Quote:
Originally Posted by RatherDashing
Do you guys know why the qualifying laps are much faster than the race? At Australia the fastest lap was 1.25.580 by Bottas, but in qualifying he did 1.20.598.
|
Others have answered but I’ll elaborate a little.
They’re running on min fuel. They have just enough to complete the out lap, timed lap and in lap.
They always use a fresh set of the fastest tire (softest) available for the weekend. Except sometimes in Q2 but that’s a whole other discussion of strategy.
Not only that but they push those tires to the limit with no concern for wear (again, except for Q2 sometimes due to the fact the top 10 have to start the race on their Q2 tires).
They run in max engine mode. You may hear people refer to Mercedes ability to turn up their engine higher than anyone else on the grid. The term “party mode” is used frequently, not sure where that originated. Basically, for the race the engines are set to maximize speed but also efficiency (fuel) and the life of the engine. In qually they’ll turn it up to a level that would probably wear down and possibly even break the engine if used for full race distance. Merc have such great reliability they can turn their engine up higher than other teams (usually) and run it at a level that other teams can’t risk.
The way the battery works they can only harvest and the use so much energy per lap. During the race they want to keep this fairly balanced. But during qually they can fully charge and then fully use all stored energy since they only care about getting in one great lap.
Setups also matter. Like the aero (front and rear wings), tire camber and toe etc. You can set up the car to be great over a quick lap but such that it’ll ruin the tires or won’t be as stable for a full race distance. And since you aren’t allowed to change most settings after the car has started Q1, it is important for teams to find a setup that works for both quick laps and for a full race. No point in qualifying 1st if you’ll be much slower in the race or if the car is undrivable with a full fuel load. If you have a very stable chassis/aero to begin with then you can probably optimize your qually speed without sacrificing too much race pace.