Italian Gp telemetry analysis: Hamilton vs Verstappen
Monza, the temple of speed, sure it is! It is the F1 weekend with the slimmest wings and highest speeds. But the balance between being faster on the straights and having better tyre performance is tough to get right. Let’s start by comparing the top speeds achieved by the drivers during their fastest times, which will give us some starting points in our analysis.
| Drivers | Speed |
| Russell – Giovinazzi | 343 |
| Mazepin | 342 |
| Alonso | 341 |
| Ocon | 340 |
| Schumacher, Stroll | 339 |
| Hamilton, Bottas, Ricciardo | 338 |
| Norris | 337 |
| Latifi | 336 |
| Vettel, Leclerc, Sainz, Verstappen | 335 |
| Gasly, Tsunoda | 332 |
| Perez | 330 |
As expected the teams with less amazing race pace opted for setups that would make them hard to be overtaken. It is also worth mentioning a result we got when we compared the gearing ratios of all teams, namely that Alpine is the car with longer gears, which should have helped them with their top speeds.
Mercedes had quite a good package at Monza. By our estimations, based on acceleration analysis, their low drag setup seems to have the most grip available and also, as we saw, good straight-line speed. The good surprise behind them was Mclaren.
At one stage it seemed like a dominant pole position for Lewis, however, the late charge of Valtteri denied him the first position. From their telemetry comparison, we can conclude that Hamilton was better at getting around the corners but losing on the straights.
If the new engine in Bottass’ car was making a difference then it should have been helping with the acceleration out of the corners as the top-speed-part of the speed traces are quite close. The exit out of Lesmo 2 is where Valtteri gained significant ground.
Comparison between the championship contenders really tells us a similar story. Hamilton tuned for better cornering and potentially better long stint pace while Max set for better top speeds.
It is the top end of the Ferrari that is lacking to the Mercedes engine in the McLaren. Carlos is faster through every single corner. On top of that, his initial low-end acceleration phase is quite close to that of Lando. But it is the engine performance above 270-280kph that is dropping Ferrari down.
One possible explanation is that they might have tunned the car for better race pace in clear air because as we saw on Sunday they were not far that from the McLarens in terms of race performance. It was the dirty air that caused stalemate situations all through the field.
A close battle between the Ferrari’s teammates. However, strong Lesmos, Ascari, and Parabolica for Carlos gave him the edge. The only time Leclerc is better on the brakes is at the second chicane. The other times we can see the orange braking zone being shorter and later.
This can be confirmed from the longitudinal acceleration graph as well. At Lesmo 1 Sainz achieves almost 1G more braking power than Leclerc. However, at the first chicane and Parabolica, it is easy to spot that Charles is able to decelerate the car in a much faster way but he is staying longer on the brakes from this it can be concluded that he didn’t manage to match the second phase of Carlos’ braking and is lifting the pressure off of the brake pedal quicker than Sainz.
So not that sure at “near corner entry” braking. Of course, take that with caution because we don’t actually know how different the car setups were.
Author and graphics : Nikola Stanchev – @RacingTelemetry