2 Oct 2018

Race 16 – 53 Laps – 5.848km per lap – 309.745km race distance – very low tyre wear

Russian GP F1 Strategy Report Podcast – our host Michael Lamonato is joined by Rob James from the Box of Neutrals F1 Podcast

2018 RUSSIAN GRAND PRIX STRATEGY REPORT

The Russian Grand Prix was decided by strategy, just not the sort that pit Ferrari against Mercedes in a battle of off-track wits; rather it was Mercedes’s use of team orders that had ultimate sway over Lewis Hamilton beating Valtteri Bottas in Sochi.

Ferrari played a part, albeit only a small one. When Vettel jumped Hamilton in the sole round of pit stops the Briton had to push his new tyres early to make his way back past, causing blistering that was just concerning enough to force Mercedes to do the long-foreshadowed deal with the Bottas.

THE BACKGROUND

The Russian Grand Prix was a must-win race for Vettel, who took a 40-point championship deficit to Sochi. If Hamilton won with Vettel in second or lower, the Briton would be able to finish second to the German for the remainder of the season without relinquishing his title lead.

Mercedes and Ferrari both brought upgrades to the street circuit, but for the first time in months Ferrari looked off the pace and out of sorts. Friday practice suggested the Silver Arrows had the upper hand over a single lap and a slim advantage during the race, and when the Italian team couldn’t execute the kind of Friday-night recovery it has become renowned for over the last two seasons, Vettel knew he was committed to starting on the back foot.

Pirelli brought the hypersoft, ultrasoft and soft tyres to Sochi, the same sets used at the previous round in Singapore.

QUALIFYING

The race was run against a backdrop of complaints about the qualifying system after midfielders who started the Singapore Grand Prix in the top 10 with the hypersoft tyre were found to be at a massive disadvantage compared to their rivals who started from 11th down with free tyre choice — the hypersoft tyre was rapid over one lap but useless as a race tyre, requiring extreme pace management or a very early first pit stop.

The same was feared to be the case in Sochi, which resulted in a bizarre Q2 session, thanks in part also to a litany of power unit penalties levied against five drivers. Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen and Toro Rosso’s Pierre Gasly all qualified for Q2 but knew they would start in the bottom five regardless of the times they set, so all three chose not to run in the segment.

That in turn triggered Renault to do the same with both Carlos Sainz and Nico Hulkenberg. Partly the team was aware that its poor Q1 pace would likely leave it outside the top 10 anyway, but it also cleverly realised that with all other 10 cars already out on track, it could keep both its drivers in the garage and automatically qualify 11th and 12th, theoretically the ideal midfield grid positions given they came with free tyres choice.

The plan worked, with Sauber, Haas and Force India getting all their drivers in Q3 on the hypersoft compound.

Mercedes and Ferrari had sufficient pace on the ultrasoft tyre to progress to the top-10 shootout with the middle-compound tyre, giving them both an easy strategic run in the race.

THE DECISIVE MOMENT

The top four got away cleanly and in qualifying order, leaving the next opportunity for position change around the difficult-to-pass circuit the sole pit stop window, which Bottas opened on lap 12 with a switch to the soft-compound tyre.

Vettel, having trailed Hamilton from third place by around 1.5 seconds, dived into the pits on the following lap, emerging behind the Finn — but, crucially, Hamilton did not.

Mercedes left the Briton out until lap 14, but in doing so they exposed him to Vettel’s undercut. The German was setting a blistering out-lap, and to make matters worse, Hamilton was encountering traffic on his in-lap, and the result was that he emerged from his pit stop side-by-side with Vettel.

Hamilton was forced to cede position, but in Vettel’s haste to build a gap he locked up at turn 13, which allowed Hamilton to follow him through the back sector of the circuit and launch an attack at turn two. Vettel rebuffed, but Hamilton overpowered him by turn four to take back position.

But the brief moment of action had an unintended side effect — Hamilton had used his soft-compound tyres too hard too soon, opening up some blistering, similar to the way Raikkonen undid his race at the Italian Grand Prix.

With Vettel shadowing closely, though unable to launch a move, Mercedes used the blisters as a trigger to enact what some considered to be inevitable anyway and called on Bottas to let the Briton past. The Finn would be able to defend against Vettel without risking his tyres, whereas the clearer air ahead would help Hamilton protect his own rubber.

Bottas optimistically radioed towards the end of the race, once Vettel’s threat had subsided, whether he’d be swapped back into the lead, but the advantage to Hamilton’s championship campaign overwhelmed the decision, and the pair finished unhappily in formation.

THE CONTRA-STRATEGY DOESN’T WORK

The midfield battle was poised along tyre lines, with those starting on hypersofts thought to be at a massive disadvantage, but this proved not to be the case, the pink-striped tyre operating strongly enough in Sochi for those starting on other compounds to find no real advantage.

With the exception of Verstappen and Ricciardo, who recovered from 19th and 18th to finish fifth and sixth respectively — as is standard for any of the top six cars starting from the back — only Nico Hulkenberg managed to gain a place on the hypersoft starters by starting his race on the soft compound.

The Renault driver jumped both Romain Grosjean and Marcus Ericsson — the latter had the faster car but was stuck behind the former for most of the race — but he had used too much fuel in the opening stint of the race to keep both, and Grosjean got past the German before the end of the race for P11.

OVERTAKING EARLY PAYS DIVIDENDS

Passing is difficult at the Sochi Autodrom, but in the chaos of the early laps it was certainly doable. Max Verstappen, albeit with a massive car advantage, made it from 19th to fifth in just eight laps; his teammate, Daniel Ricciardo, may have been capable of similar pace were it not for damage to his front wing caused by an errant piece of debris he hit in the opening minutes of the race, reportedly costing him 30 points of downforce.

Charles Leclerc was also as big mover, passing Esteban Ocon on the first lap and Kevin Magnussen in emphatic style on the second lap to set himself up for a best-of-the-rest finish in seventh behind the Red Bull Racing drivers.

But after the opening parts of the race overtaking was substantially more difficult — indeed Force India, which has ordered its drivers not to race each other, swapped Sergio Perez ahead of Esteban Ocon in an attempt to pass Kevin Magnussen for eighth place, but to no avail, and it was forced to swap them back to keep the peace.

Tyre data

Courtesy of Pirelli Motorsport

Our host Michael Lamonato  is joined by Trent Price – Editor of eRacing Magazine to talk through the details of round 15 of the season.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

If you like the podcast, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.

For full written report about the strategy plays in this race, and detailed data (including all the stints and tyre choices) click here. All of our previous F1 Strategy Report Podcasts are here.

Contact us on twitter @strategyreport. or at http://www.f1strategyreport.com/

19 Sep 2018

Race 15 – 61 Laps – 5.063km per lap – 308.706km race distance – low tyre wear

Singapore GP F1 Strategy Report Podcast – our host Michael Lamonato is joined by Trent Price – Editor of eRacing Magazine

2018 SINGAPORE GRAND PRIX STRATEGY REPORT

Lewis Hamilton won the Singapore Grand Prix with a conservative one-stop strategy to stretch his championship lead over Sebastian Vettel to 40 points, but while the Briton’s lead was never really threatened, the Mercedes car arguably should never have been so comfortably positioned at the head of the field.

Hamilton’s tyre management was only the second half of Mercedes’s efforts to undermine Ferrari’s attempted to revive its rapidly flagging title hopes; qualifying was the real key to owning the Marina Bay streets.

THE BACKGROUND

Expectations were high that Singapore would allow Ferrari to rebuild its championship campaign after the disappointment of the Italian Grand Prix, and these optimistic foundations were solid enough — Vettel was a four-time winner in Singapore, Ferrari has typically performed well at the circuit and Mercedes has frequently struggled with the unique demands of the Marina Bay streets.

Pirelli brought the hypersoft, ultrasoft and soft compounds — skipping the supersoft tyre in a bid to create more strategic variation — to Singapore, which also theoretically benefitted Ferrari given Mercedes tends to struggle with the softest tyres in the range.

QUALIFYING

The above tenants were true right up until Hamilton blitzed Vettel by 0.6 seconds, a margin significant enough for Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen to slot between the two title protagonists. The culprit for Ferrari’s underperformance was an inability to keep the delicate hypersoft tyre in its correct temperature window.

Vettel also wasn’t helped by operational problems throughout the session, including a needless disruption in Q2 when the team sent him out on the ultrasoft tyre in an attempt to set it as his race start compound. He was forced to undertake an all-or-nothing hypersoft run subsequently, which was hampered by traffic.

The culmination of these problems meant Vettel and Raikkonen missed out on crucial laps to push the limits of the tyre ahead of Q3, and it also deprived Ferrari of an opportunity to fine-tune its approach to tyre warm-up.

Given the importance of qualifying and track position at street circuits, Ferrari and Vettel’s inability to manage the session proved extremely costly by Sunday.

THE DEFINING MOMENT

Vettel stole second place from Verstappen on the first lap, but the race thereafter entered a lull as all hypersoft starters tried to extend tyre life for as long as possible to make a one-stop race feasible. A four-lap safety car to clear Esteban Ocon’s crashed Force India car triggered on lap one helped in this regard.

A game of cat and mouse ensued between Hamilton and Vettel, the chaser keeping within 1.5 seconds of the leader, until Hamilton opened the taps from lap 12. His lap times dropped by around three seconds, attempting to guard against the undercut.

Vettel didn’t have the same performance left in his tyres and was forced to go aggressive, stopping on lap 14 to trigger the undercut for new ultrasofts — the purple-striped rubber would require extreme tyre management to make it to the end, but the soft compound wouldn’t be fast enough to give Vettel the lap-one speed burst he needed to try to trip up Hamilton.

The idea, then, was to gain track position and worry about the rest later, but though it gained him a few tenths, it wasn’t enough to close the gap Hamilton had built.

Worse, however, was that Vettel’s early stop had assumed he would be able to sweep past Sergio Perez, the last of the midfield cars still in his pit window. Instead he was held up for two extremely costly laps during which Red Bull Racing stopped Max Verstappen, who was able to jump the hamstrung Ferrari back into second place.

Should Vettel have waited another two or three laps to pit ahead of Perez? The fear was that by then Hamilton would’ve opened too large a gap to undercut anyway — though presumably the assumption was the Force India driver on his worn tyres wouldn’t have been as hard to pass as he was.

RICCIARDO GOES LONG

Daniel Ricciardo suffered a poor weekend by his standards. Never off the podium in Singapore since joining Red Bull Racing, the Australian qualified and finished sixth after being among a number of drivers who couldn’t get the hypersoft tyres into the sweet spot in qualifying.

Given the difficulty of overtaking on street circuits, the only way he was going to make progress was to do something different to the other five frontrunners, which he did by taking his hypersoft tyres an impressive 27 laps — 30 laps in total taking into account qualifying — and switching to a long ultrasoft stint to the flag.

Running long on the hypersoft tyre gave him the opportunity to take advantage of the high probability of a safety car, pitting under which would’ve jumped him ahead of his rivals, and using the ultrasoft tyre gave him reasonable pace in the second half of the race — but not enough to execute a pass, and he finished less than a second behind Kimi Raikkonen.

MIDFIELD DECIDED BY STARTING TYRE

Because a hypersoft-soft one-stop strategy required extreme tyre management and an early stop, those who started on the ultrasoft compound found themselves with a major strategic advantage, and in this sense those who started just outside the top 10 with free tyre choice profted significantly in the race over those who were forced to use the qualifying compound in the first stint by virtue of progressing through Q2.

Fernando Alonso, Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc, starting from 11th, 12th and 13th on the grid, finished from seventh to ninth because they were able to run until between laps 37 and 38 before stopping, by which time they’d built up a significant gap on those who’d started ahead of them on hypersofts, allowing them to maintain position.

Contrast their fortunes with those of Nico Hulkenberg and Romain Grosjean. Both had to slog through slower traffic after their stops on laps 15 and 16 respectively — Grosjean lost a place to Hulkenberg in part thanks to the undercut and in part thanks to a slower in-lap.

Hulkenberg made relatively rapid progress, which enabled him to finish 10th and in the points, whereas Grosjean struggled to get past both Williams cars in particular, which cost him valuable time. That, combined with him being generally off Hulkenberg’s pace, meant he was too back to jump Marcus Ericsson and Stoffel Vandoorne when they made their pit stops on laps 44 and 43.

Sergio Perez was the worst example of this, however. He was stuck near the back of the field behind Sergey Sirotkin, who was defending superbly, from his first pit stop at the end of lap 17 until he crashed into him in a botched overtaking attempt on lap 39.

TORO ROSSO’S BIZARRE CALL

Given the hypersoft was so out of favour as a race tyre, Toro Rosso’s decision to start Pierre Gasly and Brendon Hartley on the pink compound made no sense. Gasly got a bit of a boost off the line, passing two cars, but his progress, even considering his 26-lap stint, counted for little given his first pit stop dropped him to last bar one because the field was still so bunched up due to the severity of tyre management taking place.

Hartley’s strategy made even less sense given he stopped on lap 14 — earlier than even those who started the race with used ultrasofts — and was subsequently committed to a two-stop strategy that delivered him 17th behind the penalised and damaged Force India of Sergio Perez.

Tyre data

Courtesy of Pirelli Motorsport

Our host Michael Lamonato  is joined by Luca Manacorda from FormulaPassion.it to talk through the details of round 14 of the season.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

If you like the podcast, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.

For full written report about the strategy plays in this race, and detailed data (including all the stints and tyre choices) click here. All of our previous F1 Strategy Report Podcasts are here.

Contact us on twitter @strategyreport. or at http://www.f1strategyreport.com/