 | 2240 | 1910 | 1410 |
Circuit Gilles Villeneuve
Live timing for all sessions available here:
https://www.formula1.com/en/f1-live.html
Lap times, PU component use, technical reports and Stewards' decisions for the weekend will appear here:
https://www.fia.com/events/fia-formula-one-world-c...
Weather forecast:
http://www.myweather2.com/Motor-Racing/Canada/Circ...
The tyre choices:
2017 Qualifying
2017 Race
Fastest Race Lap: 1:14.551 (L64, L. Hamilton; Mercedes)
Alright Red Bull Racing, fun’s over boys! Back to reality now. Or is it?
A totally different challenge to Monaco. And it’s welcome too.
This track is top 5 in the calendar for the amount of time spent full throttle per lap, with a lot of heavy braking thrown in. The brakes and energy recovery systems are working very hard during the lap. Locking the front wheels is a problem frequently seen here when drivers don’t have absolute confidence in the car’s performance on the brakes, or indeed under pressure in the race.
Aero efficiency is the name of the game here, and you would see all teams running skinny wings to help with the straight line speed, with some bringing special spoon shaped rear wings for optimum downforce. The less wing needed to run for a given downforce level, the better also the fuel consumption - you can begin to appreciate how some cars might perform better than others in the race compared to qualifying. Speaking of qualifying, who will have a big meeting with the Wall of Champions?
The track is classified as a low degradation one from a tyre perspective, with Pirelli bringing the same tyre compounds as Monaco. There are no real high speed corners, however, due to the heavy braking demands and acceleration from low speed for this track, you would expect the tyres to be more under stress than Monaco. Despite the softer tyre compounds it seems Pirelli have not quite nailed their brief in creating tyre performance variation that models the race here in 2010, and as such teams have managed to 1-stop in recent years.
The low working range of the hypersoft should suit the track but will it last half the race? There should be less graining than Monaco for a start, once the track grips up after the cars have run in the first practice session. Funnily enough, graining was the problem that allowed that interesting race back in 2010. More importantly, will this tyre be too close in performance to the one step harder ‘ultra-soft’, to enable top teams to qualify on it for Q2? Will there be enough degradation to force teams in to a 2-stop and thus leave more room for creativity? These questions will hopefully be answered after Friday.
Another story for the weekend is the planned introduction of new engines by the manufacturers for this race. The manufacturers will now have a good idea about the reliability of their first spec of engines raced thus far, which were supposed to maintain the same power levels of their last spec from 2017, and so will start to focus on performance for this update. Rumoured power increases for the different manufacturers range from 15-30hp.
If everyone had the same level of power increase, it just might maintain the status quo, so the performance of the different cars will be interesting to compare with the previous races. One hopes Renault and Honda have a bigger jump than Mercedes/Ferrari. And will Ferrari be affected by the recent rulings on oil burn/ERS? Was it timed by Merc to perfection, just as new engines are going to be introduced? If Ferrari lose engine performance, then surely this Championship will turn into a 2 horse race? Ferrari had introduced the new spec to their customers at Monaco, so all above board and got some valuable data as to how the updated unit is performing.
This update is also supposed to be important for the ongoing talks between RBR and Honda. If Honda can match Renault with this update, they will have the confidence of RBR. Already, Renault have indicated that they are not yet ready to introduce a better spec MGU-K they have been working on for 2 years due to reliability concerns. This set back aside, will this be the update that launches RBR’s WDC title challenge this year? The noises coming out of Renault doesn’t fill one with optimism that this will be the case, with the RBR drivers also facing future engine component penalties. The Monaco win was a real boost to Ricciardo in the Championship standings, leaping to 3rd position in the table - all 3 drivers at the top now share two wins each. And if the Honda is going to be as powerful as it is rumoured, Toro Rosso should be leading the midfield here.
Last year, Hamilton cruised to the win while his main challengers tripped over themselves. Will they get their collective arses in gear this time? The track has one of the shortest run to the first corner but somehow we’ve had at least one (very) fast starting driver changing the complexion of the race for the last couple of years. Vettel in 2016 and Verstappen last year. Will Hamilton win this GP to equal Michael Schumacher for most wins (7) at this track? Or will the Ferrari, RBR drivers and indeed, Hamilton's team mate have something to say about that?
Edited by Dr Z on Sunday 3rd June 18:24
Edited by Dr Z on Tuesday 5th June 08:17
It will be interesting to see if the Ferrari's have caught up power unit wise with Merc.... If not, I am guessing Lewis is going to have another enjoyable weekend...
Oh and OP, thank you very much for your continuing production of these posts with the data, it really does make the thread so much better than ever before.
Oh and OP, thank you very much for your continuing production of these posts with the data, it really does make the thread so much better than ever before.
Jasandjules said:
sandman77 said:
Who was the last current driver to hit the wall of champions here? I know Vettel has hit it before - has anyone else on the current grid came a cropper here?
Pretty sure Kimi and Alonso have given it a good whack...slipstream 1985 said:
Jasandjules said:
sandman77 said:
Who was the last current driver to hit the wall of champions here? I know Vettel has hit it before - has anyone else on the current grid came a cropper here?
Pretty sure Kimi and Alonso have given it a good whack...It may have been that year when Ricciardo also touched the wall on his way to his best lap of the weekend...?
Dr Z said:
I seem to remember Sainz crashing there a couple of years back in qualifying, taking huge risks when TR were powered by the previous year's Ferrari engine...It was pretty spectacular lap to watch up until that point. I'll see if I can find it.
It may have been that year when Ricciardo also touched the wall on his way to his best lap of the weekend...?
It may have been that year when Ricciardo also touched the wall on his way to his best lap of the weekend...?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN7fc1iBHfU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zje6wNf-Jm4
Edited by bobbo89 on Monday 4th June 12:58
Ah, yes that's the one! I couldn't find any onboards of the lap though.sandman77 said:
slipstream 1985 said:
Yeah it has actually been a while. Max is surely a dead cert with his current form.
I'm not too sure, he will be on his best behavior this week. Nobody needs a clean weekend as much as he does.ELUSIVEJIM said:
Interesting to see Ferrari, Red Bull and others with three more hypersoft tyres than Mercedes for the weekend.
Yep, Merc seem to be betting on the harder tyres this weekend.This will be interesting to keep an eye on, if the hypersoft turns out to be a great race tyre (as it has been touted since it's introduction), Merc may well find themselves slightly on the back foot.
So their 5 sets of hypers could be used thus: 1 x quali sim & long run in FP2; 1 x quali sim in FP3; 1 x backup for Q2 & race; 2 x Q3 runs.
That's a pretty tight schedule to keep to, if one set is ruined by a bad lock up...which happens a lot here!
Dr Z said:
ELUSIVEJIM said:
Interesting to see Ferrari, Red Bull and others with three more hypersoft tyres than Mercedes for the weekend.
Yep, Merc seem to be betting on the harder tyres this weekend.This will be interesting to keep an eye on, if the hypersoft turns out to be a great race tyre (as it has been touted since it's introduction), Merc may well find themselves slightly on the back foot.
So their 5 sets of hypers could be used thus: 1 x quali sim & long run in FP2; 1 x quali sim in FP3; 1 x backup for Q2 & race; 2 x Q3 runs.
That's a pretty tight schedule to keep to, if one set is ruined by a bad lock up...which happens a lot here!
The most interesting thing for me is WTF is going on with Stroll's tyre selection for the weekend? Not that Sirotkin's makes a whole lot better reading. Williams (sadly) seem lost at the moment.
Edited by Mark-C on Monday 4th June 15:39
KevinCamaroSS said:
sandman77 said:
slipstream 1985 said:
Yeah it has actually been a while. Max is surely a dead cert with his current form.
I'm not too sure, he will be on his best behavior this week. Nobody needs a clean weekend as much as he does.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bjmn_5Kh0r3/
Some nice “clean” racing from the f1 instagram account.
Love Canada GP!
Some nice “clean” racing from the f1 instagram account.
Love Canada GP!
Robert Kubica does a virtual hot lap of the track
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k2M78eb6es
"Oof!...we clipped the wall"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k2M78eb6es
"Oof!...we clipped the wall"
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