2017 Russian GP Qualifying - Timing data

For the Sochi circuit, I decided to compare the cars' performances solely on the fastest corners, and those corners are 7 and 8 :

The laps included on this comparison are:
_Vettel's pole and fastest Q2
_Both Q3 laps of Hamilton
_Bottas' fastest Q3
_Alonso and Vandoorne's fastest qualifying laps (from Q1)
_Hulkenberg's Q1 lap, 0.2s slower than his Q3's
_Q2 laps from Ricciardo and Kvyat (not their best)

Speedometer was not available on the laps of Alonso, Kvyat, Hamilton's first Q3 and Vettel's pole.

Turn 7

Driver/lap                              Minimum Speed ( km/h )                              Time ( s )       

Vettel's pole                                                                                                                      1.1

Vettel's Q2                                                    172                                                             1.11

Hamilton's first Q3                                                                                                           1.2

Hamilton's fastest Q3                                   170                                                           1.22

Bottas                                                           174                                                             1.15

Ricciardo                                                      172                                                             1.12

Alonso                                                                                                                             1.28

Vandoorne                                                   165                                                              1.24

Kvyat                                                                                                                                1.19

Hulkenberg                                                   171                                                                1.2

All drivers went well into the apex kerb but most went even further into the extra bump, beyond the kerb, to try to gain additional time. Such drivers were: Vettel (on both laps) , Hamilton (on his first Q3 run) , Bottas , Ricciardo and Hulkenberg.

Alonso have been outqualifying his team mate by quite big margins but Stoffel did very well on these faster corners, at least. Anyway, as was the case on the previous tracks, Mclaren and Renault displayed poor cornering performances again. Toro Rosso wasn't particularly good either and Hamilton had an appalling performance, when compared to his team mate(which indicates something might have been very wrong with his car given the difference).

As verified with timing data from the Bahrain GP, Red Bull already have very good cornering performance with their current car. Their new aerodynamic package, scheduled to be introduced in Barcelona, might put them well ahead of Ferrari and Mercedes, downforce wise, as the lap analysed is not even the maximum the car was capable of.

           

Turn 8

Driver/lap                              Minimum Speed ( km/h )                                Time ( s )       

Vettel's pole                                                                                                                     1.05

Vettel's Q2                                                    184                                                            1.02

Hamilton's first Q3                                                                                                          1.15

Hamilton's fastest Q3                                   174                                                            1.12

Bottas                                                           178                                                               1

Ricciardo                                                      177                                                                1

Alonso                                                                                                                              1.2

Vandoorne                                                   167                                                              1.22

Kvyat                                                                                                                                1.13

Hulkenberg                                                   169                                                              1.19

Bottas and Ricciardo were the benchmark around T8 and it's no coincidence that both were the ones that most utilised the apex kerb. Bottas was the only one that went into the bump, beyond the kerb. Ricciardo and Vettel, on his Q2 lap, used all of the kerb while Hamilton, on his first Q3 lap, Alonso, Vandoorne and Hulkenberg only went around halfway into it.

Vettel, on his pole lap, Kvyat and Hamilton, on his second Q3 lap, used very little of the apex kerb so there could be quite some margin for improvement there.

I have seen a video of Vettel's pole lap with the speedometer available, taken from the F1 app, but such speedometer have a refresh rate even lower than the ones that FOM displays on the videos, making it very unreliable to gather useful data from. It must be noted that speedometers, in general, aren't 100% accurate anyway and it's not rare to see the minimum speeds not correlating too well with the timing data(average speeds are much more reliable).

Barcelona is a track that will allow a better downforce comparison between the cars as, on Melbourne, Ferrari was faster than Mercedes through the high speed S but slower through Turn 14 and, on the other tracks, there aren't +240km/h corners