Closing strong: The 2000 Japanese GP
Welcome back to The Tyrell Challenge. Just one race to go on the 2000 season, and just like last year, it is time to watch charts on how this season went down. This will help show just how dominant our second half of the season went.
Hmm ... made the image too big. Anyway, this is the progression of the points. As you can see, the start of our season was ... meh, but soon enough we shot up. Mika's championship ended after Canada, MSC just disappeared into the distance, and Villeneuve overtook him. Salo just ... flatlined as we improved.
The Average Finishing Position paints an interesting image. Takagi started as not it, but the performance of Tyrell was just so much that he evens out with Salo and Frentzen. Diniz was similar, equaling Frentzen's ... let's say, uninspiring performance, then destroying the field and equaling Hakkinen. However, this just shows the whole season which ... well, it paints a good image of who was good and who was meh overall. However ...
The Silverstone Split
I was curious to see how good we were after our upgrades resulted in a Silverstone W and a much better performance overall. Well, here it is.
Yes, after Silverstone, Pedro Diniz has outpointed Michael Schumacher. The Michael. Tora Takagi has outpointed Jacques Villeneuve and Mika Hakkinen. Yes, this is a real sentence. This is a thing that has happened.
The Average Finishing Position makes the front 2 look just about even, but Takagi out right beat Villeneuve. Frentzen was horrible down the stretch, and Mika just barely beats the Mika.
OK, back to the regular schedule. The TL;DR of all that: Tyrell's second half of the season has been stupid strong for a team that was in between the Front Runner and Midfielder bubbles.
No real upgrades for this race. We'll compare the starting and finishing performance ratings on the next chapter too but.
This is the last time we'll see this screen this year. Things will change in between seasons, keep an eye on it.
That's ... harsh, considering what we have achieved. This rating will change at the end of the season, after Suzuka.
The next step in evolution for Tyrell is a bigger factory. Ours was a tiny, baby Level 1. We are going to upgrade to a Level 5 for next year. That's makes it more expensive to maintain, yes, but also increases how much personnel we can have. More personnel means tasks can get completed quicker. It also allows us to buy more facilities, which speed up the design phases. The Test Rig is different, as it will improve the effects of Test days.
Here's next year's car, with all the sponsors attached to it.
These shots are for reference. Tech regs could happen, which would affect the suppliers. These are here so I can compare how each supplier changed next year.
A good and a bad. A good, because Tires are getting downgraded, which means our Works Tire deal will allow us to beef up the tires far better than the competition. A bad because the Engine downgrade means our Mugen-Honda won't be as good and remapping will be difficult because we have few points to work with. We still need the full POWER engine, it will just be ... a risk. Still, our Auto Gears might help protect the engine.
Not much on the table for Suzuka. Both championships have been wrapped up. It's only Diniz v Villeneuve for P2 that's relevant here. With the advantage, Diniz can lock up P2 with a 5th or better. Villeneuve has to outscore him by 9 points, so he MUST win.
Suzuka, as you know by now, has a disturbingly high rate of rain affected sessions. Diniz is a wet weather ace (this is a thing, yes), so he gets nearly all Dust points and just 1 Rain point. Takagi isn't that good in the wet, so he gets an extra Rain point.
Rainy Mie strikes again. The rain seriously affected our qualy schedule, which is why we only did 2 runs.
Oh, Jacques. Welp, there's no catching Diniz now. Be aware that the number 1s were nearly disqualified too. They did laps in the wet only. They got lucky.
Something tells me MSC isn't going to stay at P18 for too long.
There's just not much strategy in a wet weather race. 1 Stop, just swap tires when the weather changes.. And hopefully ... hopefully, stop once for dries and never stop again.
Took 15 laps for rain to stop. And look where Michael, Mika and Mika are.
We did a risky strat of doing 20+ laps on a soft set of tires. I just told the guys to go extremely easy on the tires. They did and carried them to the end, which surprised me a bit. The other AIs had to stop for whatever reason, be it tires or fuel. With nothing to fight for, at least for Diniz, I tried to give Takagi the win, but he was fighting with Mika Salo for a while, making it a risk. He got clear on the final lap, a bit too late.
I'm still kinda ... shocked at Villeneuve just not qualifying. Pure bottling, 1997 style.
Just 11 drivers qualified. Such was the dominance of the Big 4. There was that Fisichella 6th place finish where he out performed Diniz.
Ferrari just destroyed the field this season. But P2 is being manned by Tyrell. The placed reserved for McLaren this year was taken by ... Tyrell. A sign of things to come? I hope.
Despite burning $24m in a single shot, we still made a profit. A significant profit.
Prost just getting roasted out here.
Yeah, of course di Montezemelo won the Manager of the Year award. You expected the Tyrell manager to win it, right?
Just runner up, the championships give a big bonus to the Manager Score. We smashed McLaren and Benetton so hard, their managers tumbled. What a mess we created.
And that's it for the 2000 season. Thanks for keeping up. The 2001 preseason will be up as soon as I can make and write it, when I have time to do so (college started and that's kind of a big deal)
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