3
Mercedes shot itself well clear of Ferrari during the qualifying simulation runs in Sochi, finishing over half a second ahead of the Maranello squad. And things appear even better for the Silver Arrows when it comes to the long run data.
Mercedes once again looks to be the fastest car, however it is not known how much fuel each team was using during their long runs. On the hyper soft compound, Sebastian Vettel set just one lap, while the tyre degraded quickly on the rest of the cars.
When it came to running the harder compound, each of the top six bar Kimi Raikkonen attached the purple-walled ultra soft. Raikkonen ran with the soft tyre, the hardest of the three Pirelli compounds available this weekend.
With degradation on the hyper soft tyre high, the top three teams may look to advance from Q2 on the ultra soft tyre to start the race on the same set, before switching to the soft compound on a one-stop strategy. Take a look at the long run times from Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull below.
| Hamilton | Bottas | Vettel | Raikkonen | Ricciardo | Verstappen |
| 1:39.318 | 1:38.552 | 1:39.154 | 1:40.036 | 1:38.667 | 1:37.512 |
| 1:39.057 | 1:29.018 | 1:41.863 | 1:38.048 | 1:37.126 | |
| 1:39.431 | 1:40.065 | 1:42.798 | 1:37.833 | 1:37.059 | |
| 1:39.610 | 1:40.966 | 1:42.227 | 1:37.214 | ||
| 1:41.262 | 1:42.769 | 1:38.510 | |||
| Average | Average | Average | Average | Average | Average |
| 1:39.354 | 1:39.973 | 1:39.154 | 1:41.939 | 1:38.183 | 1:37.484 |
| Hamilton | Bottas | Vettel | Raikkonen | Ricciardo | Verstappen |
| 1:38.522 | 1:38.971 | 1:38.899 | 1:38.966 | 1:40.104 | 1:39.598 |
| 1:39.617 | 1:39.656 | 1:39.567 | 1:38.937 | 1:40.623 | 1:39.572 |
| 1:39.608 | 1:40.154 | 1:40.174 | 1:38.852 | 1:40.024 | 1:40.106 |
| 1:39.740 | 1:39.941 | 1:40.229 | 1:39.510 | 1:39.901 | 1:40.138 |
| 1:39.970 | 1:39.580 | 1:41.431 | 1:39.853 | 1:40.075 | 1:40.124 |
| 1:39.514 | 1:39.455 | 1:41.261 | 1:39.022 | 1:40.754 | 1:40.352 |
| 1:39.987 | 1:39.410 | 1:40.905 | 1:39.313 | 1:40.954 | 1:40.222 |
| 1:39.840 | 1:39.588 | 1:40.633 | 1:40.602 | 1:40.104 | |
| 1:40.201 | 1:40.486 | 1:40.059 | |||
| 1:39.999 | |||||
| 1:40.055 | |||||
| 1:40.131 | |||||
| Average | Average | Average | Average | Average | Average |
| 1:39.600 | 1:39.594 | 1:40.366 | 1:39.208 | 1:40.309 | 1:40.031 |
Grand Prix of Belgium
C. Sainz jr
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ajpennypacker
Posts: 2,475
Excellent analysis, I'd love to see this for every race.