2013 Korean Grand Prix lap times and fastest laps

13 comments on “2013 Korean Grand Prix lap times and fastest laps”

1. 

   Simon (@simon999)
   6th October 2013, 14:43

   We’ll never know how it would have played out, due to the safety car incidents (which you can’t legislate for), but I can’t get my head around the strategy call for HAM during the 2nd stint.

   When the tyres go off the cliff with more than half a race to go, you surely don’t need much more than common sense to tell you that your only option is to pit ASAP. I’m pretty sure he was still in the window for a 3 stop strategy at the point the right-front went and I’m skeptical as to how many other cars would have been able to complete a 2 stopper at a sensible pace, had the safety car not been deployed. Practically every team was “on the limit” by the time their stop came around.

   He’d lost a pit stop anyway by the time he came in, which only meant that he’d now struggle to complete 25 or so laps on the next set of tyres and probably suffer the same fate all over again. It makes no sense to go with the call they did, IMO. Or have I just missed something?
   1. 

      Mike Dee (@mike-dee)
      6th October 2013, 14:55

      I agree with you. I guess he would have come out in traffic but that seemed like the better choice anyway.
   2. 

      richly
      6th October 2013, 15:33

      No Simon, you are 100% correct and then some. Lewis gave up more than 14 seconds to fourth place waiting to pit. More importantly Mercedes allowed Lotus to maximize their pit strategy to full effect. Lewis could have certainly made an extra stop and probably needed to after shooting his tires twice in the race going for position. The Rosberg nose issue only made matters worse as Lewis went two additional laps on those tires some 3 seconds slower than the top runners. Not a master stroke I am afraid. the tires killed this race for everyone. Most people don’t care so much about who wins so long as it’s a good race, and this one was clearly a tire management run.
   3. 

      AdrianMorse (@adrianmorse)
      6th October 2013, 18:44

      @simon999, you are completely right, they should have pitted them at the end of lap 22, 23 the latest. You can see on laps 18 and 19 that he significantly speeded up, probably as the graining on his tyres was gone at that moment, then a couple of laps later they were suddenly completely gone.

      I suppose there are two mitigating circumstances to Mercedes awful strategy, the first is that there was the misunderstanding about the condition of the tyres. If Lewis and his crew had communicated about the fact that the graining had gone, they would have known he needed new tyres. when the lap times went up again. The second reason is that a pit stop any later than lap 24 would probably have just put him behind the Hulkenberg – Alonso – Webber battle.

      Still, I think that in any circumstance, except perhaps 5 laps from the end, as soon as you are two seconds a lap slower, you should go into the pit straight away. Just compare the lap times of Raikkonen and Hamilton on lap 27. Raikkonen set a fast lap of 1m42.8 on his fresh tyres, whereas Lewis did a 1m48.3. That’s almost 6 seconds in one lap, and on the next lap he lost another 7 seconds! Crazy.
2. 

   erix
   6th October 2013, 15:27

   Once again Kimi is proven with consistent lap times, a grade A driver. No match for one-lap Ricciardio or diving Perez, but they are a lot cheaper anyway.
   I wonder Vettel is also consistent with fast-slow-fast-slow race laps, perhaps playing with KERS.
   1. 

      Mike Dee (@mike-dee)
      6th October 2013, 16:30

      Playing with KERS? More likely him going fast and then being asked to slow down by Rocky!
      1. 

         erix
         7th October 2013, 5:51

         I was thinking of deploying all his KERS in the beginning of the straight for the next lap, explains the fast-slow-fast-slow rhythm.
3. 

   Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
   6th October 2013, 15:44

   In this era of F1, technology and so on, a 10 lap Safety Car period (alas from two different incidents) it’s absolutely unacceptable.

   A fifth of a race spoiled by rubber on track and a car catching fire. Standard incidents. But in Korea, it’s a lot more serious for whatever reason. Why this track has walls so near the track? it turns the back straight into a sort of a tunnel and it’s a hard job to clean debris or recover a car (just like when Rosberg’s car retired and they kept him there, with waved yellos, for 6 laps a couple of years ago).
   1. 

      Sri Harsha (@harsha)
      6th October 2013, 15:56

      Actually it was last year Ros Stopped his car on the Back straight. And they used Yellow Flags for 6 laps
   2. 

      boozie
      6th October 2013, 16:29

      I totally agree and think a lot has to do with the rule to allow lapped cars to re-lap themselves.
      While i understand that it is in the interest of the show to have the cars lined up in the order of the classification this rule prolonges the safety car phases usually by 2-4 laps.
      And it is a bit unfair to the front-runners as well because they’ve had to overtake the backmarkers beforehand the hard way.
4. 

   Patrick (@paeschli)
   6th October 2013, 16:34

   I don’t really understand the second safety car … was it necessary? There was a lot of smoke, but the smoke went away from the track so no visibility problem IMO.
   1. 

      uan (@uan)
      6th October 2013, 19:29

      the second safety car was necessary because the fire marshall’s truck was released onto the track and was an incredibly dangerous hazard on the long straight. The race had to be neutralized immediately and the only way to do that was with an SC.
   2. 

      Max Jacobson (@vettel1)
      6th October 2013, 20:02

      @paeschli it was for the idiot fire Marshall’s.

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