8 Oct 2018

Race 17 – 53 Laps – 5.870km per lap – 307.471km race distance – low tyre wear

Japanese GP F1 Strategy Report Podcast – our host Michael Lamonato is joined by Phil Horton from Motorsport Monday and Motorsport Week

HAMILTON WINS IN JAPAN

Lewis Hamilton seized his fourth successive win and his sixth win in seven races at the Japanese Grand Prix to put himself on the brink of his fifth world championship.

Hamilton and Mercedes were just about untouchable all weekend, and Ferrari in any case failed to take advantage of the few opportunities it had to at least try to run the Silver Arrows close.

THE BACKGROUND

After being thoroughly showed up in Russia and having long lost the championship initiative, the pressure was on Ferrari to finally strike back against Mercedes, but right from the outset it was clear the Scuderia was destined to struggle in Suzuka — Hamilton topped every practice sessions and the Silver Arrows held comfortable advantages in both the qualifying and long-run simulations.

Worse is that Ferrari seemed to be among those most significantly afflicted by blistering with the soft-compound tyre, the likely backbone of most strategies from Pirelli’s medium, soft and supersoft range in Japan.

The only wrinkle in the narrative would that warm and sunny weather was forecast on Sunday, which threatened to push the race from being the comfortable one-stop affair predicted during the overcast Friday practice sessions into marginal territory — but even this would be potentially disadvantageous for Ferrari given the propensity for the soft compound to blister under high loads in hot temperatures.

QUALIFYING

As if to compound Ferrari’s woes, rain was forecast to arrive at the track in time for qualifying, and it duly did so at the end of Q2. It presented the teams that qualified for the top-10 shootout with a difficult question to answer: did conditions require slicks or intermediate tyres?

Ferrari plumped for the latter, but as soon as Sebastian Vettel emerged from his garage with the green-striped compound he knew the team had made the wrong call.

Hamilton and Bottas provisionally locked out the front row while Vettel and Raikkonen were sprinting back to the pits to switch to slicks, but by the time they made it back onto the track with the supersoft tyre the rain had arrived. A slippery circuit combined with driver error left Kimi Raikkonen fourth and Vettel ninth, though he was later promoted to eighth after Esteban Ocon served a three-place grid penalty from P8.

THE DECISIVE MOMENT

Truthfully the decisive strategic moment came in qualifying, when Ferrari bungled its tyre strategy and left Vettel, already so comprehensively pummelled by Hamilton, down for the count halfway down the grid.

However, the German’s early-race recovery was impressive. Halfway through the first lap he was up to fifth, and with teammate Raikkonen in fourth he was surely already eyeing off Max Verstappen’s third place.

Raikkonen was literally pushed aside by Verstappen at the final chicane, moving Vettel up to fourth, and after a brief safety car — deployed to clean up debris from Kevin Magnussen’s punctured Haas — the German engaged the Dutchman in a fight.

But Vettel botched his chance by carrying too much speed down Verstappen’s inside into Spoon. Verstappen was able to continue with some damage, but Vettel spun off the track, falling to 19th and setting himself up for yet another recovery drive, which eventually yielded sixth place — not nearly enough to reverse.

FERRARI THROWS AWAY A PODIUM

Scuderia Ferrari has endured some painful weekends this year, but in many respects the Japanese Grand Prix would rank amongst the worst, with the team’s qualifying debacle compounded by an uncompetitive race result that delivered fifth and sixth at the flag, notably behind Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull Racing car after the Australian started 15th.

Vettel’s problems were clearly borne of driver error, but Raikkonen would have fair cause to feel his Japanese Grand Prix could’ve ended with so much more than fifth place.

Running in fourth between Red Bull Racing teammates Max Verstappen ahead and Daniel Ricciardo behind, Ferrari decided to pit Raikkonen on lap 17, the thinking being that a fresh set of medium tyres would be enough to counteract the damage he picked up in his first-lap tangle with Verstappen at the chicane.

But the team’s timing was poor, and Raikkonen emerged behind Esteban Ocon, Sergio Perez and Pierre Gasly and took five laps to pass them.

Verstappen was able to run until lap 21, when he stopped for a new set of soft-compound tyres, and still emerge comfortably ahead of the Finn. Adding further insult was that Ricciardo then managed to jump Raikkonen at his own stop on lap 23, the Australian switching to a new set of mediums.

It isn’t the first time Ferrari overestimated the speed with which its drivers would be able to slice through traffic, with the same error being a contributing factor in Vettel’s defeat in Singapore.

VSC CONTINUES TO PROVE CONTROVERSIAL

The virtual safety car continued to cause some consternation among drivers, with Romain Grosjean being the latest to feel hard done by the full-course yellow programme.

Grosjean complained vociferously over team radio that Perez had illegally closed down his 2.5-second advantage to seize seventh place from him when the race’s only VSC period ended on lap 42.

This isn’t the first time the virtual safety car has been criticised, with Sebastian Vettel earlier in the year expressing his concern that the system was open to abuse by drivers who adopted unusual driving style to game the system and gain time on their rivals when they’re supposed to be maintaining the gap.

The FIA admitted the system had loopholes and has worked to fix them, but in this situation it seems Grosjean was simply mugged at the restart by a craftier Perez — though it’s worth noting the potentially mitigating factor that Grosjean had some electrical damage to his car after a fire was spotted burning on the chassis early in the race.

TORO ROSSO DOESN’T DELIVER

Honda-powered Toro Rosso was easily the best supported team in Japan, and qualifying sixth and seventh was as good a result as the enthusiastic fans could’ve hoped for.

Expectations for a similarly strong finish were high before the race, with the team buoyed by Honda’s latest power unit upgrade in particular, but a poor start was the beginning of the Faenza team’s unravelling.

Pierre Gasly held seventh place and Brendon Hartley fell to 10th, but the pit wall overestimated the durability of the supersoft tyre and underestimated the power of the undercut, leaving both drivers out too long to maintain position.

The team allowed Force India pair Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon to execute a clean undercut when they stopped on laps 24 and 26, and when Gasly and Hartley followed suit on laps 29 and 28 they dropped to 13th and 17th respectively, with the former stuck behind Marcus Ericsson and the latter behind Lance Stroll.

Gasly muscled his way past Ericsson into 10th and spent the last 10 laps defending against Renault’s Carlos Sainz, who was equipped with a fresh set of medium tyres, but in doing so he blistered his soft-compound rubber, which triggered his surrender of the points-paying position three laps from the end.

MARCUS ERICSSON’S NO-STOP RACE

Marcus Ericsson started from the back of the grid after a crash in Q1, but the Sauber car had strong qualifying and long-run pace, with teammate Charles Leclerc qualifying 11th and starting from 10th.

Sauber used that long-run pace to execute an ambitious one-stop strategy by pitting Leclerc and Ericsson behind the safety car on laps four and five respectively, giving them almost 50 laps to run on a single set of medium tyres.

The plan seemed to work for Leclerc, who was running behind the points-scoring Force India cars before he was forced to retire the car, but Ericsson struggled to defend against midfielders on fresh tyres in the second half of the race and had to settle for a nonetheless decent recovery to 12th

Tyre data

Courtesy of Pirelli Motorsport

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

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

4 Sep 2018

Race 14 – 53 Laps – 5.793km per lap – 306.720km race distance – low tyre wear

Italian GP F1 Strategy Report Podcast – our host Michael Lamonato is joined by Luca Manacorda from FormulaPassion.it

MERCEDES MUSCLE FERRARI OUT OF HOME WIN

Ferrari failed to convert its first front-row lockout since 2000 into a victory for either pole-sitter Kimi Raikkonen or championship contender Sebastian Vettel, with Lewis Hamilton and his Mercedes pit wall outfoxing both en route to a decisive victory.

The Scuderia was strategically hamstrung, however, after Vettel hit Hamilton on the first lap and tumbled down the order, leaving the then leading Raikkonen to fend off both Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas in tactical thriller that ultimately left the partisan home crowd heartbroken.

THE BACKGROUND

Ferrari’s strong pace in Belgium was a precursor to a competitive showing at its home race in Italy, with both Spa-Francorchamps and Monza rewarding power above all else.

Friday practice bore this out, though it was closer than some expected — part of Mercedes’s problems in Belgium was down to tyre wear, which sprung from the car’s poor traction out of slow corners. With so few slow corners in Monza, the gap had shrunk between the frontrunners.

Both Ferrari and Vettel started the weekend down in the championship standings but with momentum. The Scuderia had gone without a home win since Fernando Alonso’s 2010 triumph, but both were confident of breaking the drought.

Did the pressure of performing at home to give the title hopes of team and driver get to Ferrari and Vettel? Only they know the answer for certain.

QUALIFYING

Ferrari’s first true error came in qualifying, when Kimi Raikkonen was given the benefit of starting both his Q3 laps behind Sebastian Vettel, thereby benefitting from his slipstream on Monza’s long straights. Vettel said he and Raikkonen take it on turn to leave pit lane first, but there was some conjecture about whether this was on a per-weekend basis or run by run.

Whatever the case, that Ferrari chose not to preference Vettel over Raikkonen despite the latter being realistically well outside the championship frame was a strategic error, innocuous though it may have seemed at the time given the result was a front-row lockout.

Vettel was obviously frustrated at the end of the session, and his eagerness to get past his teammate at the first and then, fatefully, fourth turns was perhaps derived from this hangover of frustration.

THE DEFINING MOMENT

Though Ferrari’s qualifying strategy was a contributing factor, its home-race collapse was triggered by Vettel’s botched attempt to defend second place from Lewis Hamilton.

Vettel had an ambitious look down the inside of Raikkonen at turn four, but in doing so he opened the door for Hamilton to cruise around his outside. Perhaps fretting about his error and lacking some downforce tucked in behind Raikkonen, the German slid slightly wide out of the left-hand corner and hit Hamilton, sending himself into a spin that left him 18th.

Raikkonen still held the lead, however, even after Hamilton briefly seized first place at the safety car restart, but from there Mercedes was able to use both its cars strategically against the Finn to prevent him from winning his first race in more than five years.

Hamilton was shadowing Raikkonen with relative ease in the first stint, so Ferrari opted to pre-empt an undercut by bringing in Kimi on lap 21. Mercedes ordered Hamilton to do the opposite, and the Briton stayed out hoping his used supersofts could build a pit-stop buffer over the new soft-shod Ferrari.

It soon became obvious this wasn’t going to be the case, however, but Mercedes left Hamilton out until lap 28, in part because Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull Racing car had stopped by the side of the road — a virtual safety car would’ve meant Hamilton could pit and jump Raikkonen, though the VSC was ultimately not triggered — and partly to give him a greater tyre offset against Raikkonen.

The Briton was brought in at the end of lap 28, just in time for Raikkonen to catch new race leader Valtteri Bottas, who hadn’t yet stopped. Mercedes directed Bottas to keep his compatriot behind him at all costs, which allowed Hamilton to make up his six-second deficit in just four laps.

By the time Bottas made his own pit stop at the end of lap 35, Raikkonen had cooked his softs, with blisters erupting on his left-rear tyre. His lap times improved in the clear air, but his defence on the worn rubber lasted only nine laps. Hamilton scythed past on lap 45 and sprinted into the distance.

Bottas’s deployment as a road block hampered his own race, dropping him into fourth behind Max Verstappen after his stop. Though he was substantially faster, Verstappen defended hard — too hard, in fact, earning himself a five-second penalty that lost the Dutchman the place to Bottas anyway.

Vettel also gained a place through Verstappen’s penalty. The German switched to the soft tyre at the end of lap one when he stopped for a new front wing. It gave Ferrari the opportunity to attempt to run to the end, but the tyre was put through too much stress as Vettel scythed his way through the midfield and blistered, requiring a change on lap 36.

FORCE INDIA GOES LONG, SAINZ POWERLESS

The midfield battle was particularly close all weekend but was ultimately decided along engine lines.

Carlos Sainz was a good example of the power disparity, the Spaniard starting seventh but finishing ninth on the road — eighth after Romain Grosjean was disqualified — after losing places to Esteban Ocon and Sergio Perez, who started eighth and 14th.

Ocon made his way past the Renault on lap 18 for sixth, and it took Perez until only until lap 24 to catch and pass Sainz for seventh. Carlos was powerless to defend down Monza’s long straights.

All three drivers went long on the supersoft tyres, with Ocon taking his set to lap 38 and Perez and Sainz stopping one lap later. Perez’s pace was especially impressive given the Mexican’s starting position — he was within three seconds of Ocon when the two made their pit stops despite his car carrying damage from a lap-one skirmish with Kevin Magnussen.

GROSJEAN PRE-EMPTED UNDERCUT

Romain Grosjean’s 2018 renaissance continued with strong sixth-place qualification and finish, notwithstanding his car being disqualified for a technical infringement after the race.

Grosjean ran a conventional strategy, stopping for a new set of soft tyres on lap 23 anticipating an Ocon undercut. When Ocon went long, Grosjean was forced to knuckle down for a long series of consistent laps on the slower tyre to ensure his compatriot wouldn’t jump him when Force India brought him in.

The result was a satisfying four-second buffer, which was enough to stave off Ocon’s late-race assault on the position despite the tyre offset — though it all counted for nought after his disqualification.

Tyre data

Courtesy of Pirelli Motorsport