Quote:
Originally Posted by J Jay
This is all sensible (and I'm enjoying the extrapolation!) but I'd question the assumption here. As you say, Suzuka's layout significantly favours LMP2 over GT500. But I would add that it also significantly favours SF over LMP1-H for the same reasons - the much lighter car would get round the corners faster, given similar levels of downforce.
With that in mind I added 6% for an assumed LMP1-H Suzuka lap of 1:42.7, and then used the Silverstone times to get an assumed LMP2 lap of 1:51.5, right in the middle of the fastest race laps set in last year's Suzuka 1000km.
Huh. That'd be an interesting one-off showdown.
BTW, were you using fastest race laps throughout? My percentages were slightly different to yours so I was wondering whether it was due to this or if we were using different year's races.
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Oh yeah, the assumption I made is totally questionable. It was just to show a rough extrapolation. If I were to bet, I would expect the SFs to lap slightly faster than the P1-Hs. By slight I mean no more than a couple of seconds, though. The SFs are definitely a bit faster on the high speed corners and likely on the slow stuff too(I imagine they have softer compounds due to less weight and shorter stint) while the P1-Hs advantage lies on acceleration(hybrid) and low drag(covered wheels). I think the P1s would make up some of the time lost on corners but not all so a few seconds would be left between them and SF, imho.
In 2006, F1 was around 1.29.8 on Nurb's Q3 and around the same on Suzuka's Q3. The layouts are quite different and that will affect the relative performance of each car to some extent but I'll assume here that not by huge amounts.
Conditions this year were less than ideal during Nurb's QLF, so let's suppose the R18 could do at least 1.38.0 as DiGrassi did 1.38.7 on a damp/green track. Going by that, I would imagine a R18 laptime on Suzuka to be on the same ballpark and the best ever SF time was a Lotterer pole from a time ago(1.36.9). A lot of times, the SF pole was around 1.38 so that's why I think that the extrapolation I originally posted is not totally unreal.
Btw, it would be so great if Toyota owned Suzuka instead of Fuji
In my extrapolation, I used the P1-H's and P2's fastest race laps because QLF was on wet. For the SF and SGT, I picked only the fastest time ever(QLF) for each series which covers the concerns carbsmith had about different weather and etc(as I looked into several sessions held on different climates and etc)
I did the extrapolations again and the numbers match with yours'. I guess you saw some difference because I applied the Silverstone % over a laptime of 1.37(I rounded to 97s as for the SF/P1-H assumed equal time) instead of the actual 1.36.9 that Lotterer did(a Q2 time btw, his pole was 37.0). Maybe that's the difference?