Are the 2014 F1 Cars slower?

"ncasolowork2" (ncasolowork2) 05/12/2014 at 09:27 • Filed to: None

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F1 has now been to a variety of tracks this year. Australia is a semi-permanent street course. Malaysia and China have some massive long straights. Bahrain is a lot of slow corners and acceleration and Barcelona is a lot of high speed and slow corners with minimal straights. Direct lap time comparisons below.

Of all the tracks the one that would be most suited to a car with less downforce and more engine power you would want to look at Bahrain.

Fastest Race Lap:

2013 Vettel 1:36.961

2014 Rosberg 1:37.020

Qualifying

2013 Rosberg 1:32.330

2014 Hamilton 1:33.185

As you can see there is little difference between 2013 and 2014 in terms of overall lap times. The best trap speed in 2013 was Di Resta 314.2kph and in 2014 Perez 328.8. 14.6kph faster (almost 10mph) in 2014.

At the opposite end of the spectrum as far as tracks that suit the old car versus the new car we have Barcelona. To give you an idea of just how much downforce the teams have lost in 2014 just look at the qualifying times and race lap times from Barcelona.

Fastest Race Lap

2014 Vettel 1:28.918

2013 Guiterrez 1:26.217

Qualifying

2014 Hamilton 1:25.232

2013 Rosberg 1:20.718

That's nearly 5 seconds faster in qualifying in 2013. The race lap times were much closer, but the race itself was 2 minutes slower. Speed traps? 337.7 versus 318.5. Nearly 20kph. To give you an idea. If Alonso had run the 2013 car at those speeds in 2013 he would have lapped both Mercedes cars and Ricciardo once and the rest of the field twice. I don't think any of Spain's overall pace had to do with fuel saving either.

Some of the other races are harder to extrapolate data from. Qualifying was wet at China, Malaysia, and Australia in 2014. China's race was in drying conditions in 2013 as well. China's fast lap was 3.6s slower in 2014. Malaysia's fast lap 3.9s slower in 2014 and Australia's fastest lap 3.2s slower in 2014. Oddly enough that means Spain's gap of 2.7s in the race is smaller. With that said the track in Spain is shorter which can easily contribute to a smaller gap in overall lap time.

So are the cars slower in 2014? Depends on your definition of slower. They're hitting significantly higher speeds, but overall lap times are down considerably.

Chris_K_F drives an FR-Slow > ncasolowork2 05/12/2014 at 09:47

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I think a major factor in this is that the teams are still trying to dial in a new platform. Obviously Mercedes is getting it down faster than anyone, but it's still the first year with a new car setup. Whereas in 2013 they were running cars they had been developing for years. I think it would be interesting to look at the lap times from the 1st year the last platform was introduced, and compare them to the 2014 times. Basically look at how well they were able to develop a new platform in time for the next season, and see how well they managed to do that.

In a couple years, I am certain that all the teams will be more used to the new platform and we will be seeing better lap times. Also, Honda. :) lol

ncasolowork2 > Chris_K_F drives an FR-Slow 05/12/2014 at 09:51

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I'm certain the teams will improve the lap times with these cars as they find ways to upgrade them. With that said the cars didn't really fluctuate much in lap times over the course of the DRS era. If you put these new turbos in last year's car with last year's aero grip levels these cars would probably be 2-3 seconds faster instead of 2-3 seconds slower. That's how much aero grip they lost.

Chris_K_F drives an FR-Slow > ncasolowork2 05/12/2014 at 09:53

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Yeah, I think the changes to aero are definitely the biggest factor. It will be interesting to see if teams can find some way to deal with or compensate for it.