[Fer no.65]

As some of you might know, I’m a MW fan, and of course I pay attention to every single thing he does on track. That includes his woeful starts.

The 12th race of the season has just finished, and as far as I remember, Mark has only get away reasonably well ONCE! (at Valencia).

How come this happens? how can someone start so badly so many times? It’s just ridiculous!

[Doance]

I know, it’s frustrating. I am yet to see a race where he doesn’t lose positions at the start.

This sums it up, lol https://i.imgur.com/3bkLX.jpg

He drove really well today and probably could have won if he didn’t drop to 8th at the start.

[Fer no.65]

That’s exactly how I feel about it :(!

[Dave Tett]

God I know! Im a HUGE MW fan! I nearly broke down crying when he crashed out in Korea! Points there were crucial! His starts however are woeful! He got off the line well this weekend in India even though Jensen took him on the first long straight! He has had some mechanical difficulties off the line a couple of races but I don’t know whats wrong! Very frustrating, im sick of that finger wagging from Vettel!! :(

[raymondu999]

To be fair @fer-no65 your stat isn’t actually quite right; he got off fine fantastic in Melbourne; and was good in Shanghai considering he was on the less-grippy tyre. Turkey; similarly he got off ok if I remember correctly, but the massively dirty side in Turkey hampered him. Monaco he got off alright, just that Alonso made a killer start. Canada shouldn’t be counted as it was a rolling start. Don’t remember his other starts, though I most of them are probably dreadful starts.

Barrichello had a similar problem in 2009 if I remember correctly. Whenever he was near Jenson in qualifying, he would fluff it. I think a large part of it is the fact that Seb has dominated Mark for the whole year; and so when Mark is starting close to Seb; he kind of gets “nervous” of sorts and puts too much pressure on himself to get things right.

His feel for the Pirellis in low-speed traction has been horrible, sorry to say, and I think this could be hampering him. At times he does the 1st phase fine (releasing the clutch and letting the car lurch forward) but fluffs the second, equally important “traction” phase (where they go from launch revs to slowly go up to full power).

I think his lackluster feel for traction in the slow speed this year has also hurt him in the starts in this regard. Given how many people wonder about this I talked to several old colleagues still working around the paddock; and most seem to note that the Pirellis are very tricky to work with in terms of static friction – the window for a good launch is very narrow; around 180RPM (90 up, 90 down). Considering they launch at about 13000RPM; this is about 0.7% variance up and down from how much you press the pedal – not easy.

[Keith Collantine]

Here’s how many places drivers have gained or lost (net) on lap one in every race this year:

Schumacher +27
Buemi +18
Alonso +8
Vettel -3
Hamilton -9
Button -11
Webber -22
Senna -23

Full list here: Position change on lap one

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