2 Jul 2018

Race 9 – 71 Laps – 4.318km per lap – 306.452km race distance – medium tyre wear

Austrian GP F1 Strategy Report Podcast – our host Michael Lamonato is joined by Abhishek Takle – F1 journalist.

VERSTAPPEN WINS AUSTRIAN RACE OF ATTRITION

Red Bull Racing was an unlikely victor of its home race at the Red Bull Ring, where technical failures and blistering tyres the hitherto dominant Mercedes cars.

It was a trying day for the Silver Arrows, with both cars retiring from the race, though not before the team had managed to make a series of tactical blunders that conspired to rob Lewis Hamilton of what could have been an easy win.

THE BACKGROUND

The Austrian Grand Prix is not the shortest lap by length but it is the quickest — Valtteri Bottas’s pole position time was just 63 seconds, and race pace wasn’t much slower.

The Red Bull Ring is obviously a fast circuit, then, but more important strategically is that it features no particularly fast or slow corners nor especially long straights and its asphalt is relatively smooth, which means tyre degradation and wear are low.

There were some concerns about graining after Friday practice on the ultrasoft tyres, however, partly because the overcast conditions kept the track cool — though the warmer, sunnier conditions on Sunday turned this predicted feature of the race on its head.

QUALIFYING

As was the case at the French Grand Prix, Ferrari stuck with the ultrasoft tyres while Mercedes and Red Bull Racing used the supersoft compound in Q2, meaning they’d start the race on the more durable compound, giving Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton some added flexibility and the opportunity to avoid graining.

Pirelli, however, predicted little difference in the two compounds and forecast the race to be a straightforward one-stop with a wide window for pit stops from and to any of the three tyres.

Where the ultrasofts did have an advantage was off the line, with the superior grip offering Kimi Raikkonen a chance to take the lead, though he ultimately couldn’t pass either Mercedes.

THE DECISIVE MOMENT

“We asked Dietrich if he could turn the heater up for Sunday, which he duly did!” said Christian Horner, explaining away Mercedes’s inferior management of its tyres in the warm weather, but his joke rang true in the sense that the weather played a decisive factor in taking the win away from Hamilton.

Under the sunny Austrian skies track temperatures skyrocketed, which promoted debilitating blistering in all compounds — but this alone wasn’t enough to rob Hamilton of what could’ve been an easy win in his own right.

The trigger was Valtteri Bottas losing hydraulic pressure and sopping by the side of the road on lap 14, causing a virtual safety car under which all four Ferrari and Red Bull Racing drivers pitted for new tyres. Hamilton did not.

Almost immediately Mercedes admitted it had been an own goal. Hamilton’s fresher-shod rivals began closing in, guaranteeing the Briton would drop places on his first pit stop, which came on lap 25.

This was compounded by the blistering the appeared on his new soft tyres, which force him to stop a second time on lap 52, putting him firmly out of victory contention before a fuel pressure problem forced him out of the race.

Ricciardo also had blistering issues, forcing him to make a second stop on lap 38 — he later retired with exhaust problems — but noteworthy was that Verstappen, now in the lead, and neither Ferrari driver were suffering blistering to the same extent.

Ferrari was confident of having superior tyre wear — the Scuderia has often been gentler on Pirelli rubber — whereas Verstappen had the benefit of running in clear air for most of the race, a benefit not accorded to Ricciardo or Hamilton.

DECISIONS FOR FERRARI

Ferrari’s approach to attempting to relieve Verstappen of his lead and score maximum points hinged on two questions: when to push and in which order their cars should finish.

At around lap 55 Ferrari gave Raikkonen the all-clear to unleash his car’s pace on the Dutchman, who was nursing his tyres after the team had informed him of Ricciardo’s problems. Presumably the call was based on an assessment that fuel and tyres would last the distance, but would an aggressive earlier push, even if conservation was required late in the race, have been enough to force Verstappen into blistering his tyres in the same way Ricciardo had?

Perhaps of more import in the championship fight, however, is that Vettel finished behind Raikkonen despite the latter being only an outside chance for the title. Vettel emerged from the race with a one-point lead, but it could have been four points had Raikkonen surrendered second place to his teammate. Whether those points play a part come Abu Dhabi will be fascinating to find out.

PITTING UNDER VSC SAVED TIME

Haas and Force India split their strategies, with Romain Grosjean and Esteban Ocon pitting under VSC conditions while Magnussen and Perez continued until laps 28 and 27 respectively. Those who stopped during the favourable VSC conditions, when cars are slowed to a predefined delta time, saved time not available to those who made their tyres changes at what would otherwise have been the optimal window.

SAUBER USES TEAMWORK

Charles Leclerc started from 17th with a gearbox penalty and dropped to 19th after a trip through the gravel on lap two, but he recovered to finish impressively in ninth thanks in equal parts to retirements, being out of position amongst slower cars and pitting under the VSC.

His teammate, Charles Leclerc, also executed a strong race. He started from 18th and used the contrastrategy — starting on softs and going long, to lap 45, before changing to supersoft — to end the race on the faster tyre to attack for position, delivering him 10th place.

Leclerc surrendered ninth place to his teammate to attack Fernando Alonso in eighth place, but when the Swede couldn’t get the job done on the McLaren, the pair switched back.

Tyre data

Courtesy of Pirelli Motorsport

25 Jun 2018

Race 8 – 53 Laps – 5.842km per lap – 309.690km race distance – low tyre wear

French GP F1 Strategy Report Podcast – our host Michael Lamonato is joined by Matt Clayton – Editor from Red Bull Motorsport

HAMILTON WIN, VETTEL RECOVERY ILLUSTRATES BATTLE OF TWO TIERS

The return of the French Grand Prix after a decade off the calendar delivered the sort of straightforward race many predicted ahead of the race at Circuit Paul Ricard.

Sebastian Vettel and Valtteri Bottas’s lap-one crash, dropping both to the back, was a blessing and a curse — on the one hand it created some precious overtaking opportunities as the two recovered places, but it also robbed the race of what could have been an interesting tactical duel.

THE BACKGROUND

Mercedes brought an upgraded power unit to France after delaying its introduction at the previous race in Canada, and the extra two weeks allowed engineers to squeeze some extra power out of the specification, which was useful around Circuit Paul Ricard’s fast and sweeping bends.

Working Mercedes’s favour too was that the circuit’s surface characteristics were similar to those found at the Spanish Grand Prix, which the Silver Arrows dominated.

Pirelli brought the same thin-tread tyres to this race — in soft, supersoft and ultrasoft format — which Ferrari struggled with in Spain to Mercedes’s advantage. All things combined, Mercedes was looking good to record its first win since May.

QUALIFYING

Mercedes topped all three practice sessions and segments of qualifying, with Lewis Hamilton leading Valtteri Bottas for a front-row lockout.

As is becoming the norm, the strategic battle at the front is in part decided by tyre choice in Q2, which top-10 drivers must start the race on. Mercedes and Red Bull Racing opted for supersofts — rain was forecast for the race, meaning a longer first stint might have allowed a direct switch to wet-weather tyres — but Ferrari, knowing it needed something to differentiate itself from Mercedes if it was to take on the dominant team, opted to start on ultrasofts.

THE DECISIVE MOMENT

The French Grand Prix’s most important moment wasn’t a tactical decision but a crash between Sebastian Vettel and Valtteri Bottas at the first turn. Vettel executed an excellent start, but his speed only boxed him onto the apex with Lewis Hamilton ahead and Bottas to the right. He locked up and knocked the Finn off the road, damaging both cars in an incident that later earnt him a five-second penalty.

Both drivers switched to the soft tyre, the most durable of the weekend, in an attempt to make it to the end of the race without another stop.

Astounding was the speed with which that Vettel scythed through the field. His car repaired, he took just 14 laps to climb from 17th to fifth behind teammate Kimi Raikkonen. Bottas made slower progress due to damage to his car.

It served to illustrate how fast the frontrunning cars are if only they unleashed their pace — but both also suffered for having to thrash their tyres.

There was a momentary stand-off between Ferrari and Mercedes. Ferrari didn’t want to pit Vettel he would have emerged from pit lane behind Bottas, who was then in sixth. Mercedes blinked first, hoping fresher tyres would solidify Bottas’s chances of jumping the driver who knocked him out of podium contention, but a rear jack failure meant the stop was much longer than usual — so much so that Vettel was able to pit and maintain position ahead of the Finn. Bottas finished the race seventh.

As an interesting point on the duo’s recovery, Vettel noted that the relative ease of overtaking was partly due to a strong headwind down the back straight which made slipstreaming and the DRS more effective.

ZERO-STOP DIDN’T WORK

The ‘zero-stop’ strategy employed by Vettel, Bottas, Fernando Alonso, Lance Stroll and Sergey Sirotkin — stopping on the first lap behind the safety car in an attempt to make it to the end — was attractive because degradation was low, but wear remained high thanks in part to the aerodynamically demanding nature of parts of the track and Pirelli’s thinner tread.

The dangers of pushing tyres too far was boldly illustrated by Stroll, who locked up his front-left tyre late in the race so significantly that it failed a few laps from the finish, pitching him off the track.

Sirotkin was the only driver to take the chequered flag without making a change after lap one, with Fernando Alonso having made a lap-46 change to new ultrasoft tyres in an attempt to record the fastest lap. Unfortunately for him, his suspension failed and he was forced to retire from the race, albeit classified P16.

TYRES LAST LONGER THAN EXPECTED

An increasingly defining characteristic of 2018 racing is that drivers — or perhaps teams — are unwilling to push the maximum of their performance envelopes. This is partly down to managing their power units, of which each driver has only three for the entire 21-race season, but it is also thanks to overtaking being particularly difficult in the current aerodynamics-heavy regulatory era.

The French Grand Prix was tipped to feature little overtaking thanks to its relative lack of heavy braking zones. This combined with the Circuit Paul Ricard’s long pit lane, the speed limit for which was reduced to 60 kilometres per hour due to the nature of the bend on pit entry that potentially put the Mercedes garage in a perilous situation were a car to lose control there, meant teams were predisposed to stop just once and therefore order their drivers to eke out the maximum life from their tyres.

Kimi Raikkonen’s 34-lap stint on ultrasofts, the softest and least durable tyre of the weekend, is a case in point. His teammate, Sebastian Vettel, was able to extract just five extra laps from his soft compounds, the most durable of the range, because he was forced to push flat out after the safety car to recover position.

Aerodynamics, not the tyres, is the limiting factor in racing.

Tyre data

Courtesy of Pirelli Motorsport

12 Jun 2018

Race 7 – 68 Laps – 4.361km per lap – 296.584km race distance – medium tyre wear

Canadian GP F1 Strategy Report Podcast – our host Michael Lamonato is joined by Ernie Black – the F1 Poet

VETTEL VICTORIOUS IN MANAGEMENT-FOCUSSED CANADIAN GRAND PRIX

Sebastian Vettel cruised to pole position on Saturday to take an effortless lights-to-flag victory on Sunday, besting Mercedes at a circuit the German marque previously considered a fortress.

But what was tipped to be an action-packed race turned into a fizzer when the vast majority of the field committed to a one-stop strategy despite Pirelli supplying its softest tyres for the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

THE BACKGROUND

The hypersoft compound made its second appearance of the season after its Monaco debut two weeks ago and was expected to be given a more rigorous workout at a circuit closer to the norm than the slow and twisty Monte Carlo streets.

While the pink-walled tyre once again delivered a significant advance in grip, it proved sufficiently unpopular as a race tyre that Mercedes and Ferrari wanted to avoid using it on Sunday, expecting degradation to be too great to offer strategic flexibility — indeed Mercedes had brought enough sets only for qualifying.

The weekend also featured new engine specification from Ferrari, Renault and Honda. Mercedes intended to bring a new specification to the power-sensitive circuit too but discovered a “quality issue” at the factory and made the decision on the Wednesday before the race to stick with its season debut units for the seventh race in a row.

QUALIFYING

As expected, Ferrari and Mercedes used the ultrasoft tyre in Q2 in order to start the race on the middle compound and avoid racing with the brittle hypersoft. Red Bull Racing, however, committed to the hypersoft as the race start tyre for both Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo, banking on the excellent usage it got from it in Monaco to benefit it in Canada.

Vettel set two laps in Q3 good enough for pole, ultimately holding a margin of 0.093 seconds over Valtteri Bottas. Mercedes’s delayed second-specification power unit was estimated to be worth a tenth of a second or more, leaving some to wonder what could have been.

THE DECISIVE MOMENT

The battle of position amongst the top six was only alive at two key moments in the grand prix and was settled relatively early.

The first flashpoint was Daniel Ricciardo’s advance on Lewis Hamilton for fourth after the Australian had jumped Kimi Raikkonen for fifth on the first lap. Hamilton’s power unit was suffering from overheating, making him particularly vulnerable, and he was forced to make an early lap-16 stop to open some cooling, taking a new set of supersoft tyres in the process.

Ricciardo unleashed the pace that had been bottled while stuck behind Hamilton, setting two purple sectors and pitting at the end of lap 17. It was enough to emerge from the pits ahead of the Briton, claiming net fourth place.

Kimi Raikkonen, who had moved up to third after Ricciardo, Hamilton and Max Verstappen made their early stops, had the opportunity to get ahead of Hamilton too when he made his stop on lap 32.

A pit stop is worth around 18 seconds in Montreal — Ricciardo had more than a 19-second buffer before emerging one second ahead of Hamilton — and Raikkonen a touch more than the requisite time, but Hamilton had a tow from Ricciardo and Sirotkin down the back and pit straights that helped him fractionally overcome Raikkonen for fifth place.

LOST POINTS FOR FORCE INDIA

Esteban Ocon took home two points for ninth place but rightly felt entitled to Nico Hulkenberg’s seventh place, having jumped the German on the first lap — but the Frenchman’s pit stop was slowed by a rear jack problem that cost him places to Hulkenberg and also Carlos Sainz in the second Renault. He finished just one second adrift from the Renault pair.

Sergio Perez likewise could’ve scored big points, but the Mexican tangled with Sainz at the safety car restart, bumping wheels with the Spaniard and dropping a swag of place as he ran wide at turn one. Force India put him on a two stop in an attempt to recover place, but to no real avail — and to add insult to injury, he was stripped of the 13th place he took from Kevin Magnussen thanks to the chequered flag being waved a lap early.

ALONSO ENDURES FORGETTABLE 300TH GRAND PRIX

Fernando Alonso had his sights set low for Canada, but being outqualified by a Sauber and retiring early were probably not features in even his pessimistic forecast.

The Spanish veteran was rightly disappointed to find his McLaren wasn’t quick enough to qualify ahead of Sauber’s Charles Leclerc, with whom he battle in the opening stint of the race until he successfully undercut the Monegasque with a lap-18 stop before retiring on lap 40 with a power unit problem.

PIERRE GASLY AND ROMAIN GROSJEAN GO LONG FROM THE BACK

Pierre Gasly and Romain Grosjean started from 19th and 20th on the grid thanks to various power unit problems, but both climbed up the order to 11th and 12th with diverse strategies.

Gasly used what looks like an affinity with Pirelli’s hypersoft tyre — he executed an extremely impressive 37-lap stint on the pink tyres in Monaco — to set competitive times on the softest rubber for the opening 23 laps before pitting, the longest first stint amongst his midfield rivals bar Grosjean.

It left the Frenchman 12th, which turned into 11th after Alonso’s retirement.

Grosjean, alternatively, took his ultrasofts to lap 48, banking on the statistical likelihood of a safety car to make a free stop from what was at the time ninth place. The crash never came, however, forcing him to stop and drop to P12.

Tyre data

Courtesy of Pirelli Motorsport

30 May 2018

Race 6 – 78 Laps – 3.337km per lap – 260.268km race distance – medium tyre wear

Monaco GP F1 Strategy Report Podcast – our host Michael Lamonato is joined by Laurence Edmondson ESPN F1 editor

RICCIARDO CONQUERS MONACO AT SLOWEST POSSIBLE SPEED

Daniel Ricciardo recorded a gutsy win in Monaco despite losing his MGU-K, worth around 120 kilowatts, on lap 18, leaving him more than 20 kilometres per hour down on straight-line speed compared to second-placed Sebastian Vettel.

His route to victory added some much-needed tension to the usual predictability of the Monaco Grand Prix, which turned on the ability of teams to master the tyre compounds on the resurfaced street circuit.

THE BACKGROUND

Pirelli debuted its hypersoft tyre in Monaco, the softest tyre it has ever produced for Formula One, alongside the ultrasoft and supersoft compounds. Teams stocked up on the hypersoft — all drivers had seven sets remaining after Thursday practice but just one set of each of the harder compounds — on the basis it is a substantially faster compound and on the assumption it would last the majority of the race given the uniquely undemanding Circuit de Monaco profile.

However, practice suggested this wasn’t the case, with the hypersoft having a limited life span and requiring more management to be effective. Pirelli estimated drivers starting on the hypersoft — in other worst those who qualify in the top 10 — would have to change off the pink-striped tyre by around lap 15.

It left midfield drivers in the top 10 potentially vulnerable to those starting just outside the top 10 on one of the more durable compounds, which offered more flexibility for a race in which the timing of a pit stop can be crucial in the ultimate result.

QUALIFYING

Mercedes attempted to make it into the top-10 shootout with the ultrasoft tyre in order to start on the compound, but the tyre was far too slow compared to the hypersoft to pull it off.

Daniel Ricciardo took pole ahead of Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel and Mercedes’s Lewis Hamilton, but whereas Kimi Raikkonen and Valtteri Bottas followed for Ferrari and Mercedes respectively, Ricciardo’s Red Bull Racing teammate, Max Verstappen, had crashed at the end of free practice three, causing too much damage to be repaired in time to take part in qualifying, leaving the Dutchman to start from the back.

THE DECISIVE MOMENT

Daniel Ricciardo led the top five away from the line in grid order — his first hurdle — meaning the only likely way he would be usurped for the lead was strategically.

Lewis Hamilton was the first to pit on lap 12 in an attempt to undercut Vettel and Ricciardo, but warm-up on the ultrasoft tyre was so difficult he actually lost time to his rivals. Vettel waited until lap 16 to stop, and Ricciardo, Raikkonen and Bottas followed on the next lap to cover each other off.

There was no change of order, however, and Mercedes was the only team to split its strategies, putting Bottas on the supersoft tyre. It turned out to be the superior compound in the middle of the race, but not enough for the Finn to pass his compatriot Kimi Raikkonen for fourth.

Were it not for the power unit problems, Ricciardo was essentially home by this point, but given his lack of engine performance, a safety car would’ve presented him with a new challenge. Vettel and Hamilton, for example, may have stopped for fresh tyres to give themselves a greater pace advantage with which they could attempt to force the issue on the Australian. Fortunately for him, no safety car was required.

THE CONTRA STRATEGY

Nico Hulkenberg and Max Verstappen used the reverse strategy — starting on the ultrasoft to end the race with a blast on the hypersoft tyre on low fuel — worked a treat for both, earning them three and eleven places respectively, though Verstappen’s move up the grid was also down to a series of overtaking moves in the first stint.

Hulkenberg was up to sixth when he made his lap-50 stop, dropping behind Pierre Gasly; Fernando Alonso, who retired; and his teammate, Carlos Sainz, who let him past without fuss.

Verstappen dropped from ninth to 11th after his lap-47 stop and need to pass only Sainz, which he did shortly after Hulkenberg scythed past, finish ninth once Alonso’s McLaren stopped with a gearbox problem.

GASLY GOES LONG

Pierre Gasly finished s superb seventh after pushing his hypersoft tyres an impressive 37 laps for his opening stint. The Toro Rosso driver was up to sixth when he made his stop, which dropped him behind Ocon, Alonso, Hulkenberg and Verstappen. The latter two hadn’t made their stops yet and fell behind once they did, and Alonso’s retirement promoted him to P7 to score some impressive points.

FORCE INDIA vs McLAREN

Force India’s Esteban Ocon started sixth and spent most of the race battling McLaren’s Fernando Alonso before he retired before taking the chequered flag in his qualifying position.

Alonso attempted to undercut Ocon by pitting first on lap 19, and he was aided in his question by teammate Stoffel Vandoorne, who lamented after the race that he had been left out longer than his chief rivals at the time — Charles Leclerc, Brendon Hartley and Kevin Magnussen — just to hold up Max Verstappen to allow Alonso to emerge from pits ahead of the Dutchman.

It gave Alonso the chance to maximise his pace on the new tyres, but it wasn’t enough, with Ocon emerging from pits still ahead of the Spaniard after a lap-23 stop.

Ocon was clever in maximising his race time, allowing Hamilton to breeze past him out of the tunnel on lap 13 after the Briton had made his stop — a futile defence against a faster car might’ve been enough to reverse that one-second margin he held on Alonso after his own stop.

Sergio Perez had a difficult afternoon after his first pit stop, which was slow and dropped him behind Brendon Hartley, Charles Leclerc and Marcus Ericsson when he should’ve been battling with Carlos Sainz, who was four places up the road.

Nathan Harper

Tyre data

Courtesy of Pirelli Motorsport