Although this was not a thrilling race, it was an intriguing one from a strategy point of view because of the difference between the two types of tyres each driver had to use. Like many races this year, it didn’t turn out the way pre-race expectations had predicted. In fact it was quite a surprise.

At the front, Vettel always had something in hand over Button. Although the McLaren was closer at the start of each stint, the Red Bull had the raw pace to ease away each time into a five second cushion. This was a margin Vettel was comfortable with in this race, allowing him to lose a second to Button by stopping a lap later and giving him a couple of seconds to play with in case of a poor pit stop. Generally this season he’s wanted to have a bigger cushion of more like seven or eight seconds so the five that he held on Sunday over Button for most of the race indicates that Button was pressing him. So it wasn’t as easy as it might have looked from the outside.

The thinking behind Vettel’s gap management tactic is that he doesn’t want to push too hard to open a larger gap for fear of damaging the tyres and as the leader is always the last to make a stop, covering the cars behind, he doesn’t want to put himself in a position where he has nothing left in the tyres.

With a performance gap between hard and soft tyres, the key as always was recognising the point at which a new set of hard tyres was quicker than a used set of softs.

Webber on the back foot over strategy
Mark Webber’s race summed up his season in many ways. He lost a place at the start, then had worse tyre wear than his rivals, so was forced onto the back foot strategy wise.

Webber was battling for 3rd place with Fernando Alonso, who got ahead of him at the second round of pit stops. Alonso said after the race that he was ‘surprised’ that Webber stopped so early. Webber had a gap of around two seconds over the Ferrari on lap 35, when his tyres started to go off. On lap 36 he lost a second to Alonso.

Webber’s middle stint was just 21 laps before his tyres started to go off, which is 7 laps less than Vettel’s in the same car and also than Button’s. This is his Achilles Heel this season. Alonso took two laps to push hard and then was able to pit and rejoin ahead of the Australian.

Webber’s plight seems all the more strange given that the Pirelli tyres were far more durable this weekend than expected. Michael Schumacher did 32 laps on a set of softs in his middle stint (albeit they were a new set, with no qualifying laps on them).

With the benefit of hindsight, Pirelli could have brought the soft and supersoft tyres this weekend, but they didn’t have any knowledge of the circuit. Also the temperatures could have been a lot higher, so it was probably best to play it safe.

Although he has had good pace at times, the story of Webber’s season is that he’s had poor starts, which have put him in traffic and this has hurt his tyres more. Without strong top speed he also finds it more difficult to pass. He has also lost the strategic freedom by having higher tyre wear, so he has to stop earlier each time.

How Schumacher beat Rosberg
This was another strong race for Michael Schumacher, who beat team mate Nico Rosberg for the third time in recent races where both have finished. Schumacher started 11th on the grid, four places behind Rosberg, but again got an excellent start to run right behind him in eighth place. He pitted on lap later at the end of the first stint and put on a set of new soft tyres, while Rosberg’s had done qualifying laps. Schumacher’s middle stint was what won it for him; he did 32 laps on that set, four laps more than Rosberg. When Rosberg switched to hard tyres on lap 45, he should have been faster than Schumacher on used softs for the five laps before he stopped. But Schumacher kept the pace up, lapping in the 1m 29s, while Rosberg didn’t get the speed on the new tyres, so when Schumacher pitted on lap 50 he jumped his younger team mate.

The pair were told they could race, but Schumacher got the hard tyres up to speed more quickly than Rosberg and held him at bay. Mercedes were in a lonely race of their own, too slow to race the leaders, but faster than the midfield.

And it was again more evidence that Schumacher is back on form and ready to shine if Mercedes can build him a good car next year.

Di Resta – Counter strategy doesn’t work out this time
Although pre race predictions suggested that the gap between the soft and hard tyre would mean that drivers would want to run the hard as little as possible, in fact it didn’t turn out that way and the hard wasn’t a bad race tyre at all.

But that only became apparent after Paul di Resta, Vitaly Petrov and Sergio Perez, who started on the hard tyre, had pitted early to remove it. Di Resta pitted on lap 2 and was clearly hoping that the time he had lost by doing it this way, would be made up by a safety car period at some stage of the race. We’ve had five recently. Also teams felt that with inexperienced marshals, who had taken a long time to clear debris during practice, race director Charlie Whiting wouldn’t want to take any chances in the race if an incident needed clearing up. It didn’t happen.

Di Resta was now committed to the soft tyre for the rest of the race. But instead of stopping just once more, as Perez and Petrov did, dividing the race into half, he was forced to stop twice more, because he couldn’t make the tyres last long enough.

Early evidence that the hard tyre was in fact pretty quick came from Rubens Barrichello in the Williams. After a collision at the start, he was forced onto the hard tyre on lap 1 and once in clear air his lap times were competitive. So Di Resta, Petrov and Perez could have run a more normal length first stint on it.

On the first lap Di Resta was 13th behind the Toro Rossos and with a normal strategy would have finished behind them, along with Sutil. It’s a big call to put yourself out of the game by pitting that early in the race, in the hope of a safety car, especially when you are in a competitive position. Force India have a quick car which has scored points consistently and even beaten Mercedes a couple of times. But they were aware that in their championship battle with Toro Rosso, they couldn’t afford to give away a lot of points, if a Safety Car changed the game.

So they went for a gamble here, based on the premise that we’ve seen a spate of safety cars lately and this was a case of strategists trying to second guess the race director. It was a gamble over a point, so not much was lost, but arguably it was a risk worth taking if a safety car had come along and potentially changed the game for Toro Rosso.

Toro Rosso’s massive strides
Alguersuari had another very strong run to eighth. The Toro Rosso again had low tyre wear, but the surprising thing in India was that he was able to drive away from Sutil’s Force India car in the middle stint (compare the brown dotted line in the graph to the yellow line below it). Given that a few races ago Force India was beating Mercedes, it shows how far Toro Rosso has come.

Since Singapore their progress has been amazing. The combination of new front and rear wings, new floor and maximising the exhausts and engine maps has transformed the car. I’ll do a separate post on that shortly.

The UBS Strategy Report is prepared by James Allen with input and data from strategists from several F1 teams.

 Re-printed from James Allen on F1 - The official website

RACE HISTORY

The Korean Grand Prix was a fascinating race from a strategy point of view, with many talking points and there have been lots of questions from fans about whether Mark Webber could have won the race if he hadn’t pitted at the same time as Lewis Hamilton or whether Fernando Alonso could have got on the podium if he’d been released from behind Felipe Massa, as he was in Suzuka. Hopefully the answers are all here.

This was one of those races where strategy was always going to be decisive, but where it was vital to be flexible and adaptable.

As soon as Pirelli announced its very aggressive tyre choice for the weekend, bringing the two softest compounds to a track with quite a few high energy corners, all the strategy engineers realised that they were up against it. Throw in rain all day Friday meaning that there was almost no data on tyre wear on long runs and it really was a voyage into the unknown.

Pirelli brought the soft / super-soft compound pairing (usually used on slow street circuits) because they were worried about the graining evident on the Bridgestones last year. The soft tyre this weekend was between 0.8s and 1s per lap slower than the super-soft.

There were several tactics at play in qualifying with Red Bull saving sets of soft tyres for the race, while Ferrari and McLaren prioritised saving supersofts.

In the end the supersoft turned out to be a far more durable race tyre than expected and pre race predictions of three or four stops were revised as the race went on and strategists and drivers were thinking on their feet. A Safety Car one third of the way through the race – one of several this year happening at this critical juncture of the race after the first pit stops – again changed the game for several drivers. The four-lap Safety Car period (laps 16 – 20) helped to conserve tyres and 18 of the 21 finishers ended up doing two stops.

Vettel changes plans and still wins the race

After losing out to Lewis Hamilton in qualifying, Vettel knew he needed to pass the McLaren early in the first stint. He muscled his way past on the opening lap and was never really tested after that in the race. He was able to use his car pace advantage to open a 1 second gap over Lewis Hamilton on the opening lap and that gap was out to 4.7s by the time Hamilton pitted on lap 15.

Vettel had saved sets of soft tyres, thinking they would be the tyre of choice for the race. But having managed 16 laps on the used supersofts, the team switched plans and put him on the same tyre again for the second stint, this time lasting 18 laps. This took him to the window for putting on a set of softs and going to the finish on a two stop plan, one less than pre-race predictions.

After the Safety Car appeared on lap 16, giving Vettel a ‘free’ pitstop and fresher tyres, Hamilton had to turn his attention to Mark Webber behind, who was particularly quick on the prime tyre. Vettel cruised to victory, the winning margin over Hamilton 12s.

Could Mark Webber have won the race if Red Bull hadn’t pitted him with Hamilton?

One of the real talking points of this race was the decision by Red Bull to pit third place Mark Webber on the same lap as Lewis Hamilton (lap 33) when Webber, running on soft tyres, was faster than the Englishman on supersofts.

Why did Webber make his final pitstop on the same lap as Hamilton, when he’d radioed the team to say his primes were holding out okay? He was very frustrated after the race,

“I think at the second stop we did the worst thing,” he said. “We didn’t stop before or stop after [Hamilton], we stopped on the same lap. That was disappointing as clearly we had some good pace to pull away from Lewis.”

Webber had caught Hamilton who was due a stop. By lap 32 Hamilton’s lap times had dropped off by a second a lap. Webber had been sitting behind him since lap 27 and as the car behind had the tactical advantage of being able to stop first without Hamilton being able to react and cover him. With Red Bull having the fastest pit work, it is likely that had Webber dived into the pits on lap 32 he would have undercut Hamilton as he had a car pace advantage of 0.5 secs over the McLaren plus the out lap on new soft tyres was substantially faster than Hamilton managed on lap 33 on used supersofts (his in-lap).

However staying out a lap longer would not have done the job, as even with a car pace advantage believed to be 0.5s/lap over the McLaren, Hamilton’s new tyres would more than offset that advantage.

As for passing Vettel in the undercut, Webber was quick to point out after the race that Vettel’s lap times (lap 31: 1:42.433s; lap 32: 1:42.281s; lap 33: 1:42.044s) were still getting quicker at this stage of the race, so he would not have jumped his team mate. Red Bull cannot therefore be accused of trying to stop him from winning. However they probably did lose him a second place by not stopping him before Hamilton.

Red Bull were cagey after the race (and keener to talk about the big picture of their constructors’ championship success) but it’s likely that the team thought that Webber had taken more out his tyres than Seb, due to his scrapping with Lewis. So they didn’t think he’d lap significantly faster in clear air.

It is also possible that Red Bull fancied their chances of winning a “pitstop race” with McLaren under pressure, given their track record this season (as highlighted in my pre-race UBS Strategy Briefing). Sadly for them that’s one race they lost this time.

Either way, it failed and Webber ended up staying behind Hamilton.

Could Alonso have finished second?
The Ferrari with its experimental front wing, was slow in qualifying, but Fernando Alonso was very fast on the soft tyre in the race. He spent the opening 34 laps stuck behind his team-mate Felipe Massa, costing him about 0.5s per lap if you compare their lap times when Fernando was in clear air, having jumped Massa in the pit stops, from lap 38 onwards.

After making his second stop on lap 37, Alonso was seven seconds behind Button, yet that gap was down to one second within 10 laps. All of the leading cars ran the same new soft tyres in the final stint and they set similar lap times, but Alonso had exceptional pace on the tyre.

Although he said after the race that he did not lose time behind Massa, it is very clear therefore that had Alonso been closer to Button at the second pitstops, he could have got the undercut and challenged Webber and Hamilton. His radio message, “I give up” at the end of the race, was a clear message to Ferrari’s management, which he rowed back from in the past race interviews.

Rosberg’s heroic efforts to stave off Alguersuari
Nico Rosberg did a phenomenal job to do 28 laps – four laps longer than anyone else – on the soft tyres for his final stint. It was a surprise to see any car – and particularly a Mercedes – last that long.

His opening stint was 13 laps on used supersofts. What wrecked his race was that he only did 14 laps – four of which were behind the Safety Car – on a new set of soft tyres for his second stint because he was forced to pit early after flat-spotting this new set while scrapping with Massa.

Although he kept soldiering on near the end, the tyres were finished and he was passed on the final lap by Jaime Alguersuari for seventh place.

One third distance safety cars becoming a trend

This year we have seen quite a few Safety Cars deployed at one-third race distance. These favour the drivers running the longer opening stints. The ones that started on the soft tyres and ‘going long’ were Adrian Sutil, Pastor Maldonado and Sergio Perez, and they all benefited from the Safety Car. Jaime Alguersuari was running the supersoft tyre but hadn’t stopped either so his tyre performance and pace was very impressive and he benefitted from the Safety Car.

Toro Rosso’s low tyre wear and very high straight-line speeds were the two biggest factors behind Alguersuari and Buemi finishing in the points. They were first and second fastest through the speed trap in the race (Buemi 320.6kph, Alg 320.5kph), whereas Vettel was just 14th fastest (312.9kph). They were also first and second fastest in sector 1 (Alg 35.0s, Bue 35.1s, Vet 35.6s).

Buemi did the longest stint of anyone on the option tyre in the final stint. He pitted for options on lap 36 and his final lap of the race was 1.5s slower than team-mate Alguersuari on the primes.

Why did some drivers run out of fuel?
Rosberg and Alonso ran out of fuel on the slow-down lap in Korea, and Button had a similar problem at Suzuka. It begs the question, why? Four laps behind the Safety Car at Yeongam should have given the teams ample opportunity to save fuel.

It appears it’s down to the teams being a lot more aggressive with their fuel tank sizes this year and the need to use aggressive engine modes at the start and re-starts.

THe UBS Strategy Report and Briefing is prepared by James Allen with input from strategists from several F1 teams.

Re-printed from James Allen on F1 - The official website

RACE HISTORY CHART
This is a graph representation of the Race History sheet showing the gaps behind the leader and the leaders’s own performance relative to his average lap time.

The Japanese Grand Prix was all about race strategy. With tyre wear much more tricky to manage than expected, throughout the field the drivers who succeeded were the ones whose teams got the strategy right, not just on race day but on qualifying day too.

There were some pretty contrasting races at the front. Of the top three, Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull had the worst tyre performance and Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari had the best. Alonso was nowhere near as quick as Vettel at the start of each of the stints, but he was always the quickest of the three cars at the end of the stints, with much less tyre drop off. This gave him the opportunity to take second place, despite only having the car pace to qualify 5th.

Meanwhile the race winner Jenson Button had the pace to stay with Vettel early on and was able to manage his tyres better in the opening stint so that he could pit a lap later than the world champion and emerge in front of him. But it wasn’t easy for him; as the McLaren has got quicker this year, its tyre performance has edged closer to that of Red Bull, as you would expect given that it’s putting more load through the tyres.

Getting that little bit extra: Vettel vs Button and Alonso

The top three finishers all did exactly the same strategy with three stints on used soft tyres and a final stint on new mediums. The difference was in the tyre degradation each of them suffered and the laps on which they chose to pit.

I thought as the race unfolded that Red Bull were being conservative with Vettel – knowing he only needed a point to clinch the title – and that offered a chance to Button and Alonso, which both of them took. But closer analysis shows that this wasn’t necessarily the case, given that in each stint he only pitted when the tyres started to drop off in performance. Often this season we have seen Red Bull be the first to pit when arguably there has been some life left in the tyres, but they always had enough pace in hand to make early stops and retain track position. In Japan Vettel couldn’t get away with that.

There are two ways of looking at Vettel’s strategy on Sunday; on the one hand he stopped early to try and maintain position, which could be considered conservative, but on the other hand being the first to stop was also quite aggressive because he risked running out of tyres late in the race. He went onto the mediums with 20 laps to go, while Button went three laps later and Alonso four laps later, thanks to superior tyre wear at the end of the stints on the softs. This is where he took second place from Vettel.

Vettel had a big gap at the end of his first stint (5.2s) and he only pitted because his tyres were finished (lap 5: 1:39.7s, lap 6: 1:40.0s, lap 7: 1:41.2s, lap 8: 1:41.7s). At the end of the second stint, you can see that his tyres were finished again and he was actually very aggressive at the final pitstop because he stops and comes out in traffic on the prime tyre. The newer tyre helped him, but Button had him covered all day.

How the Safety Car changed the midfield battle for points

As we have seen many times this season there was a tremendous scrap among the midfield runners for points positions behind the top three teams. It was always going to be this way at Suzuka with the high tyre wear and the strategists started planning their race on Saturday before qualifying.

We saw Kobayashi, Schumacher, Senna and Petrov all make it into the top ten in qualifying, but they did not set a flying lap time in Q3. So they had, in the Renaults’ case two sets of new medium tyres and one set of new softs for the race and, in Schumacher and Kobayashi’s case, one new set of each compound.

The key calculation here was the crossover point in lap time between the two tyres and on the day the difference between the medium and the soft was about 1.2s per lap. Schumacher and Kobayashi started on used soft tyres, while the Renaults went with new mediums. The two Force India cars meanwhile qualified outside the top ten and both started on used softs, while Sergio Perez was down in 17th on the grid and started on new mediums.

The safety car likelihood for this race was 60% and we duly got one on lap 24. The drivers who benefited were Petrov and Perez because they’d started on the medium tyre and the Safety Car won them back the time they’d lost. They were 43 seconds off the lead and over 20 seconds behind the Sutil when the Force India driver pitted, just two laps before the safety car was deployed.

The Force India drivers were on classic three-stop strategies and by lap 20 it was going well; they had three-quarters of a pitstop advantage over their rivals. But the gap went down to zero under the Safety Car and Perez and Petrov had gained track position with the Force India stops. Even with DRS and it’s difficult to overtake at Suzuka. Petrov and Perez were on new sets of options at the end of the race too, while Sutil was on the prime tyre so there was no chance to recover.

As for the two Mercedes cars, Rosberg started 23rd after a hydraulic problem in qualifying. He started on new medium tyres and ended up right behind the Force India of Sutil after the Safety Car, in 12th place. He was essentially on the same pitstop sequence as Force India, but the Safety Car closed the gap up and he had the advantage of using the option tyre at the end of the race, so was able to get ahead and claim a point in 10th place.

Schumacher, meanwhile, ran a pretty standard three-stop race with stops on laps 9, 24 and 41. Interestingly he did a 15-lap second stint on used soft tyres, which revealed that he had better tyre life than Red Bull and Hamilton, which hasn’t always been the case with Mercedes this year. He was 25s behind the leaders when the Safety Car came out, so that handed him the chance to close up. A nice long, consistent 17 lap stint on new soft tyres after the Safety Car brought him out ahead of Massa and underlined once again that the veteran is back on top form in terms of race pace, as we get towards the end of his second comeback season. His races have also noticeably improved since Jock Clear, his old rivals from Villeneuve/Williams days, became his race engineer..

What happened to Lewis Hamilton?
This was an odd race for Hamilton as he squandered a chance to start on pole by a collective team and driver timing mistake in qualifying. Then in the race his pace was well off his team mate Button’s.

A slow puncture at the end of the first stint undoubtedly lost him time (lap 5: 1:40.1s, lap 6: 1:40.8s, lap 7: 1:41.9s) and positions to Alonso and Button. And McLaren have said that it also affected the rest of his race because they made a set up change to the car before realising that it had been handling strangely due to a puncture. They say the changes gave him an imbalance.

Hamilton’s second stint was the really poor one – much worse than the others. He was right with Alonso and Button on lap 12, but by the time he made his stop on lap 20 he had dropped a load of time eight second, a second a lap in other words.

Hamilton got back a place from Massa by making an earlier pitstop and then exploiting the Ferrari’s problems with initial warm up on the mediums to pass Massa on his out lap. His pace was better on the medium tyre, but he lost too much time in the opening two stints to get a decent result.

Wear rates were pretty marginal on the soft tyres, but as always, it was the same for everyone. The puncture didn’t help, but it seems that Hamilton also suffered a bit more than the other front-runners. When the tyres are going away it’s frustrating for a driver. It’s a vicious circle: he’s trying to push, but he ends up going slower.

The Strategy Briefing and Report is written by James Allen with input and data from strategy engineers from several F1 teams and support from F1 Global Partner UBS.

RACE HISTORY GRAPH

Strategy wise, this race didn’t turn out as expected. The key consideration for the strategists on Sunday was thermal degradation of the tyres, especially the rears. This is due to the surface temperature of the tyres being very high, due to braking, traction and very heavy fuel loads at the start. With Singapore being a high fuel consumption track, cars were over 10 kilos heavier at the start than for the average F1 race.

Before the race, the talk was of three stop strategies at the front and so it proved for the leading four cars, but the way they did it was not forseen and had the Safety Car stayed out a little longer than the four laps it circulated for, we might have seen some strategists switching to a two stop. There was however one driver who made a two stop work and he set an example early on which led all the leading teams to react and copy him.

Di Resta and Force India get it spot on

As the tyre covers came off the cars on the grid, 10th placed Paul di Resta’s car caught the eye immediately. He and his team had opted for the soft tyre, while all the other top ten cars were starting on supersofts, including his team mate Adrian Sutil (9th) and Mercedes’ Michael Schumacher (8th), both of whom had the choice of what compound to start on because they didn’t set a lap in the Qualifying 3 session. This race strategy was planned on Saturday before qualifying even started.

Force India had realised in practice that they had good race pace and some hints that they might even be faster than Mercedes over the race distance, even if they were half a second slower in Q2. They had noticed that Mercedes were struggling with tyre degradation, as they have for most of the season and reasoned that by starting on the harder tyre they would be able to do one less stop than the Mercedes. They also had an inkling that the difference between the soft and supersoft might turn out to be less in the race than others imagined and it was the key to their race.

With this strategy in mind they opted not to run in Q3 and then Di Resta planned a longer first stint on a new set of soft tyres. Meanwhile the cars he was racing against, Sutil, Schumacher and Rosberg, all started on used supersofts. Sutil had to do so because he had used two sets of supersofts in Qualifying 2. This proved to be a problem for him in the race as he couldn’t quite go long enough on the used set in the opening stint. The Mercedes meanwhile was also slightly limited by having a smaller fuel tank, so would not be able to use the blown diffuser to best effect as it consumes a lot more fuel.

Rosberg had to pit early on lap 9 and Sutil on lap 11, while Di Resta went to lap 19. But what had been apparent to Force India was now apparent to everyone else; that they could keep a good pace on the soft tyres relative to the supersofts. During the first stint of the race everyone else realised that this was the way to go. So Vettel, Button, Webber and Alonso all put new soft tyres on at their first stop, not what Pirelli had predicted at all. Instead they were all reacting to what Di Resta was showing them.

In the opening laps Sutil was faster, but by lap six Di Resta was matching and beating his lap times. As the supersofts suffered thermal degradation with the heavy fuel loads, especially the rears, it was clear that Di Resta was on the best tyre.

The Force India cars got ahead of Rosberg when the Mercedes driver had to make his second stop on lap 22. Then, on supersoft tyres that were eight laps younger than Sutil’s softs, Di Resta passed Sutil on lap 26, crucially before the safety car came out for Schumacher’s accident. Both Force India cars pitted under the safety car, as did Rosberg, but the team had to hold Sutil as Perez was coming in and this lost him four seconds and a place to Rosberg. Now all three on new soft tyres, Di Resta drove away from the other two in the long final stint to record a career-best sixth place. Looking back, it’s surprising that more drivers didn’t start on the soft. Only the Virgin drivers, Kobayashi and Petrov did it. Force India certainly thought Perez would do it, given his strategy choices this season.

The question arises, why did Schumacher not do the same strategy as Di Resta, given that he had the choice? Unlike Di Resta, Schumacher had saved a new set of supersofts and he was clearly on a “fastest possible race” strategy of three consecutive stints on supersoft and then a final stint on softs. This “sprint” strategy called on him to push very hard and, as we saw, he pushed a little too hard, hitting Perez on lap 29 and triggering the safety car.

Who was helped by the Safety Car?
Wherever there is a Safety Car there are always winners and losers. Lewis Hamilton was helped by it as it allowed him to close up after losing so much time with extra pit stop for a nose change and then a drive through penalty. By lap 15 he had been in the pits three times.

It also helped the leaders because the slower traffic was a real problem and the Safety Car bunched everyone up at mid distance, meaning the leaders had to make half the lapped traffic passes they would otherwise have had to make. Although it helped Button by cutting Vettel’s lead of 18 seconds, the revised rules on lapped traffic meant that he had Trulli, Liuzzi and Kobayashi between himself and Button at the restart. By the time Button had cleared them all Vettel was 10 seconds clear of him.

And to round out a day of “reactive strategy” in the final stages of the race, we saw the leading teams covering each other as they stopped for a set of supersoft tyres; so when 3rd place Webber stopped on lap 47, 2nd place Button covered him on lap 48 and then the leader Vettel covered him on lap 49.

Although he gave himself a shot at a podium with another fine start, Alonso was unable to do much on strategy as the Ferrari was slow on both types of tyre, unlike Monaco and Hungary where it had been relatively competitive on the same tyres. Here the tyre degradation was worse for Ferrari than expected which pushed them into running only the opening stint on supersofts and then the other three stints on softs.

The Strategy Report, brought to you by UBS, is written by James Allen with data and input from strategists and engineers from several F1 teams.

RACE HISTORY
Showing gaps behind leader; The zero line is simply the race winner’s average lap time (total race time divided by the number of race laps). This is why his curve can go above the line if he’s lapping faster than his average, and below the line if he’s slower than his average, (under safety car or doing a pitstop).

Note the drop off in performance towards the end of the race as Di Resta, Sutil, Rosberg try to get to the finish on tyres they have had on since the Safety Car period. Note also the alarming drop off in performance of the Renault cars (yellow lines), taking them into the grasp of the Lotus cars.

Re-printed from James Allen on F1 - The official website

Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix was one of the best races of the season from the point of view of wheel to wheel combat.

But because of the unique nature of the Monza circuit, it also featured some fascinating decision-making by teams on race strategy, not just in terms of tyre strategy and pit stops, but also in terms of how to set up the cars, particularly wing level and gearing.

With top speeds reaching 350km/h, one of the key decisions was how to balance the use of the DRS wing (giving a 6-8km/h speed boost) while not hitting the rev limiter which is set at 18,000 rpm. How teams like Red Bull, McLaren and Mercedes in particular chose to tackle this had a huge bearing on the outcome of the race.

The battles at the front
It was widely known after qualifying that Sebastian Vettel had chosen to use a shorter top gear than his rivals. This gave him the advantage of a smoother acceleration out of corners like Lesmo and Parabolica, even if he was sacrificing top speed. It also allowed him to use the DRS exactly how he wanted to. Vettel was clocked at just 327km/h, the slowest of any driver and 22km/h off the fastest, but he was on pole by half a second, so the tactic worked.

But it made him vulnerable if he lost track position in the race as he would not have the top speed to overtake on the straights. When he fell behind Alonso at the start, he had to make a very bold move in the Curva Grande to pass him for the lead. He was then able to use his pace advantage to break the tow and pull away.

Meanwhile McLaren thought that they had got the balance right, but hadn’t counted on finding themselves behind Michael Schumacher, who had his car set for high top speed and proved very hard to pass after another fantastic start put him in the race at the front.

Schumacher qualified 8th, but got a great start, running third after the first corner, but dropping back behind Hamilton by the end of the lap. The safety car was deployed for the accident in Turn 1 and at the restart, Hamilton wasn’t sharp and Schumacher repassed him, staying ahead for the whole of the first stint. Mercedes pitted him on lap 16, putting him on the new set of softs that the team had saved in qualifying by doing only one run in Q3. Hamilton stayed out for two more laps to try to build a gap. His stop was 0.7s faster than Mercedes, but Mercedes tyre planning for the race paid off and on new tyres Schumacher was fast enough to stay ahead of Hamilton. Mercedes top speed without the DRS was equal to the McLaren’s top speed with DRS so Hamilton couldn’t get ahead.

After a warning from Race Control about blocking, in the end Schumacher lost the place by making a late upshift when the engine was on the limiter and this lost momentum and allowed Hamilton to pass.

In the battle for second place between Button and Alonso, the Ferrari driver had good pace on the soft tyre, but once again the Ferrari’s weakness on the first laps on the medium tyre cost him a position. Button came in on lap 33 and his outlap was 1.5 seconds faster than Alonso’s when he pitted a lap later. Button passed him on that lap. Button’s second lap on the tyre was a 1m 28.0, while Alonso’s was a 1m 29.3. This has now cost Alonso important positions in three races, including Germany, where he lost the lead to Hamilton is similar fashion to the way Button took him at Monza. Ferrari acknowledges it is a weakness they must address for 2012, as it holds them back strategically.

Mercedes thinking differently
Another important reason why Schumacher was able to compete at Monza was that the soft Pirelli tyre turned out to be more durable than expected. The blistering was not as bad as at Spa, due to strict camber levels imposed by Pirelli and enforced by the FIA. And the degradation was not as bad as in Friday practice because the track improved. Mercedes have struggled this season with wearing out the soft tyres more quickly than their rivals, but Schumacher was able to do 21 laps on his second set of softs.

Knowing that they didn’t have the speed to do better than 7th and 8th in qualifying, Mercedes strategists had been focussing on the plan for the race. To this end Rosberg had qualified on medium tyres, which meant that he fell behind Petrov and Schumacher, whom he would normally outqualify. The thinking behind Rosberg’s strategy was to avoid starting the race on blistered soft tyres, to run a long opening stint and then two fast stints on new soft tyres. Part of this was due to the fact that Mercedes had high degradation on the soft on Friday and also because the difference in lap time between the soft and medium wasn’t as great as at Spa. Here it was more like 0.7s to 1.2s, with Mercedes and Red Bull on the lower end of that.

Sadly we never got to see what Rosberg might have achieved as he was eliminated in the first corner accident. But it is worth noting that as the durability of the soft tyre was better than expected on race day, all Rosberg’s rivals were easily able to do the race in two stops only, so it’s unlikely that he would have finished higher than Schumacher did in fifth place.

Strategy brings midfielders strong results
Rosberg’s decision to start on mediums was not unique and caused a ripple effect. Senna did not set a time in Q3 so he could have the choice of which tyre to start on and sitting behind Rosberg on the grid he went for medium, reasoning that there was no point being on the faster tyre if Rosberg was going to be slower ahead of him in the opening stint on mediums. He lost five places in the opening lap chaos and pitted under the safety car on lap 2 to soft tyres and did a three stop strategy from there. Arguably he would have been better to stick with the original plan to run mediums and stop twice. It might have left him closer to Alguersuari in the middle stint.

But the Spaniard had great pace in that second stint and this set him up for his career best seventh place. His start was good, coming from 18th to 11th and because he had been eliminated in Q1, he had new tyres for the whole race. The Toro Rosso is very kind to its tyres, like the Sauber, and the general pattern seems to be that they qualify poorly but can race well. In previous years with durable Bridgestone tyres this would have led to no points, but they’ve played the Pirelli card very well.

Alguersuari’s result makes it seven consecutive races – and nine in total out of 13 – in which a driver eliminated in Q1 scores points.

It’s all down to strategy and this has been one of the most refreshing aspects of the 2011 season.

Behind Rosberg and Senna several drivers outside the top ten (and therefore able to choose their starting tyre), went for medium tyre too. These included both Saubers and Sutil, their target being to do the race in one stop only. Again, regretfully all three retired so we never got to see what they might have done.

Perez was looking very good, though. He made up seven places at the start to 10th and was running 8th in the opening stint, with Alguersuari. He was in a very good position with good pace on the medium tyre. When the Spaniard pitted on lap 20, Perez could have switched to a two stopper and come home just ahead of him in P7. But sadly the gearbox failed and he retired. This proved significant in the championship as it allowed Di Resta to score four points, which moved Force India into 6th place in the Constructors’ championship, ahead of Sauber.

The UBS Strategy Report is written by James Allen with input and data from strategy engineers from several F1 teams

RACE HISTORY GRAPH

Note Vettel’s pace after the restart on lap 4, which astonished rival teams. Note also the way Alonso’s pace drops off relative to the McLarens after switching to medium tyres on lap 34.

The Belgian Grand Prix was one of the most interesting races of the season from a strategy point of view, with the top four finishers using four different strategies. Most of the practice was run in wet conditions, so no-one had any tyre data and therefore raceday was a voyage into the unknown.

How long would the soft tyre last? How much slower would the medium tyre be than the soft per lap?

What was known after qualifying, as a result of most drivers doing up to six laps in Q3, was that the soft front tyres were blistering, even on low fuel. This meant that several drivers, including both Red Bull drivers, were faced with having to make a pit stop very soon after the start of the race to get rid of their damaged qualifying tyres. How they managed that and the decisions they made about how to run the race from there dictated the outcome and it’s fascinating to look in depth at what happened.

Vettel: Risk, opportunity and reward
Sebastian Vettel started from pole, briefly lost the lead to Rosberg then regained it. It was a good decision to stop early on lap 5. It’s never easy to make such an early stop when you are pulling away, but the tyres didn’t have much more in them (having already done 6 laps in qualifying and now 5 in the race). By coming in on lap 5 and rejoining in seventh place, just 10 seconds behind the leader, Vettel was now on fresh tyres while all his rivals were still on their old qualifying rubber. His pace during this seven lap stint is what set up the victory for him.

It effectively gave him a free pit stop when the safety car came out on lap 13, because he had built a sufficient margin that he could pit and lose track position only to Alonso. From there he could manage the race, dividing the remaining 20 laps into roughly equal stints on the softs and then finally on the mediums. By the time he took the medium tyre on lap 30, the team already had a lot of data about it from Mark Webber’s car, the Australian having done most of the race on it.

So Vettel’s strategy was all about coping with risk initially, then being bold and stopping early, then taking the opportunity of the safety car and from there on he had track position and it was just about managing the tyres.

Did Ferrari make a mistake not pitting Alonso under the safety car?

No. Many fans have suggested that Ferrari’s strategy was flawed, but it wasn’t. They made the right decision to leave him out as it maintained track position ahead of Red Bull and this gave Ferrari and Alonso a shot at the win. Even though Alonso had tyres that were 5 laps older than Vettel he was better off staying out because a) Ferrari’s tyre wear was good and b) a stop under the Safety Car would have dropped him behind Webber.

With Webber, on medium tyres, slower than Alonso after the restart, this would have resulted in Alonso being even further behind Vettel prior to making his last pitstop.

The only thing that Ferrari might have done differently is to spend less laps on the medium tyre which may have given Button less of an opportunity to close the gap, but they were trying to do one less stop than Vettel and Alonso probably needed fresh rubber when he pitted for mediums after 21 laps on his soft tyres. This season with the Pirellis you are constrained into windows in which you have to change tyres simply because of the tyres going off.

Alonso’s laptimes on the medium tyres remained consistent so it is debatable whether the extra laps on the medium cost him the position to Button, but most likely he would have lost it either way.

Whatever decision Ferrari made at the Safety Car moment, Alonso would ultimately have lost out to Webber, either by failing behind under the Safety Car and then not having the pace advantage to repass, or by staying out as they did.

Making the most of the slower medium tyre

Going into the race the talking point was the blistering on the soft tyres, which risked a failure if the tyres were pushed for too long on a car heavy with fuel. Mark Webber clearly felt that he couldn’t be competitive using the soft tyre and opted to run mainly on the medium tyre, which hurt his ultimate pace, but it got him a second place.

Many teams seem to have had the confidence that once they had got rid of the first set of soft tyres, they would be able to manage the blistering issue on the second set. They didn’t have much information about how the tyres would behave at Spa, although they do generally have a very good knowledge of the tyre, having raced it at every event this year. There was also a reluctance on most people’s account to use the medium tyre because they believed it to be 1.5 secs or more slower than the soft.

The teams who didn’t didn’t qualify in the top ten didn’t get to run slick tyres in qualifying and so had no idea what would happen with blistering on their car. It’s important to recognise that blistering doesn’t harm lap time particularly, it is not the same as degradation. The problem is vibration and ultimately if pushed too hard, there is the risk of a failure.

Michael Schumacher and Jenson Button did the same three stop strategy; a short early stint to get the slower medium tyre out of the way, pit early and then divide the rest of the race into three flat out stints on soft tyres. Both drivers were starting out of position; Schumacher 24th after a crash in qualifying and Button 13th after a bad strategy call saw him sitting in the pits when the track was at its fastest in Qualifying 2.

They came through the field brilliantly using strategy as well as car and driver pace. Button finished third and Schumacher fifth, ahead of his team mate Rosberg, who qualified fifth. When both made their final stops around lap 30/31 Schumacher was just five seconds behind Rosberg. But crucially he was now on new soft tyres and Rosberg on the slower medium tyre.

It would not have been possible without the safety car on lap 13, as Schumacher was 20 seconds off the lead at that stage and Button 21 behind. The safety car took away that time gap and made a comeback possible. Also the track allows it; not only is Spa a good track for overtaking, but with the adjustable DRS rear wing, a fast car and new soft tyres, passing was very easy on the Kemmel Straight. This was all factored into Button’s and Schumacher’s strategy.

The way Button in particular came through the field from 13th place after the Safety Car restart was very impressive. He went through Perez, Petrov, Sutil, Massa and Rosberg and then bridged the gap to the leading trio. But it was a consolation prize; he believed that he had the car to challenge for pole position and the race win in Spa, but that strategy mistake in qualifying cost him that chance and gave Vettel one less rival to deal with.

And this race was an opportunity for Button to beat Vettel because there was so much variation on strategy, if he had started alongside him on the front row.

RACE HISTORY GRAPH

Note the safety car period, Button’s progress after it and the fact that everyone stops for the final time within a lap or two of each other.

The Hungarian Grand Prix was a fantastic race, again very close between the top four cars, any one of which could have won it. The closeness of competition and changeable conditions made it another race where strategy was the decisive element.

The winner put together the right combination of decisions, based on the data assembled in practice and a judgement when a sudden shower fell late in the race, not to pit for intermediate tyres but to wait it out.

Meanwhile several drivers saw their races compromised by poor strategy calls and we had three midfield runners in the points, all as a result of good strategy.

Rain had been forecast for Sunday morning but not for the race. There was a lot of doubt among teams about the forecasts.

Overtaking wasn’t easy – it never is in Budapest – but the conditions helped in this race. There was much less of a headwind on the pitstraight during the race than there had been during qualifying, which is why the DRS zone wasn’t particularly successful; a lot of people were hitting the rev limiter without the wind to slow them, as it had on Saturday.

Another reason why the DRS didn’t produce lots of overtaking was down to the relatively short length of the straight and amount of wing run on the cars. They never reach terminal velocity before the braking point.

So lets’ take a close look at how the decisions were made.

All smiles before their epic battle; decided in Button’s favour (McLaren)

Button makes the right calls
Of Jenson Button’s 11 Grand Prix victories, six have come in mixed conditions such as we had on Sunday. A combination of experience, smoothness at the wheel and judgement of grip level are central to this. Button started the race on intermediates, as did everyone else, then switched to supersoft tyres on lap 11.

Webber, Massa and Barrichello had come in on lap 10 and Webber set fastest sector times straight away; all the right signals were there. However Massa was incredibly tentative on dry tyres on a wet track, struggling to get them up to temperature. Button, in third place, reacted and pitted on lap 11, Alonso didn’t. And neither did the leader, Hamilton nor P3 Vettel and P5 Rosberg. They waited until lap 12 to changeover. All of them except Hamilton, who had had a five second lead, lost time and positions as a result; Button got ahead of Vettel for P2, while Webber got ahead of Alonso and Rosberg into P4.

The supersoft tyres didn’t last long. Pre-race predictions were that they would be good for 20 laps, but the reality was more like 15 or 16 – less in Hamilton’s case. He had a new set he had saved in qualifying and pushed very hard on them to open up a nine second lead on Button. But after 14 laps he had to pit again, Button stopped a lap later. They remained about six seconds apart, but the decisive moment came when Hamilton went for another set of supersofts on lap 40. There was no way he’d be able to reach the finish on them. Button went for soft tyres on lap 42, knowing that they would make the finish.

Here’s how their decisions were reached; the used supersoft was 0.8s faster per lap than the new soft tyre, so Hamilton’s tactic was to open a lead of over 18 seconds in order to pit again and retain the lead. He should have easily done this with a 15 lap stint, but in fact Button was as fast, if not faster on the softs. On lap 47 as light rain began to fall, Hamilton spun, losing the lead to Button. Now behind his team mate and on the wrong tyre, he was caught between a rock and a hard place. Vettel, who was also on soft tyres to the finish, was going to jump him at his pitstop and so was Webber.

Although Hamilton attacked Button and got ahead, he needed a game changing move, which is what the intermediate tyre might have been when he took it on lap 52, as the rain persisted. But it turned out to be the wrong call. Although the lap times went off by 11 seconds, keeping a calm head was vital as the shower died away and within three laps the times were back to normal. The drivers on intermediates had to stop again for dry tyres.

Button, Vettel and Alonso did not take the intermediate and stayed ahead of Hamilton, Webber did take it and stayed behind.

So the decision on intermediate tyres was important in the outcome, but it wasn’t decisive; the soft tyre decision earlier was the decisive one.

Alonso did many of the same things as Hamilton. Judging by the lengths of his stints, he planned to make four stops, especially after losing time behind Rosberg early on. He got jumped by Webber on the switch from intermediates to slicks because he stayed out too long. His first dry stint on supersoft was 13 laps, second stint 11 laps, third stint 11 laps and fourth stint on soft was 23 laps. He jumped ahead of Webber at the third stop by pitting three laps earlier and he didn’t make the mistake of going for the intermediate on lap 50 so got ahead of Hamilton. It was a good recovery from a messy first half of the race.

The two Toro Rosso drivers had strong results; Sebastien Buemi went from 23rd to 8th, while Jamie Alguersuari got points for the fourth time in five races, by again running a long middle stint on the harder tyre and doing one less stop than the others. This tactic has been so successful for them and Sauber this year it’s surprising more midfield teams haven’t tried it. But being kind on the tyres is a pre-requisite!

Di Resta consults with engineers before the start (Force India/Sutton)

Breakthrough result for Paul di Resta
Paul Di Resta got his best F1 finish to date with seventh place, a breakthrough result in many ways. His engineers were amazed at his composure and authority in the most tense moments of the race, such as when it rained on lap 50. It was his call not to pit for intermediates on lap 50. Di Resta has struggled for results since the early races, but this one will have made other teams sit up and take notice. It was not the drive of a rookie.

And it’s interesting to look at his race strategy because it exactly matches Button’s.

He started on the supersoft tyres, albeit his were new because he didn’t get into Q3 and so he had a spare set of new ones. Button stopped on lap 27 for another used set of supersofts and Di Resta did the same. Then on lap 42 Button went for a new set of softs and Di Resta followed suit. There is no suggestion here that he was copying Button, it’s a coincidence. But it’s interesting because the two slick tyre choices were based on their data from Friday practice, where they got good life and good pace from the soft tyre. So it was clear that it would do up to 30 laps on a lighter car close to the end of the race.

Di Resta was racing Rosberg, who had gone for the soft tyres in the second stint. But the Mercedes driver’s decision to pit for intermediates decided it in Di Resta’s favour. It was the second race in a row that Force India has finished ahead of Mercedes. While it was the seventh time in 11 races that Rosberg has finished lower than his start position.

As a side note, given that Button has now won six of his 11 races in these conditions in recent years, it’s probably not a bad idea to copy him on days like these – he doesn’t often get it wrong!

Re-printed from James Allen on F1 - The official website

RACE HISTORY CHART

The German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring featured three drivers in different cars closely matched on performance. As the winner Lewis Hamilton observed, it was all about being perfect and not making mistakes and this was as true of the strategists and the pit crews as it was of the drivers.

In the end it came down to some inspired driving and finely balanced strategy calls. But further down the field we saw some varying strategies making a difference to the race result, particularly in the case of Adrian Sutil, who finished sixth ahead of the Mercedes and Renaults.

The key consideration in deciding the strategy in Germany was the performance on the slower medium tyre. If you were getting a difference between the soft and medium tyre of around 1.5 seconds then two stops was the way to go. If the gap was larger then three stops would be the answer with a short final stint on the medium tyre.

Tyre life turned out to be better than expected in Friday practice, so for many teams two stops looked a good option. But then heavy rain on Saturday night cleaned the track and that might have pushed some people towards three stops in the race believing that the track was very green. In the Bridgestone days this would have led to tyre graining, but that didn’t happen with the Pirellis in Germany. Instead what happened was that the track had less grip so the lap times were slower and this took less life out of the tyres, but the green surface didn’t damage them.

The battle at the front

Bearing all of this in mind, even the three-stoppers at the front ran almost a two-stop race in terms of stint lengths. Webber for example, did 26 laps on his third set of soft tyres. They didn’t want to put on the prime tyre, so they stopped as late as possible. Two cars pushed it to the extreme – Vettel and Massa – they pitted for medium tyres on the penultimate lap!

Among the leading trio Webber, who lost the lead to Hamilton at the start, was able to undercut Hamilton at the first stop by pitting first on lap 14. Webber was 0.5s behind the leader Hamilton when he made the stop. A very fast turnaround by the Red Bull crew, plus two very aggressive out-laps by Webber got him into the lead. He pushed hard to open a gap but Hamilton was faster in sectors one and three and Webber knew then that it wasn’t going to be his day.

Having pushed his tyres too hard early on, Webber’s pace wasn’t good at the end of the second stint. He tried the undercut again, but it didn’t work out. Hamilton and Alonso, on option tyres that were two laps younger, were able to increase their pace when Webber pitted. Webber’s second stop was 0.8s slower than his first stop and the end result was that he was down to third.

As for Hamilton and Alonso, they came in together for the first stop but Hamilton pitted a lap earlier second time around. Alonso’s in lap was 0.7s faster than Hamilton’s and the pit stop was 0.4s faster. What was interesting was that Hamilton’s out lap on fresher tyres hadn’t been significantly faster than Alonso’s on worn tyres, which defies the principal of the early stopper having the advantage.

Alonso came out of the pits in front but the Ferrari’s weakness in not warming the tyres up straight away meant Hamilton was able to pass him in Turn 2. So the strategy had worked for Ferrari on paper, but not in reality.

Webber had managed the undercut at the first stop but stopping first didn’t work for either Webber or Hamilton at the second stop. This can partly be explained by the damage the extra duel weight does to the tyre in the first stint, which diminishes by the time of the second stop and by the durability of the Pirelli soft tyre.

As for the timing of the final stop to the slower medium tyre, that was all about looking for evidence and it came in the form of Vitaly Petrov and Kamui Kobayashi. Maldonado had gone to the medium early on lap 35 but his lap times were inconsistent. When Petrov went to mediums on lap 46 and started setting personal best sector times on his second lap on the tyres, and Kobayashi went faster than his team mate who was still on old soft tyres, it was clear to McLaren that the time had come to take the medium tyre.

Webber was out of the picture by now, 8 seconds behind second place Alonso. McLaren pitted Hamilton on lap 51, but Ferrari did not react, leaving Alonso out there for two more laps, Ferrari was more concerned about its pace on the harder tyre. Hamilton’s pace was good straight away on the medium and the race was in the bag. Webber tried to stay out longer and jump them but he was coming from too far back and he couldn’t get close.

Sutil vs Rosberg

One of the highlights of the race was the performance of Force India with Adrian Sutil. He put together a perfect weekend and the strategy team got it just right. The result was he finished in sixth place, ahead of both Mercedes. He qualified 8th, two places and 0.8sec behind Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes. To beat him from there is quite an achievement.

Sutil vs Rosberg was a good example of two stops working out better than three. Force India were one of the teams for whom the simulator said that two stops was as fast as three and with one less stop to make there was less risk of losing time in traffic or with a poor stop.

Sutil stopped on laps 22 and 48, Rosberg on laps 14, 36 and 53. Their lap times were pretty similar in the first stint, but thereafter Sutil had the measure of him. The Mercedes is heavier on its tyres and Sutil closed the gap to Rosberg from four seconds down to nothing by the time Rosberg made his first of three stops. The Mercedes is a faster car, as was proven in qualifying, but their hands were tied by the heavy tyre use and Force India were able to beat them with 10 seconds to spare at the end.

Sutil was very impressive all weekend and he managed to find good consistency from the medium tyre. He was straight onto the pace after he went to mediums and set his fastest lap of the race when they were nine laps old. Many teams found it hard to get temperature into the medium tyre in the cool temperatures.

Getting the fuel load right
The possibility of rain on race day had quite an influence on fuel strategy in this race. A lot of people under-fuelled their cars in the belief that it would rain and that forced a lot of people to save fuel late in the race. That’s why Alonso eventually finished four seconds behind Hamilton, before then running out of fuel on the slow-down lap.

After making that mistake and under-fuelling Hamilton at Silverstone, McLaren didn’t make the same mistake twice!

(The UBS Strategy Report is produced with input and data from the strategists of several F1 teams.)

Race History Graph
Below is a graph showing the race history. It shows each car and the time delta between them and the race leader. So the laptime is encapsulated in it, but it also shows progress at different stages during the race because a cars slope will change if it goes faster or slower. You can also see when someone is clearly being held up in traffic.

The zero line is simply the race winners’ average lap time (total race time divided by the number of race laps). This is why his curve can go above the line if he’s lapping faster than his average, and below the line if he’s slower than his average or doing a pitstop.

Re-printed from James Allen on F1 - The official website

LAP TIMES GRAPH

This was a very interesting race from a strategy point of view, there were a lot more unknowns than normal, particularly with the tyres, as there was so little dry running before the race. And then there was the partially wet track at the start, which forced everyone to start on intermediate tyres, but how long for?

Prior to the start most strategists were thinking of a three stop race, with some further back on the grid planning to do one less stop to try to make up places.

The wet start meant two things which made life easier; drivers would not have to use both types of dry tyre so the much slower hard tyre did not have to be used and the wet start, essentially shortened the race by 11 laps and made the race simpler and the strategies easier to achieve.

The first key decision was how early to come in for dry tyres.

This decision was helped by Michael Schumacher who was forced to pit for a new nose on lap 9 and went to dry tyres, as he had nothing to lose. By lap 11, when his tyres were up to temperature, he was a second a lap faster than the leader and it was clear that slicks were faster and drivers like Jenson Button dived into the pits.

Red Bull: coping with two competitive drivers
At the point of wet to dry changeover, Sebastian Vettel had an eight second lead over Mark Webber, who was under pressure from Fernando Alonso. Using this to their advantage, Red Bull pitted Webber first so he would not lose time or a place to Alonso. It worked, but keeping Vettel out for the extra lap cost him five seconds. So the team was definitely thinking of Webber’s needs when it made the call on the order at the first stop.

However at the second stop they inadvertently cost Webber the place to Alonso. They did their usual thing of pulling the driver in just before the tyre performance drops off a cliff and Webber pitted on lap 26. Alonso still had life in his tyres however and did a 1m 35.5 which was the fastest lap of the race to that point. That and Webber losing a second and a half in his own pit stop meant that Alonso had done enough to undercut him. But then when Vettel’s stop went wrong and he lost the lead to Alonso, the German came out in Webber’s path, preventing him from attacking Alonso on tyres that were up to temperature.

This was a very rare example in 2011 of a driver undercutting a rival by stopping a lap later; normally new tyre performance means the undercut can only be achieved by stopping first.

McLaren – race compromised on several fronts
Leaving aside the extraordinary situation where Jenson Button’s wheel wasn’t attached at his third pit stop, McLaren’s race strategy was compromised. Like in Valencia the car was very hard on its tyres relative to the opposition. But the worse problem for Lewis Hamilton was that he didn’t have enough fuel.

With engine mapping changed for this race – meaning less fuel needed because they were not using it to off-throttle blow the diffuser – and no real dry running in practice, team strategists were really estimating the amount of fuel that would be needed to complete the race. Starting 10th McLaren clearly went over aggressive on Hamilton’s strategy. Normally you need around 150 kilos of fuel to do 52 racing laps of Silverstone.

The wet opening 11 laps should have played into his hands, because you use less fuel in the wet and many strategists took fuel out when they saw that the race start would be wet. But surprisingly it didn’t help Hamilton and he was still forced to save fuel in the last 20 laps, which cost him a podium place to Webber and almost cost him another to Massa.

This is one of the big challenges for race strategists; they want the car to finish with the minimum amount of fuel, because any extra weight you carry for 52 laps slows you down. If you are too aggressive it loses you a lot of positions when you are forced to slow at the end. If you put too much into the car, it will make you slower in the opening part of the race, but you won’t lose positions from it.

We’ve seen very little of this in the last 12 months, which indicates that teams don’t feel that being super-aggressive on fuel load is a worthwhile risk.

From back to front again for Alguersuari
This year we are seeing a phenomenon which we haven’t seen before in F1 strategy; in six of the nine races so far, a driver who is eliminated in Q1 is able to come through and score points. Alguersuari has now done it three races in a row from 18th place on the grid.

Toro Rosso’s official word was that they were caught out by the rain at the end of Q1 and didn’t get a lap in on soft tyres, but I’ve been told that they went for a hard tyre run only in order to save three sets of soft tyres for race day, as it’s worked for them in the past.

At any rate, Algersuari drove his customary long stints, taking advantage of the extra life and performance of new soft tyres to stop only twice and finish 10th.

Nico Rosberg and Sergio Perez were the highest placed two stoppers in sixth and seventh places.

The importance of the start in race strategy
Rosberg lost three places at the start and did well to come through to finish where he would have done without that initial setback.

But we are seeing some trends in starts this year, which are making a difference to drivers’ results.

The most obvious example is Pastor Maldonado, who qualified a brilliant 7th at Silvestone and then lost three places off the startline. This is a strong trend this year for the Venezuelan, who has lost 19 places in 9 starts this season.

Webber also has a poor start record – he’s lost 12 places in 9 starts – and he lost the lead at the start to Vettel at Silverstone.

Re-printed from James Allen on F1 - The official website