The Spanish Grand Prix was a perfect example of how a race can be won or lost on the finest of margins and on a good or bad strategy decision. Pastor Maldonado beat Fernando Alonso and won the race for Williams due to planning and to a good strategy call half the way through the race, while Lotus’ Kimi Raikkonen again had the car to win, but was a fraction off due to race strategy and conditions and he ended up third.

There were several key moments and decisions which decided the outcome of this race. The main one was the early second stop of Maldonado. But there was another before the race had even begun and it eliminated the favourite for the race win.

Hamilton’s race to lose
Lewis Hamilton should have won this race comfortably for McLaren, with a 0.6second per lap car advantage. But a mistake by the McLaren team when he did his final run in qualifying ruined his chances.

Due to a refuelling error, Hamilton’s car did not have enough fuel in it to complete the lap and be legal at the end. Team boss Martin Whitmarsh has since admitted that he should have told Lewis Hamilton to abandon his hot lap, as the team had realised by then that it had not put enough fuel in his car. Had he done this Hamilton would have started the race from 6th place, with a time set earlier in Q3. Instead McLaren did not act, Hamilton completed the lap, switched the engine off and then the team tried to argue force majeur for the error. The FIA Stewards sent him to the back of the grid from where 8th was the best result achievable.

Hamilton made up four places at the start from 24th on the grid and managed to get his tyres to last 14 laps in the first stint, the longest of any front-runner. He had climbed to fourth place when he stopped and rejoined in 14th place. He made his way through the field with a combination of overtakes and a two stop strategy which meant he did 21 laps on his second set of tyres and 31 on the final set, both of which were the hard compound. He lost time in the second stint behind Massa, otherwise a better result might have been possible. He got ahead of Massa when the Brazilian served a drive-through penalty on lap 29 for using DRS in a yellow flag zone.

By extending the stints, Hamilton was able to make up places when the three stoppers made their final stop and he kept the tyres alive for 31 laps, losing only one place at the end to Vettel and almost getting one back from Rosberg. It was a fine drive, but he and McLaren know that his first win of the season was there for the taking this weekend, had they made a different decision in the heat of the moment in qualifying.

Getting the planning right
On Friday practice, with track temperatures above 40 degrees, the soft tyre was working well as a race tyre. However expectation before the weekend was that the temperatures would be lower on race day than the rest of the weekend.

This led some teams to plan to save three new sets of hard tyres for the race, as these have a lower working temperature range than the softs and would therefore come into their own in those conditions. This turned out to be the correct thing to do; the track was at 44 degrees on Saturday and this dropped to 32 degrees on Sunday and the hard was the faster tyre. Williams and Maldonado did this, Ferrari had only two new sets for Alonso. Red Bull were also one of the teams to save three sets.

However the plan didn’t quite work out for them as they didn’t have the pace in qualifying or the race. Sebastian Vettel was forced to use up all his soft tyres just to get through into the final part of qualifying. This meant that he had no new sets of softs for a run in Q3 and was only 8th on the grid. Both cars required a front wing change during the race, the team combined it with a tyre stop but it wasn’t ideal timing tactically. Vettel also had a drive through penalty so he did well to finish ahead of the McLarens in 6th place.

Maldonado beats Alonso through strategy

The cars are so close together this year, winning is all about getting out the front of the pack early on, as Vettel did in Bahrain and Rosberg did in China.

The race was again fought out between the two cars on the front row of the grid. However Spain was only the second time in five races (the other was Malaysia) where the car leading the first lap did not go on to win the race. This was all down to strategy. Williams believed that they had a pace advantage over Ferrari and expected the challenge for the win to come from Lotus. However they knew they were vulnerable to Alonso’s excellent starts. Maldonado duly lost the start to the Ferrari driver and then Alonso had enough pace in the opening two stints of the race that Maldonado wasn’t able to get close enough to attack.

Importantly, however, the Williams had better tyre life at the end of the stints and at the end of the second stint, Maldonado closed up on Alonso, from over three seconds to half of that. Williams pitted him two laps before Alonso for the second stop and Ferrari allowed their driver to stay out and run into slower traffic. This is something they have allowed to happen before.

The call to try the undercut (pitting earlier than opponent and using pace of new tyres to get ahead when he stops) was made by Williams’ head of strategy Mark Barnett. He brought Maldonado in on lap 24 when he was 1.5 seconds behind Alonso. Having saved the sets of new hard tyres, Barnett calculated that he would then have the tyre life to do 42 laps with one more stop to make without losing pace at the end.

It was brilliantly executed; his in-lap was 0.4s faster than Alonso’s, the stop was only 0.2secs slower than Ferrari’s, but crucially on new hard tyres his out-lap was 2.6 seconds faster and the first flying lap was also a second faster. With Alonso losing time behind Pic, Maldonado had done enough to take the lead from the Ferrari when it stopped to laps later than the Williams

However as Alonso pushed hard in his wake to stay with him in the final stint, we got a graphic example of how following another car speeds up the degradation of the tyres, Alonso wasn’t able to stay with Maldonado until the end, as the degradation caused by running in traffic was more severe than running in clear air. Alonso’s tyres had done three laps in qualifying, so were the same age more or less as Maldonado’s.

Lotus and McLaren – what might have been

Although they had the fastest car in race practice simulations on Friday afternoon, were third and fourth on the grid and set the fastest lap of the race on Sunday by over a second, Lotus didn’t win. Why not?

Temperature has something to do with it; the drop to 32 degrees on race day took the edge off their speed (so fine are the margins now!). They also made a strategy mistake at the first stop, putting the cars onto a set of used soft tyres, rather than the hards. They pushed the stints out to make sure they’d have a chance at the end. As the temperatures rose towards the end of the race we got to see what the Lotus could do. The Lotus set the fastest lap of the race, over a second faster than the nearest car. Raikkonen’s final stint was 18 laps, Alonso’s 23 laps, Maldonado’s 25 laps. Alonso was vulnerable to attack from Raikkonen in the final laps, but he ran out of laps. Perhaps if he’d stopped one lap earlier he would have passed Alonso for second at the end.

Starts are a vital part of race strategy and we saw the experience of Raikkonen over the nervousness of Grosjean at the start. Although the younger man was ahead on the grid, Raikkonen was ahead in the opening lap and Grosjean fell behind Rosberg, whose pace was much slower and so held him up. The Frenchman lost 8 seconds in the first 9 laps. Worse still, Mercedes pitted Rosberg first as a defensive move and he stayed ahead in the second stint, so Grosjean had to pass him on track.

The first win for Lotus this year is surely not far away.

RACE HISTORY

This is the Race History chart from the Spanish GP, kindly provided by Williams F1 Team. The chart’s main use is to show track position and also gaps between cars. The zero line is best viewed as a “ghost” car which is setting the average lap time of the winner (his race time divided by 66 laps) and you can see how the lap times evolve relative to it. Note Lotus’ pace relative to the leaders in the final stint, for example, when the temperatures went up and they set the fastest lap of the race.

The Bahrain Grand Prix was another example of close racing with uncertain outcomes, dependent on race strategy, which has already come to characterise the 2012 F1 season.

Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull became the fourth different car/driver winning combination in four races, showing not only how closely matched the teams are, but also how delicate the balancing act is in getting the strategy right on the Pirelli tyres.

In just four races we have already had eight different drivers on the podium, more than in the whole of 2011.

Bahrain’s Sakhir circuit provided the sternest test yet of the tyres, with plenty of high energy corners, hard braking zones and track temperatures around 40 degrees.

Tyre degradation was very high, especially due to the heat. Degradation is a measure of the decline in lap time performance, whereas wear is the consumption of the tyre.

Strategists briefed on Sunday morning that the wear was not a problem – it would be possible to do a whole race distance on one set of tyres – but the drop-off in lap time was severe over 20 or so laps on the medium tyre and 14 on the soft.

So it was a question of being reactive. It was essential to have a plan in mind, whether that was two stops or three stops, but to be prepared to change it, reacting quickly to pit once you saw degradation affecting the lap time. There was also a huge benefit in having new sets of tyres, rather than used sets.

Pre-race expectations were that most drivers would do three stops, with a few trying a two stop strategy. In the event, among the top ten finishers, only Force India’s Paul di Resta managed to do two stops.

Lotus takes on Red Bull

There were many surprises in this race. The poor performance of McLaren on track and in the pits, for example. But the biggest was the way the Lotus cars of Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean took on the Red Bulls. They managed to beat Mark Webber fairly easily, but Raikkonen couldn’t quite do enough to beat Vettel to the win.

Lotus has had a good car at every race this season, but hasn’t quite got the strategy right before. In China, for example, they tried to do a two stop race with Raikkonen, but timed the stops wrong and on worn tyres he was vulnerable to the three stoppers at the end of the race, falling from 2nd place to 14th.

In Bahrain they got it almost perfect. The strategy planning began in qualifying, where the Finn did only one lap in the Q2 session, intending save a new set of soft tyres. Here Lotus made a small mistake, which turned out to be a benefit as they sent him out too early and underestimated the track improvement at the end of the Q2 session. Raikkonen failed to make the top ten shootout, where Ricciardo’s result shows that a 6th place start might have been possible for the Lotus. But to do that would have used up more tyres.

It wasn’t their intention to miss Q3, however the upside was that by failing to make the top ten, it meant Raikkonen had two new sets of soft tyres and two new sets of mediums, so he would do the whole race on new tyres. He also had a free choice of starting tyres. Vettel, in contrast, by going all the way to the end of qualifying and taking pole, used all his tyres except for one set of mediums and was forced to start on used softs.

How much was the gain from this on Raikkonen’s side? Every new set you run compared to your rival on a used set is worth around 8 seconds for a stint. Here’s how the strategists work it out: Degradation is 0.3 seconds per lap, so after 3 laps in qualifying on a set of a tyres they is 0.7s per lap slower than a new set.

So for Raikkonen compared to Vettel, in the first three stints there was 24 seconds available to him, provided he could make use of the new tyres and not lose time with mistakes or in traffic. It’s what got him in the game and almost won him the race.

Lotus went for the soft tyre for the start, because it has a higher working temperature than the medium and free practice had shown the car worked well on it with high fuel. They thought they were the fastest car on Friday.

We’ve seen how the start is crucial in strategy terms and Raikkonen made a great start, showing the advantage of new softs tyres off the line, up from 11th to seventh and ahead of Rosberg and Perez. He made a mistake on lap three and let Massa past, taking a couple of laps to get back past him again. During this time he lost three seconds to the leader Vettel. But more significantly he damaged his front wing and so had to deal with some aerodynamic loss, which also cost him for the rest of the race.

Thanks to the new tyres he passed Hamilton, who was struggling, and he managed to extend the first stint to lap 11. By doing this he got ahead of Alonso, Webber and Button. Now he was a contender for the win.

In the second stint on new softs he was the fastest car on the track until he caught his team-mate Grosjean and it was here, arguably, that he lost the chance to win. Vettel was not getting away at the front, Grosjean was on used medium tyres and Raikkonen was caught up behind him. He passed the Frenchman on lap 41 by pitting a lap earlier and undercutting him, then set off after Vettel.

On new mediums compared to Vettel’s used softs he caught up quickly, but couldn’t pass. With some clear air instead of the four laps he spent behind Grosjean, he might have had the platform to jump Vettel in the final stops, but instead he made his third stop on the same lap and with Vettel using his only new set of tyres in the final stint, Raikkonen had no further tyre advantage to play and had to follow him home.

Raikkonen was disappointed after the race. He had a chance to win, just as Perez had a chance to win in Malaysia. The strategy was good enough to give him a chance, but not perfect. Perhaps with a little more ruthlessness by Lotus, moving Grosjean aside, it could have been perfect.

Tour de Force by Di Resta and Force India

After a trying weekend off the track the Sahara Force India team got a great result on Sunday with Paul Di Resta finishing sixth. As the Scotsman said afterwards, this felt like a win for the midfield team.

He did it despite having the slowest car of the top 12 qualifiers, with a pace offset of 8/10ths of a second per lap to the Red Bulls and McLarens and 3/10ths to the Mercedes.

Again the strategy planning began in qualifying; the team had taken the decision not to do a lap in Q3 but instead to save tyres for the race, knowing that he was going to try to do a two-stop race. This gave him two new sets of soft tyres and one new set of mediums for the race.

The ideal two stop race was to stop on laps 19 and 38, but even though he had new soft tyres at the start, he couldn’t get further than lap 14 before the degradation became too great, relative to the three stoppers, and he had to pit. He was the last of the top ten to do so.

With everyone around him three stopping, Force India knew their driver would be vulnerable at the end of the race on worn tyres to three stoppers on fresh tyres, but Di Resta drove a masterful race, keeping the tyres alive at the same time as keeping the pace up.

On new softs at the start, he lost two places off the line and lost time behind Senna. However, by extending his soft tyres to lap 14 he was able to get ahead of many of the three stoppers, including Rosberg, whom he was racing for final position.

Traffic is less of a problem for a two stopper than a three stopper, but Di Resta still lost time at various stages of the race, particularly the second stint where he was faster than many three stoppers, despite looking to do a 19 lap stint compared to their 13 laps. If there was a place where he lost the opportunity to finish ahead of Rosberg, it was probably here.

With a final stint of 24 laps, he was vulnerable at the end of the race, to Rosberg, but was helped by Button’s late race retirement and the fact that Alonso didn’t quite have the straight line speed to attack in the final laps. Using KERS, Di Resta could defend and hold his 6th position, equalling his career best F1 finish.

The UBS Race Strategy Report is written by James Allen with input from F1 team strategists and from Pirelli.

The Bahrain Grand Prix was another example of close racing with uncertain outcomes, dependent on race strategy, which has already come to characterise the 2012 F1 season.

Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull became the fourth different car/driver winning combination in four races, showing not only how closely matched the teams are, but also how delicate the balancing act is in getting the strategy right on the Pirelli tyres.

In just four races we have already had eight different drivers on the podium, more than in the whole of 2011.

Bahrain’s Sakhir circuit provided the sternest test yet of the tyres, with plenty of high energy corners, hard braking zones and track temperatures around 40 degrees.

Tyre degradation was very high, especially due to the heat. Degradation is a measure of the decline in lap time performance, whereas wear is the consumption of the tyre.

Strategists briefed on Sunday morning that the wear was not a problem – it would be possible to do a whole race distance on one set of tyres – but the drop-off in lap time was severe over 20 or so laps on the medium tyre and 14 on the soft.

So it was a question of being reactive. It was essential to have a plan in mind, whether that was two stops or three stops, but to be prepared to change it, reacting quickly to pit once you saw degradation affecting the lap time. There was also a huge benefit in having new sets of tyres, rather than used sets.

Pre-race expectations were that most drivers would do three stops, with a few trying a two stop strategy. In the event, among the top ten finishers, only Force India’s Paul di Resta managed to do two stops.

Lotus takes on Red Bull

There were many surprises in this race. The poor performance of McLaren on track and in the pits, for example. But the biggest was the way the Lotus cars of Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean took on the Red Bulls. They managed to beat Mark Webber fairly easily, but Raikkonen couldn’t quite do enough to beat Vettel to the win.

Lotus has had a good car at every race this season, but hasn’t quite got the strategy right before. In China, for example, they tried to do a two stop race with Raikkonen, but timed the stops wrong and on worn tyres he was vulnerable to the three stoppers at the end of the race, falling from 2nd place to 14th.

In Bahrain they got it almost perfect. The strategy planning began in qualifying, where the Finn did only one lap in the Q2 session, intending save a new set of soft tyres. Here Lotus made a small mistake, which turned out to be a benefit as they sent him out too early and underestimated the track improvement at the end of the Q2 session. Raikkonen failed to make the top ten shootout, where Ricciardo’s result shows that a 6th place start might have been possible for the Lotus. But to do that would have used up more tyres.

It wasn’t their intention to miss Q3, however the upside was that by failing to make the top ten, it meant Raikkonen had two new sets of soft tyres and two new sets of mediums, so he would do the whole race on new tyres. He also had a free choice of starting tyres. Vettel, in contrast, by going all the way to the end of qualifying and taking pole, used all his tyres except for one set of mediums and was forced to start on used softs.

How much was the gain from this on Raikkonen’s side? Every new set you run compared to your rival on a used set is worth around 8 seconds for a stint. Here’s how the strategists work it out: Degradation is 0.3 seconds per lap, so after 3 laps in qualifying on a set of a tyres they is 0.7s per lap slower than a new set.

So for Raikkonen compared to Vettel, in the first three stints there was 24 seconds available to him, provided he could make use of the new tyres and not lose time with mistakes or in traffic. It’s what got him in the game and almost won him the race.

Lotus went for the soft tyre for the start, because it has a higher working temperature than the medium and free practice had shown the car worked well on it with high fuel. They thought they were the fastest car on Friday.

We’ve seen how the start is crucial in strategy terms and Raikkonen made a great start, showing the advantage of new softs tyres off the line, up from 11th to seventh and ahead of Rosberg and Perez. He made a mistake on lap three and let Massa past, taking a couple of laps to get back past him again. During this time he lost three seconds to the leader Vettel. But more significantly he damaged his front wing and so had to deal with some aerodynamic loss, which also cost him for the rest of the race.

Thanks to the new tyres he passed Hamilton, who was struggling, and he managed to extend the first stint to lap 11. By doing this he got ahead of Alonso, Webber and Button. Now he was a contender for the win.

In the second stint on new softs he was the fastest car on the track until he caught his team-mate Grosjean and it was here, arguably, that he lost the chance to win. Vettel was not getting away at the front, Grosjean was on used medium tyres and Raikkonen was caught up behind him. He passed the Frenchman on lap 41 by pitting a lap earlier and undercutting him, then set off after Vettel.

On new mediums compared to Vettel’s used softs he caught up quickly, but couldn’t pass. With some clear air instead of the four laps he spent behind Grosjean, he might have had the platform to jump Vettel in the final stops, but instead he made his third stop on the same lap and with Vettel using his only new set of tyres in the final stint, Raikkonen had no further tyre advantage to play and had to follow him home.

Raikkonen was disappointed after the race. He had a chance to win, just as Perez had a chance to win in Malaysia. The strategy was good enough to give him a chance, but not perfect. Perhaps with a little more ruthlessness by Lotus, moving Grosjean aside, it could have been perfect.

Tour de Force by Di Resta and Force India

After a trying weekend off the track the Sahara Force India team got a great result on Sunday with Paul Di Resta finishing sixth. As the Scotsman said afterwards, this felt like a win for the midfield team.

He did it despite having the slowest car of the top 12 qualifiers, with a pace offset of 8/10ths of a second per lap to the Red Bulls and McLarens and 3/10ths to the Mercedes.

Again the strategy planning began in qualifying; the team had taken the decision not to do a lap in Q3 but instead to save tyres for the race, knowing that he was going to try to do a two-stop race. This gave him two new sets of soft tyres and one new set of mediums for the race.

The ideal two stop race was to stop on laps 19 and 38, but even though he had new soft tyres at the start, he couldn’t get further than lap 14 before the degradation became too great, relative to the three stoppers, and he had to pit. He was the last of the top ten to do so.

With everyone around him three stopping, Force India knew their driver would be vulnerable at the end of the race on worn tyres to three stoppers on fresh tyres, but Di Resta drove a masterful race, keeping the tyres alive at the same time as keeping the pace up.

On new softs at the start, he lost two places off the line and lost time behind Senna. However, by extending his soft tyres to lap 14 he was able to get ahead of many of the three stoppers, including Rosberg, whom he was racing for final position.

Traffic is less of a problem for a two stopper than a three stopper, but Di Resta still lost time at various stages of the race, particularly the second stint where he was faster than many three stoppers, despite looking to do a 19 lap stint compared to their 13 laps. If there was a place where he lost the opportunity to finish ahead of Rosberg, it was probably here.

With a final stint of 24 laps, he was vulnerable at the end of the race, to Rosberg, but was helped by Button’s late race retirement and the fact that Alonso didn’t quite have the straight line speed to attack in the final laps. Using KERS, Di Resta could defend and hold his 6th position, equalling his career best F1 finish.

The UBS Race Strategy Report is written by James Allen with input from F1 team strategists and from Pirelli.

The UBS Chinese Grand Prix was a thrilling race, despite the comfortable winning margin for Nico Rosberg in the Mercedes.

Race strategy was crucial to the outcome and we also learned a lot about how F1 has changed in 2012, with the field closing up on performance, so the top teams can no longer rely on building gaps over the midfield to drop nicely into after pit stops. The leading teams will have to work much harder than last year on creative race strategy and the drivers will have to do a lot more overtaking.

During Friday’s Free Practice 2 it was clear that many teams have yet to master the best set up on their cars for both qualifying and the race, going from high fuel to low fuel.

How Mercedes surprised with its race pace
McLaren appeared to have race pace that was 0.5s a lap faster than Mercedes, but overnight on Friday Ross Brawn’s team made some changes to the set up to improve the tyre life and at the end of the Saturday morning session Schumacher ran a handful of laps on high fuel to confirm the changes. This was not noticed by many in the paddock, but proved crucial to Mercedes’ victory.

The track temperature was foremost in the minds of the team strategists as they prepared for the race; these 2012 Pirelli tyres are very sensitive to temperature changes and in qualifying it was clear that a drop of a few degrees created a disparity between different cars.

The rough rule of thumb is; Mercedes likes the colder temperature, as does the Sauber, while the Red Bulls, Lotus and McLarens operate better in higher temperatures. This is a trend that is likely to continue all season, so in Bahrain the picture may look different from China.

As with last year’s Shanghai race, the key strategy decision was between two pit stops and three and the timing of them. Pre race predictions showed that two stops was faster than three by up to 7 seconds, but the danger was that the two stopping driver would be vulnerable in the last five laps on worn tyres.

Crucially, the decision on which strategy was faster varied from team to team, depending on how fast they could run on the medium tyre. McLaren, for example, found it slower than the soft, while other teams including Mercedes, Lotus and Williams thought differently.

Rosberg vs Button vs Hamilton
McLaren went for three stops, Mercedes for two; the pattern was set. One of the reasons why Hamilton in particular was obliged to do three stops was because in qualifying he set his fastest time on a set of tyres that had done six laps by the time he started the race. This meant he would struggle to make it to lap 13, which was the window for two stops.

Mercedes knew this and planned to exploit it. Rosberg and Schumacher were instructed to get to at least lap 13, at which point they would switch to a medium tyre and do a middle stint of 21 laps, then a final stint on mediums again. Button was the greater threat to them on his three stop strategy, based on two stints on the soft tyre, but his challenge faded with a botched final pit stop, where the left rear wheel change was delayed by six seconds.

So when he rejoined, instead of being 14 seconds behind Rosberg with 17 laps to go and tyres that were 5 laps newer, he was 20 seconds behind.

The pit stop problem – not the first McLaren have suffered at critical moments this season – had a further knock-on effect in that it brought Button back out into the train of cars led by Massa and Raikkonen, who were two-stopping. Instead of gaining on Rosberg, Button could not take advantage of his new tyres, lost a second per lap to him and the race was over.

Most of Hamilton’s race was spent in traffic as well, due to starting down in seventh place after his gearbox change penalty. He could never get clear of the competitive midfield cars and run in clear air, so progress through the field was difficult on the three stop strategy he was obliged to do. A strategy like that requires plenty of opportunity to drive flat out on a clear track.

Intense competition in midfield
Quite a few cars in the midfield tried the two stop approach, based on two stints on the medium tyre, with mixed results; the key here was being able to extend the middle stint so as not to leave yourself too many laps at the end on the final set of tyres.

Vettel went for it, to try to get himself up from his lowly 11th grid slot, as did Massa from 12th, Senna from 14th and the two Lotus drivers. Raikkonen started 4th and Grosjean 10th.

It is interesting to compare the results these drivers achieved, all trying to do the same thing. The most stark example of it going wrong is Raikkonen – he fell from 2nd place, with just nine laps to go, to 14th at the finish! Partly this was due to worn tyres after a 28 lap final stint, but he also got off line trying too hard to defend his position from Vettel. His tyres got dirty and this allowed other cars to pass him. He got in a vicious circle; as he defended against them the tyres got dirtier still and all hope was lost.

The reason he found himself in this position was because he pitted too early for his second stop on lap 26. His middle stint was only 16 laps long on the medium tyre so he blinked too early on coming in for the second stop.

Conversely, Senna started on the medium tyre, did a middle stint on his new set of soft tyres, pitted for the second time on lap 29 back to the medium and managed to gain places when the three stoppers made their final stop. Senna’s drive showed how well balanced and competitive the Williams car is this year. He managed to get an 7th place finish. Vettel went from 11th to 5th at the finish, making the most of the strategy by pulling off a long middle stint on medium tyres.

Grosjean drove well, to collect his first points of the season, but it could have been better. He managed to go four laps longer than team mate Raikkonen in the middle stint and this set him up for a great result in 5th place. He was sitting there with 12 laps to go, but made a mistake when fighting Webber and lost three places. He managed to get two of them back, which shows that he still had life left in his tyres, despite them being only three laps fresher than Raikkonen’s.

The UBS Race Strategy Report is written by James Allen with input and data from several F1 team strategists.

The UBS Chinese Grand Prix was a thrilling race, despite the comfortable winning margin for Nico Rosberg in the Mercedes.

Race strategy was crucial to the outcome and we also learned a lot about how F1 has changed in 2012, with the field closing up on performance, so the top teams can no longer rely on building gaps over the midfield to drop nicely into after pit stops. The leading teams will have to work much harder than last year on creative race strategy and the drivers will have to do a lot more overtaking.

During Friday’s Free Practice 2 it was clear that many teams have yet to master the best set up on their cars for both qualifying and the race, going from high fuel to low fuel.

How Mercedes surprised with its race pace
McLaren appeared to have race pace that was 0.5s a lap faster than Mercedes, but overnight on Friday Ross Brawn’s team made some changes to the set up to improve the tyre life and at the end of the Saturday morning session Schumacher ran a handful of laps on high fuel to confirm the changes. This was not noticed by many in the paddock, but proved crucial to Mercedes’ victory.

The track temperature was foremost in the minds of the team strategists as they prepared for the race; these 2012 Pirelli tyres are very sensitive to temperature changes and in qualifying it was clear that a drop of a few degrees created a disparity between different cars.

The rough rule of thumb is; Mercedes likes the colder temperature, as does the Sauber, while the Red Bulls, Lotus and McLarens operate better in higher temperatures. This is a trend that is likely to continue all season, so in Bahrain the picture may look different from China.

As with last year’s Shanghai race, the key strategy decision was between two pit stops and three and the timing of them. Pre race predictions showed that two stops was faster than three by up to 7 seconds, but the danger was that the two stopping driver would be vulnerable in the last five laps on worn tyres.

Crucially, the decision on which strategy was faster varied from team to team, depending on how fast they could run on the medium tyre. McLaren, for example, found it slower than the soft, while other teams including Mercedes, Lotus and Williams thought differently.

Rosberg vs Button vs Hamilton
McLaren went for three stops, Mercedes for two; the pattern was set. One of the reasons why Hamilton in particular was obliged to do three stops was because in qualifying he set his fastest time on a set of tyres that had done six laps by the time he started the race. This meant he would struggle to make it to lap 13, which was the window for two stops.

Mercedes knew this and planned to exploit it. Rosberg and Schumacher were instructed to get to at least lap 13, at which point they would switch to a medium tyre and do a middle stint of 21 laps, then a final stint on mediums again. Button was the greater threat to them on his three stop strategy, based on two stints on the soft tyre, but his challenge faded with a botched final pit stop, where the left rear wheel change was delayed by six seconds.

So when he rejoined, instead of being 14 seconds behind Rosberg with 17 laps to go and tyres that were 5 laps newer, he was 20 seconds behind.

The pit stop problem – not the first McLaren have suffered at critical moments this season – had a further knock-on effect in that it brought Button back out into the train of cars led by Massa and Raikkonen, who were two-stopping. Instead of gaining on Rosberg, Button could not take advantage of his new tyres, lost a second per lap to him and the race was over.

Most of Hamilton’s race was spent in traffic as well, due to starting down in seventh place after his gearbox change penalty. He could never get clear of the competitive midfield cars and run in clear air, so progress through the field was difficult on the three stop strategy he was obliged to do. A strategy like that requires plenty of opportunity to drive flat out on a clear track.

Intense competition in midfield
Quite a few cars in the midfield tried the two stop approach, based on two stints on the medium tyre, with mixed results; the key here was being able to extend the middle stint so as not to leave yourself too many laps at the end on the final set of tyres.

Vettel went for it, to try to get himself up from his lowly 11th grid slot, as did Massa from 12th, Senna from 14th and the two Lotus drivers. Raikkonen started 4th and Grosjean 10th.

It is interesting to compare the results these drivers achieved, all trying to do the same thing. The most stark example of it going wrong is Raikkonen – he fell from 2nd place, with just nine laps to go, to 14th at the finish! Partly this was due to worn tyres after a 28 lap final stint, but he also got off line trying too hard to defend his position from Vettel. His tyres got dirty and this allowed other cars to pass him. He got in a vicious circle; as he defended against them the tyres got dirtier still and all hope was lost.

The reason he found himself in this position was because he pitted too early for his second stop on lap 26. His middle stint was only 16 laps long on the medium tyre so he blinked too early on coming in for the second stop.

Conversely, Senna started on the medium tyre, did a middle stint on his new set of soft tyres, pitted for the second time on lap 29 back to the medium and managed to gain places when the three stoppers made their final stop. Senna’s drive showed how well balanced and competitive the Williams car is this year. He managed to get an 7th place finish. Vettel went from 11th to 5th at the finish, making the most of the strategy by pulling off a long middle stint on medium tyres.

Grosjean drove well, to collect his first points of the season, but it could have been better. He managed to go four laps longer than team mate Raikkonen in the middle stint and this set him up for a great result in 5th place. He was sitting there with 12 laps to go, but made a mistake when fighting Webber and lost three places. He managed to get two of them back, which shows that he still had life left in his tyres, despite them being only three laps fresher than Raikkonen’s.

The UBS Race Strategy Report is written by James Allen with input and data from several F1 team strategists.

The Australian Grand Prix got the new season off to a great start and showed that the race strategy side is going to be as vital as ever to a good outcome.

In this first Strategy Report of the year we will look at how Jenson Button was able to dominate the race by taking priority in strategy decision making at McLaren, while Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull used good strategy and a piece of opportunism with the safety car to steal second place away from Lewis Hamilton.

We will also see how, for the second consecutive year, Sauber’s Sergio Perez was a trailblazer, covering the race with just one stop and his performance on the medium tyre in the first stint changed the thinking of many of the top teams about how to approach the race.

Analysis of Key Strategy Decisions: Albert Park, Melbourne, March 18 2012

As the first race of the season the Australian Grand Prix is always something of a test case for how race strategies have been affected by new generation of tyres and rule changes, such as the one banning the exhaust blown diffuser.

This weekend we saw clearly that the 2012 Pirellis are more suitable race tyres for F1 than last year’s; they allow the drivers to push a bit more and they wear differently from the 2011 versions, which would wear quickly along the shoulder, whereas the 2012 models wear evenly across the tyre, which is positive and makes them slightly more predictable. But performance still drops sharply if you stay on them too long.

The expectation going into the race was that the leading drivers would do a two stop race, starting on used soft tyres, taking a second set of used softs at the first stop around lap 19 and then pitting for medium tyres around lap 39.

McLaren vs Red Bull: How Button got the upper hand and Vettel beat Hamilton

McLaren controlled the race from the front row of the grid and the victory was only threatened 22 laps before the end, when the safety car neutralized the field and removed Button’s lead, with Vettel right behind him. Lewis Hamilton didn’t have the pace to stay with Button and some bad luck with strategy cost him second place. Both drivers had to be careful on fuel saving as well, according to the team boss Martin Whitmarsh, due to starting with an aggressively low fuel load.

The start was the decisive moment. Hamilton had qualified on pole, but Button had gained the strategic advantage over his team mate by winning the start, which meant that he had first call on when to pit.

He made his first stop on lap 16 and moved onto the medium tyre. This meant Hamilton had to come in a lap later. Hamilton’s tyres were already going off significantly and he lost 3.4 seconds on lap 16 and on his in-lap to the pits on lap 17. He lost a further 1.4 seconds on his out lap. Worse still, he rejoined behind Raikkonen and Perez, who was on the medium tyre and one-stopping. By the time he passed Perez he was 11 seconds behind Button. More significantly, Vettel had gained seven seconds on him through this period. The world champion also stopped at the ideal moment – lap 16 – before the tyre performance dropped off and was now just two seconds behind Hamilton. This time lost for Hamilton would prove decisive at the second stops. Vettel had opted for the soft tyre, while Hamilton and Button were on medium.

With an 11 second gap between Button and Hamilton at the end of the second stint and the tyres going off on both cars, the McLaren team decided to pit both of their cars at the same time, on lap 36. Their in laps were identical, but Hamilton’s out lap was 3 seconds slower than Button’s, meaning he was vulnerable to Vettel.

People have questioned the wisdom of pitting the two cars on the same lap and it’s something that McLaren have been working on, as it’s hard to achieve and requires a very well drilled pit crew, to have the second set of tyres ready to go. Being able to double stop has significant strategic advantages in multi-stop races, where an extra lap on fading tyres can cost a lot of time. But in a two stop race, it was an interesting decision to try it.

The Red Bull team had seen McLaren stopping, but left Vettel out as he was lapping faster than the McLarens at that point.

So he was on target to jump Hamilton at the second stops anyway, but it was guaranteed when the safety car was deployed as Petrov’s car had broken down on the pit straight.

Vettel dived into the pits from the lead and rejoined in between the McLarens, ahead of Hamilton. From 6th on the grid after a disappointing qualifying session, Vettel had made the most out of the opportunity presented to him by McLaren and Hamilton.

Perez blazes a trail – again!

The total time needed for a pit stop at Albert Park is 25 seconds, which is one of the longest of the year. This is because the pit lane is long and the speed limit is just 60km/h, rather than the usual 100km/h, for safety reasons. This encourages drivers to do less stops rather than more. Even though Raikkonen, for example, had three sets of new soft tyres at his disposal, he didn’t go for a three stop sprint strategy because of the time that would be lost in the pits.

So from outside the top ten there were always going to be a few cars that would start on the medium tyre and try to get to lap 28 or 29, then switch to the soft. The front runners would never have planned to do this as simulations showed it to be 20 seconds slower than a 2 stop if you can run in clear air.

Last year Sergio Perez did a one stop race and finished seventh (although he was later disqualified for rear wing irregularities). It was assumed that several drivers would try this. In the event only three started on the medium tyre: Perez, Vergne and Petrov. Vergne did a two stopper, but Perez managed to go from 22nd on the grid to finish 8th. More importantly his pace around the time of the leaders’ first pit stops showed that the medium tyre as not only more durable than the soft, but was fast too.

Going into the race the strategists knew that on one single qualifying lap the soft tyre had been 0.8secs faster than the medium. But they believed that in the race that gap would be smaller, probably around 0.5 seconds. If you had a new set of options – as Raikkonen did for example – that was a faster choice than a new set of mediums. But the gap between the two tyres turned out to be so close that if you only had used softs, as all the front runners had, then a new set of mediums was better for most.

With the leaders forced to stop as early as lap 16, Perez was lapping comfortably in the 1m 33s which convinced several strategists that the medium was the best tyre to be on that day. Webber went to it first, followed by Button, Hamilton and Alonso. Vettel, Raikkonen and Kobayashi went for soft. The Japanese driver then underlined Sauber’s gentle action on the tyres by extending his middle stint on softs to 23 laps; longer than Alonso managed on new mediums in the Ferrari !

Perez’ strategy saw him rise to second place by lap 20 before the tyre started to really go off – he dropped five places and ten seconds in three laps as the cars that had pitted for new tyres overtook him. But he made his only stop on lap 24 and drove to the flag on a set of new options. He was racing Maldonado, Rosberg, Kobayashi and Raikkonen and finished 8th, having started at the back of the grid. The Sauber’s ability to run long stints on the tyres will bring them plenty of points this year.

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

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

RACE HISTORY GRAPH

The zero line represents the winner’s average lap speed. This graph shows the lap times of all the competitors relative to that lap time.