Thankfully the conditions remained dry throughout the session and drivers were able to carry out their long runs. Here are the lap times of the main contenders for the Grand Prix:
Dashed line means the driver was running the option tyre.
Here I was impressed with Massa on the option tyre running around the same pace as Kimi on the primes after 15 laps. Massa’s stint continued at around the same pace in the 73.0/1’s even further than the graph shows which is impressive. You would expect the degradation curve to accelerate faster with the option tyre but these lap times would indicate that the race will be one stop because of the low degradation. The previous race also was a single-stop race soft/supersoft for the leaders. One less than the previous year.
Race times from Lap 2-10.
Rosberg was Mercedes’ prime runner and maintained similar consistency and pace to the Ferrari, if not a little slower – averaging 1:13.2 on his long run compared to 1:13.0 of Raikkonen. This will not be so much of a worry to the Mercedes pit wall as Hamilton and Rosberg’s race pace is typically just under a second faster than they run in FP2 as shown in Montreal (see graph):
But it may worry them that Vettel and Raikkonen both showed very competitive low-fuel pace – arguably the most competitive they’ve been all year. So if they can get pole position or a front row lockout it will be Ferrari who dictate the pace.
The race being one-stop is good news because it means we can predict the entire race laptimes using the self-created forecaster.
Race Forecast
2015 Canadian Grand Prix
As mentioned last race, I created the forecaster using excel and the knowledge of a few uni modules in IT and data analysis, but it showed a lot of promise in Monaco and predicted fairly accurately how Raikkonen dropped back from Mercedes in the last race in Montreal as shown on the graph. I hope to keep improving the accuracy and functions of the spreadsheet every race to prove how much we, as fans, can interpret from the pieces of information we have access to on places such as the FIA website.
For this race we can now forecast 4 drivers races simultaneously. Let’s start with Mercedes vs Ferrari again. For now, we can’t forecast race traffic – meaning cars do not suffer from dirty air and can phase through one another. The estimation for the pole time for the Canadian GP was almost spot on! (+0.06s) I believe. This time we don’t know Hamilton’s true super soft pace yet but if we assume he makes up as much time as Nico did, we are looking at a 1:08.0 with the track being rubbered in by the feeder series.
Shown here is the calculated race finishing times compared to the lap they pit on. The finishing time of the race last year was 5275 seconds. So the pace this year is going to be faster due to one less pitstop in addition to the fact that the Mercedes’ last year were behind the Williams’ and Perez for much of the race.
Raikkonen’s curve would typically be a few seconds behind Vettel but his excellent tyre wear shown in practice gives him an opportunity to win the race by pitting earlier and forcing the Mercedes duo to have to cover him by pitting themselves.
Because the forecaster includes a standard distribution error (made so the driver is 66% likely to repeat the driving skill of the previous lap to +/-0.2s), the finishing times of the drivers can vary by a few seconds each time the race is re-ran, and as the graph above shows, the result is so close. The 4 drivers separated by 3.5 seconds.
I’ve repeated the race countless times and there is no consistent fastest winner. It is approximately Kimi 25% Vettel 40% Hamilton 25% Rosberg 15%. Pole will be massively important for the race, but less so if it rains as that will prompt drivers to explore and make errors.
But what about Williams and Lotus?
Massa’s option degradation hints that he could stay out on the Super Soft tyre for longer, pit later and have a rampant stint on the softs. Unfortunately the gap seems to still be too much to overcome but considering Ferrari have been so competitive so far this weekend, this is a decent outcome for Williams.
To conclude? I’d expect a closer fight between Mercedes and Ferrari then we’ve seen before and hopefully create a more exciting race than the previous few. Due to the difficulty in overtaking both naturally this year and at this track, pole will be essential and traffic will completely change the real results from the forecast. As Lewis showed last year, you can make up a lot of ground on lap 1 so expect the penalty-hit drivers to create some excitement from the start.
