When you have almost 1,000,000 followers on twitter, its really not possible to say something and then delete it. What happens on twitter doesn’t stay on twitter. So when Lewis Hamilton used instagram to share a very interesting piece of team data, we think someone in the team suggested he take it down.
Lewis’ message read:
In engineering, just been shown this, overlay of mine & jensons qualifying lap on a speed trace.This is what I was trying to explain yesterday.
The image attached was this:
As you can see from the hand written notes, Lewis lost one second on the straights. Lewis later tweeted that the dotted line was the differential to Jenson, when the line goes down he loses time, when it goes up he makes up time.
Clearly, the team had a couple of issues. The first being the release of this data – something the other teams could probably make some great use of. Secondly, probably not a good look for Lewis to be somewhat frustrated openly about the difference between his car and Jenson’s – noted during the weekend by the difference in the rear wing between the cars.
Lewis, Lewis, Lewis. If it’s on the internet – someone has a copy.
Lets see how this plays into contract negotiations over the coming weeks.
UPDATE: To explain the lap chart in some more detail, EFTM understands a few of the lines but would love to hear from you in the comments if you know more!
Here are our thoughts:
EFTM Analysis of Lewis Hamilton and Jenson button comparison lap data
The throttle line clearly shows when the “gas” is on, at full compression and on the straights.
Another obvious line is the gear selection. This is possibly one of the most important ones that rival teams would be interested in as it would bring to them data about gear ratio choices being made at McLaren. You can see where Lewis is stepping up and then down through the gears throughout the lap.
Let us know what you think in the comments below…
