29 Aug 2018

Race 13 – 44 Laps – 7.004km per lap – 308.052km race distance – medium tyre wear

Belgian GP F1 Strategy Report Podcast – our host Michael Lamonato is joined by Sean Kelly – the Virtual Statman

VETTEL POWERS TO IMPORTANT BELGIAN GRAND PRIX VICTORY

Sebastian Vettel recorded a crucial win at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, breaking Mercedes’s stranglehold on the Belgian race and trimming his championship deficit to Lewis Hamilton down to 17 points.

The vanquished Hamilton lamented that he was powerless to repel the resurgent Vettel despite starting from pole position, and the Briton called on his team to find more engine power or greater chassis performance to overcome Ferrari’s confident pace advantage at the head of the field.

THE BACKGROUND

Ferrari arrived at the Belgian Grand Prix knowing it had been a Mercedes fortress since the introduction of the 2014 turbo-hybrid power unit regulations. The Silver Arrows was peerless at the flat-our circuit, owning all four pole positions and winning all bar the 2014 race, which it gifted to Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo after Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton crashed into each other on the second lap.

Mercedes brought its third and final power unit upgrade to Spa in an attempt to maintain its streak, but so too did Ferrari bring an updated engine. The Italian team dominated free practice, suggesting it had kept its nose ahead in the power stakes, and it exhibited superior long-run pace to boot.

QUALIFYING

Rain undid Ferrari and Vettel’s victory chances in Germany and Hungary before the midseason break, with Sebastian crashing out in the rain-affected German Grand Prix and missing out on the vital pole position in Budapest one week later.

The German therefore would’ve been extremely disappointed to see his car’s certain pace advantage washed away for the third race weekend in succession when a brief but heavy deluge flooded the track just in time for Q3. Hamilton duly claimed pole position.

Ferrari still emerged with a marginal advantage, however, with Kimi Raikkonen qualifying sixth — the Finn hadn’t been sufficiently fuelled to complete a final lap in the chaos of the sudden arrival of rain — whereas Valtteri Bottas in the second Mercedes was to start from 17th with a power unit penalty.

The Scuderia would have the tactical advantage of squeezing Hamilton between two strategies — or at least that was the plan.

SLIPSTREAM STRATEGY

Carnage unfolded on the first lap, with Nico Hulkenberg rear-ending Fernando Alonso, who then careered into Charles Leclerc and catapulted into the air, smashing through Daniel Ricciardo’s rear wing as he thudded back down to earth. Ricciardo then nudged into Raikkonen, who picked up a puncture that resulted in race-ending damage to his car. All five retired before the end of the race.

That left Vettel strategically on his own, but he was already wresting control from Hamilton further up the road. He slipstreamed the Mercedes along the Kemmel straight and got the job done in the braking zone.

He was only threatened thereafter twice: first on the safety car restart, which Hamilton botched by getting too punchy too early at the bus stop, putting him out of slipstream range for the first turn, and at the sole pit stop window.

HAMILTON’S UNDERCUT

Mercedes pulled the undercut trigger on lap 21 with a 3.498 -second deficit to Vettel. On new soft tyres Hamilton set two purple sectors on his out-lap, applying pressure to the race leader.

Vettel was ordered to pit at the end of the next lap, and he bettered Hamilton’s in-lap by half a second. His pit crew got his tyres changed in 0.482 seconds faster than Mercedes executed Hamilton’s stop, and he emerged from pit lane 1.359 seconds ahead of Hamilton.

It was a solid effort from team and driver to stave off the threat.

As a hypothetical, had the two pit stops run to the same time, Vettel’s advantage would’ve been only 0.877 seconds, which would’ve made Vettel’s in lap and Verstappen’s presence on track the two defining elements of the pit stop window.

A QUIET TOP 10

The battle inside the top 10 was fairly sedate in Belgium once Vettel had gotten the job done on Hamilton. Valtteri Bottas made his irresistible climb to the tail of the frontrunners, as he was expected to do with machinery vastly superior to that employed by the midfielders, but there was little racing to be had between teammates at Force India and Haas, with Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon leading home Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen.

The battle for ninth and 10th was an exception, however, with Pierre Gasly battling with Marcus Ericsson for the minor points-paying places.

Gasly was theoretically disadvantaged by his Honda power unit when compared with Ericsson’s Ferrari motor, but the Frenchman had the advantage of track position.

Ericsson, having qualified outside the top 10, had the advantage of starting on the soft tyre, however, meaning he would switch onto the fast supersoft for his final stint. Gasly, having started 10th, would be forced to do the opposite.

By half distance Ericsson was well within undercut range, but the Toro Rosso pit wall saw a strategic opportunity to extinguish the threat. On lap 25 Gasly was brought in, pre-empting Sauber’s undercut.

The Frenchman dropped to 11th behind teammate Brendon Hartley, who duly let him past. Ericsson, who had little choice but to follow suit, made his own stop on lap 26. He likewise fell behind the Kiwi, but this time Hartley obstinately defended for two laps, costing Ericsson precious seconds and the best of his new tyres.

Gasly was eight seconds up the road by the time Ericsson muscled his way through, and he maintained the gap the chequered flag.

SAINZ STRUGGLES WITHOUT SOFTS

Carlos Sainz, starting from P19 with new power unit elements, suffered a difficult afternoon on the third medium-supersoft strategy. Stoffel Vandoorne was the only other driver to use the medium compound, and neither driver fared well.

Sainz’s progress was tortuous. He made it past Brendon Hartley’s Honda-powered Toro Rosso at the restart on lap five, but he went to lap 21 stuck behind Lance Stroll’s Mercedes-powered Williams, lacking the tyre grip and engine performance to make a move.

An undercut onto the supersoft tyre got him ahead of the Canadian, but he was thereafter stuck behind Stoffel Vandoorne for three laps and then the second Williams of Sergey Sirotkin for another six laps before breaking into clear air in 11th place on lap 33, by which time he was too far away from the top 10 to make an impact on the point-paying places.

Tyre data

Courtesy of Pirelli Motorsport

31 Jul 2018

Race 12 – 70 Laps – 4.381km per lap – 306.630km race distance – medium tyre wear

Hungarian GP F1 Strategy Report Podcast – our host Michael Lamonato is joined by Phill Tromans from the “For F1’s Sake” Podcast

HOW TEAMWORK DECIDED THE HUNGARIAN GRAND PRIX

After scrappy races in Austria and Britain, Mercedes maximised its points haul in unlikely circumstances in Germany and now Hungary, where Lewis Hamilton beat Sebastian Vettel to victory despite racing the slower car of the two.

Rain played its part in Budapest, but of great significance too was “wingman” Bottas and his Finnish Ferrari counterpart Kimi Raikkonen, whose strategies were central to Vettel’s assault on the lead.

THE BACKGROUND

Mercedes expected before the race that it would be closer to Ferrari thanks to the twisty nature of the Hungaroring taking away emphasis on power, which has become the Scuderia’s domain in recent races.

Friday practice, however, suggested that the Silver Arrows had the slowest car in the three-way fight between itself, Ferrari and Red Bull Racing, particularly in the hot Hungarian conditions which made managing the rear tyres — a weakness of Mercedes, particularly in the softer compounds — a real challenge.

QUALIFYING

Qualifying, however, was a decisive factor, when heavy rain arrived from the end of Q1 and persisted through to the end of the afternoon. In the wet Ferrari lost its advantage — maintaining temperature in the wet-weather compounds is understood to have been the problem — and Mercedes locked out the front row.

It set up an intriguing battle for the race given the top 10 had free tyre choice and Ferrari, the faster car in dry conditions, would be behind the slower Mercedes cars.

THE DECISIVE MOMENT

Ferrari split its strategies, starting Raikkonen from P3 on the ultrasoft and Vettel from P4 on the soft, the optimal result being an aggressive Vettel with his longer-life rubber forcing Mercedes into chewing through its tyres too early, allowing him to then end the race with the fast tyre himself when tyre wear would be lower.

Bottas in second place was Hamilton’s de facto number two in this race, defending the Briton from Ferrari and allowing him to build a gap, which was up to 4.5 seconds after 10 laps.

Ferrari deployed Raikkonen to distract Bottas. Ferrari stopped its Finn on lap 14, triggering Mercedes to do the same with Valtteri the following lap. It cleared the way for Vettel to challenge Hamilton’s lead directly.

However, the ultrasoft was holding up better than expected, allowing Hamilton to keep a buffer until around lap 22, when his tyres started losing their edge. Mercedes switched him to softs on lap 25, handing Vettel the lead.

The next 14 laps decided the race. Hamilton’s new softs were more than a match for Vettel’s old ones, but so long as the German could stay ahead of Bottas after his stop, he could use his fresh ultrasofts at the end of the race to challenge for the lead.

Choosing the time to pit, however, was tricky. Hamilton showed 25 laps was possible on the ultrasofts, and the Ferrari had better tyre wear and would be on lower fuel. A 30-lap stint ought to have been possible, but with 35 laps to go Bottas started recovering from his 25-second deficit to Vettel.

Ferrari pulled the trigger on lap 39, but by then Vettel had only 20.708 seconds on Bottas for a 21-second pit stop thanks to his slow navigation through backmarkers. With the addition of Valtteri setting the then fastest lap of the race and Ferrari executing a slow pit stop, Sebastian emerged from pit lane behind both Mercedes cars in third.

Even with ultrasoft tyres Vettel couldn’t make an impression on Bottas, and by the time the Finn’s substantially older soft-compound tyres gave in on lap 65, allowing the Ferrari to get past, what had been a nine-second deficit to Hamilton after his pit stop had ballooned to 24 seconds, guaranteeing Lewis’s win.

BOTTAS “A SENSATIONAL WINGMAN”

Bottas had done his job protecting Hamilton and Mercedes’s victory, but it came at the expense of his own race. His soft-tyre stint was a mammoth 55 laps, and he lost places in the final five laps not only to Vettel and Raikkonen but to the recovering Daniel Ricciardo as well, finishing fifth.

“A sensational wingman” is how Mercedes boss Toto Wolff described Bottas after the race, to which Bottas appeared to take offence, the words coming off as sounding as though he had been confined to the number-two position on the driver roster. Wolff later clarified he meant the comments only in the context of this race, but there’s no doubt that with an 81-point deficit Bottas will be called to wingman duty for the rest of the season, just as Raikkonen was for Vettel this weekend.

McLAREN SCORES POINTS WITH AMBITIOUS FIRST STINT

Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne qualified 11th and 15th respectively and by lap 15 had stabilised to 12th and 13th behind both Renaults, both Toro Rossos and both Haas cars.

Given the difficulty of overtaking, McLaren opted to put both drivers on long first stints, getting Alonso to lap 39 and Vandoorne to lap 40, in an attempt to avoid falling behind slower cars.

When Nico Hulkenberg, Brendon Hartley, Carlos Sainz, Romain Grosjean, Kevin Magnussen and Pierre Gasly all stopped between laps 23 and 32 — Gasly had a big enough buffer not to fall behind either McLaren — Alonso and Vandoorne were able to make up track position, rising to seventh and eighth.

The secret ingredient for McLaren was Esteban Ocon, who had qualified 17th and was attempting a similar strategy. The Frenchman rose to ninth ahead of the early stoppers but was substantially slower on the soft tyre than Alonso and Vandoorne, meaning he ended up protecting them from the other midfielders to such an extent both McLarens were able to stop without losing position.

Magnussen wasn’t caught behind Ocon, however, and therefore recovered P7 when the McLarens stopped, and Vandoorne’s gearbox failure meant only Alonso was able to reap any points from the strategy with his eighth-place finish.

ULTRASOFTS WERE BETTER THAN EXPECTED

The longevity of the ultrasoft compound was a key theme in Hungary. Hamilton took the compound 25 laps in his opening stint, but Pierre Gasly and Kevin Magnussen took their sets 32 and 31 laps respectively.

Brendon Hartley, who was running ninth before his stop, said after the race he was disappointed the team reacted to Nico Hulkenberg, who had been 10th, stopping on lap 23. The Kiwi was taken off the ultrasofts and onto the slow medium-compound tyre one lap later.

Romain Grosjean, who had been 11th as Hulkenberg and Hartley stopped ahead of him, was able to unleash the pace still in his ultrasoft tyres until lap 29, when he made his own stop and emerged ahead of both to steal the final point of the race from the Toro Rosso.

Tyre data

Courtesy of Pirelli Motorsport

24 Jul 2018

Race 11 – 67 Laps – 4.574km per lap – 306.458km race distance – medium tyre wear

German GP F1 Strategy Report Podcast – our host Michael Lamonato is joined by Lawrence Barretto, Formula1.com Senior Writer

HAMILTON HOLDS HIS NERVE TO WIN FROM 14TH ON THE GRID

The 2018 German Grand Prix was decided by wet weather, but ironically it was those who stuck with slick tyres that proved the biggest winners, including Lewis Hamilton, who stormed from 14th on the grid to lead a Mercedes one-two ahead of Valtteri Bottas after 67 laps.

But Hamilton didn’t have the superior strategy — in fact it was teammate Bottas, who would likely have won the race were it not for a team order to hold position during the frenetic final 10 laps of the grand prix.

THE BACKGROUND

The German Grand Prix was something of a leap into the unknown for Formula One. Not only had it not been to the Hockenheimring in two years, but Friday, Saturday and Sunday all featured dramatically different weather, with free practice conducted under baking heat, Saturday on a cooler track after heavy rain washed out FP3, and Sunday a combination of both, with the race starting warm and dry but ending in mixed conditions.

Whereas the ultrasoft tyre — the softest of the ultrasoft-soft-medium array brought by Pirelli — was blistering on Friday, it was operating ideally on Saturday, and by Sunday Pirelli was predicting an easy one-stop race with any combination of tyre.

The arrival of rain on Sunday afternoon was the overriding consideration in deciding the pit window, however, with big gains on offer for those who could time their pit stop with the need to switch to wet-weather tyres compared to those who would have to make a second stop. Flexibility, therefore, would be key.

QUALIFYING

Ferrari dominated qualifying, with Sebastian Vettel acing pole and Kimi Raikkonen qualifying third. Better still, Valtteri Bottas (P2) and Max Verstappen (P4) would be without strategic back-up, with Lewis Hamilton starting from P14 after a hydraulics leak took him out of qualifying and Daniel Ricciardo starting from P19 thanks to a power unit change penalty.

Their climb through the field would be a formality in faster machinery, which in some respects gave them a small strategic weapon: by starting on harder tyres, they could stretch their first stint far longer than their other top-six rivals, who would have to pit before lap 30 after starting on worn ultrasoft rubber.

If Hamilton and Ricciardo could get back into the top six after the leaders made their pit stop and in time for the rain, an unlikely win wasn’t out of the question — as indeed transpired to be the case for Hamilton, with Ricciardo forced into retirement with power unit troubles early in the race.

THE DECISIVE MOMENT

Lewis Hamilton’s success hinged on lap 52, when Sebastian Vettel’s crash in the rain triggered a safety car. The team, already committed to pitting Bottas, was torn between how it should handle Hamilton, who was third behind Kimi Raikkonen at the time.

The confusion is lovingly recreated here in the conversation between Hamilton and his race engineer, Peter Bonnington.

PB: “Box, box. Box, box. Get the gap. The gap to Valtteri — “

LH: “Kimi’s staying out!”

PB: “No, stay out! In, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in.”

Hamilton reacted to the first call to stay out, clambering over the grass dividing the pit entry and the track — he was reprimanded for it after the race — but had he stopped he would have ended up behind Bottas at the safety car restart on the same tyres and would therefore have likely finished there. Moreover, Ferrari might have opted not to pit Raikkonen on the following lap and instead hold track position in the lead, relegating Mercedes to second and third.

Instead, when Raikkonen pitted on the following lap it was Hamilton who inherited the lead and was therefore tasked with defending first place on his used tyres against Bottas and Raikkonen shod with fresh rubber.

Bottas attacked aggressively immediately while Hamilton struggled with tyre warm-up, but the Finn was quickly told to hold position, lowering blood pressure on the pit wall and allowing Hamilton to escape to victory.

A RACE DEFINED BY ANTICIPATION FOR RAIN

What put Hamilton in the position to manage the rain was his 42-lap opening stint on the soft tyre, having been hoping that rain would arrive somewhere during the middle phase of the race to effectively give him a free pit stop compared to those who had already made their first stop in dry conditions and would have to stop a second time for wet-weather rubber.

When rain arrived on lap 43, mere moments after he made a stop onto dry tyres, Hamilton appeared to have been supremely unlucky, but the rain was focussed only at turn six, meaning on balance his new ultrasoft tyres were the best option and his pit stop, somewhat fortuitously, the optimum strategy at the time.

The question was whether the rain would intensify.

THE CHANCE TO BE A HERO (OR ZERO)

Max Verstappen — then with nothing to lose, running ahead of only Hamilton and way ahead of the midfield — Pierre Gasly, Charles Leclerc and Fernando Alonso all stopped for intermediate tyres hoping that the rain would get worse and they’d end up big winners. The opposite came to pass, however, and the rain momentarily dried up.

All four returned to the pits for a costly additional stop between two and three laps later, eliminating all bar Verstappen from points contention.

However, the question was posed a second time only two laps later, on lap 50, when the rain became heavier and more widespread. It was enough to cause Vettel to crash, and the resulting safety car triggered another wave of pit stops.

Nico Hulkenberg, Romain Grosjean, Kevin Magnussen and Carlos Sainz all stopped for new intermediate tyres, assuming now that the rain was here to stay, but all four were forced back into the pits four laps later, still behind the safety car, for ultrasoft tyres after it became clear the rain wasn’t severe enough for wet-weather tyres.

Hulkenberg got away with it as the gap to the cars behind him hadn’t had time to close behind the safety car. Grosjean was less lucky, dropping from seventh to tenth, but his ultrasoft tyres allowed him to rocket past Brendon Hartley, Marcus Ericsson, Esteban Ocon and Sergio Perez, all of whom were running older tyres having not stopped for the rain.

Magnussen was the biggest loser, losing places in the slippery conditions and incorrectly stopping for intermediate tyres, falling from what could have been fifth place after Vettel’s retirement to 12th at the flag after his stops, albeit winning a place after a 10-second time penalty was handed to Sainz, who also suffered after switching to and from the intermediate tyre.

Tyre data

Courtesy of Pirelli Motorsport

11 Jul 2018

Race 10 – 54 Laps – 5.891km per lap – 306.198km race distance – medium tyre wear

British GP F1 Strategy Report Podcast – our host Michael Lamonato is joined by Zach Priest from  the Superlicense F1 Podcast.

VETTEL WINS IN HAMILTON’S HOUSE

Sebastian Vettel won his first British Grand Prix in nine years and Ferrari’s first in seven to break British hearts after pole-sitter Lewis Hamilton floundered off the line to squander his good Saturday work.

Hamilton recovered to second place, however, in a race that rapidly unfolded from a strategic game of cat and mouse into a four-way on-track duel in the final stint.

THE BACKGROUND

Silverstone was amongst Ferrari’s least competitive circuits last season, and over the past five years Mercedes had been able to turn it into a fortress, winning with Nico Rosberg in 2013 and Hamilton every year thereafter.

Mercedes seemed destined to extend its dominance after a power unit upgrade in France and a chassis update in Austria appeared to give it the upper hand in the battle with Ferrari, but the Scuderia brought aerodynamics upgrades of its own to England, putting on back on equal footing.

Pirelli brought its hard compound to a race for the first and almost certainly only time this season. Few teams brought more than one set of the blue-striped tyre given the usual cool climes of Northamptonshire, but clear skies and temperatures nudging 30°C sent track temperatures past 50°C for the weekend, bringing the hard tyre into contention for those with enough sets.

QUALIFYING

With around a second of raw pace difference between each compound, no-one used the medium in Q2 to attempt to have it as a race start tyre — and, in any case, the soft compound would almost certainly have to be used in the race at some point anyway.

Hamilton pipped Vettel to pole position, with Kimi Raikkonen third and Valtteri Bottas fourth. Red Bull Racing was a way off the pace in fifth and sixth, though both Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo has set up their cars for the race knowing the lack of power from the Renault engine would have them out of Saturday contention anyway.

THE DECISIVE MOMENT

While Vettel’s excellent start and Hamilton’s poor one is ultimately what put the Ferrari driver in a winning position, the podium was only decided on the track across the final 10 laps thanks to two safety cars.

The British Grand Prix was balanced between one and two stops if drivers stuck to only the soft and medium compounds, as almost all did. The first safety car on lap 32, triggered by Marcus Ericsson’s heavy crash at turn one, presented an ideal chance to make that second stop.

However, it also presented an opportunity: drivers who thought they could make it to the end of the race without making a second stop could stay out on their worn tyres and gain track position, which they would then have to defend for approximately 15 laps.

Second-placed Valtteri Bottas and fifth-placed Lewis Hamilton, having stopped on laps 21 and 25 respectively, were told to stay out, promoting them to first and third. The thinking was that had they simply done as Ferrari had and emerged from pits on soft tyres — and used softs at that, given Mercedes had no new soft sets left after using them in qualifying — neither Hamilton nor Bottas would have been able to make an impression on Raikkonen or Vettel in such evenly matched machinery.

Taking track position and attempting to defend was therefore a strategic gamble for victory rather than a conservative drive for points.

For a time everything was coming up Valtteri, the Finn impressively rebuffing Vettel’s aggressive advances, but by lap 47, his tyres now 26 laps old, Bottas ran out of grip. He not only ceded the win to Vettel, but he lost second to Hamilton and third to Raikkonen.

Hamilton, on the other hand, had tyres four lap younger than those on Bottas’s car, enabling him to secure second place, which is arguably the most he deserved after losing the lead with his slow start.

‘INTERESTING TACTICS’

At turn three Raikkonen was lining up a move to relieve Hamilton of fourth place, but the Finn locked his front-right tyre and careered into the Mercedes, sending Lewis tumbling to the back of the field. Kimi was handed a 10-second penalty for the error.

Hamilton, however, felt there was more at play, implying Raikkonen had hit him deliberately.

“Interesting tactics, I would say, from their side,” he said, and referring to the French Grand Prix in which Vettel hit Bottas at turn one, he added, “All I’ll say is there’s now two race the Ferraris have taken out one of the Mercedes.”

Though he didn’t attempt to row back his commentary in the post-race press conference, where both Vettel and Raikkonen dismissed his theory, he later used Instagram to call his crash with Raikkonen a “racing incident”.

RED BULL RACING AGGRESSION BACKFIRES

The Renault-powered Red Bull Racing team knew it couldn’t compete with Mercedes or Ferrari on one-lap at Silverstone, so the team went into the weekend fully focused on maximising performance in the race.

On lap 30 this took the shape of Ricciardo making a pre-emptive stop for new soft tyres from fourth place when the team saw that Raikkonen behind him seemed to be struggling on his worn mediums.

The team intended Ricciardo to use his superior pace on the new rubber to ensure Raikkonen would emerge from his pit stop behind the Australian, but the plan came undone when the first safety car was triggered only two laps later, allowing Raikkonen to stop effectively for free, relegating Ricciardo to finishing behind the Ferrari and Mercedes drivers.

HARD TYRE WORKS, JUST

In Austria Renault failed to score while midfield rival Haas maximised its points haul, so the French team wanted to ensure it scored heavily in Britain. The path to points was to guarantee a one-stop race by switching from the starting medium compound to the unfancied hard tyre at the first stop window.

For Hulkenberg it worked a treat after his lap-20 stop. Though the hard compound was around a second a lap slower than the medium, avoiding the need to make a second stop ensured the German remained ahead of the midfield to finish sixth.

Carlos Sainz was less competitive, however. He was stopped on lap 17 to undercut Esteban Ocon, but the Frenchman’s in an out-laps were almost two seconds quicker compared to those set by Sainz, who slowed when he emerged behind McLaren’s Fernando Alonso.

In some respects Ocon achieved what Sainz was attempting. The Force India driver emerged ahead of Alonso and just behind Stoffel Vandoorne, who entered the pits one lap later, giving the Force India driver the space he needed to nurse his medium tyres all the way to the end of the race.

Tyre data

Courtesy of Pirelli Motorsport