1 May 2018

Race 4 – 51 Laps – 6.003km per lap – 306.049km race distance – low tyre wear

Azerbaijan GP F1 Strategy Report Podcast – our host Michael Lamonato is joined by Chris Medland from Racer Magazine

BOTTAS STRATEGY GAMBLE COMES UNDONE IN BAKU

Valtteri Bottas should have won the Azerbaijan Grand Prix after executing a flawless weekend and pulling off a bold strategic gamble on the timing of his sole pit stop, but an errant bit of debris on the front straight undid his good work, causing a puncture so sudden and severe that he was forced to retire from the race altogether.

Instead Lewis Hamilton inherited victory on a day even the Briton admitted he wasn’t the best driver on the track, such is the unpredictable nature of the Baku City Circuit.

THE BACKGROUND

The Azerbaijan Grand Prix has shifted from its previous June calendar slot to the end of April, with a side-effect being substantially cooler weather and, at least on this weekend, far windier conditions.

The dusty, slippery circuit was made treacherous by peak gusts of up to 80 kilometres per hour on race day, and the alignment of the buildings meant the direction of the breeze was subject to sudden and surprising change.

Baku’s long front straight, low-degradation surface and lack of high-energy corners means tyre warm-up has always been difficult, but the cold weather made it even more so this year, with even the ultrasoft tyre, the compound with the lowest operating range of the selection brought to Azerbaijan experiencing graining due to lack of temperature.

Adding to the difficult was that the current soft tyre compound had ever appeared at this track in the past, meaning teams and drivers had their work cut out for them to master the circuit in time for the race.

QUALIFYING

The ultrasoft was quickly judged to be a poor race tyre, so Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull Racing attempted to qualify for Q3 with the supersoft, with only Kimi Raikkonen unable to do so.

Both Force India and both Renault drivers likewise started on ultrasofts in the top 10, with all other bottom-10 cars starting on the supersoft compound bar Brendon Hartley and Romain Grosjean, who started on softs.

THE DECISIVE MOMENT

Lewis Hamilton struggled to extend the life of his first set of tyres and was forced to change to new softs on lap 22, leaving Sebastian Vettel and Valtteri Bottas out in an unusual duel — the supersofts were lasting longer than expected, and both were considering extending long enough to switch to the faster ultrasoft tyre for a short stint at the end of the race.

Vettel blinked first, however, stopping on lap 30 and leaving Bottas in the lead of the race, and when Mercedes saw Bottas could still set competitive time, it left him out and gambled on the likelihood of a safety car winning him a free pit stop, from which he could emerge with his lead intact.

The decisive moment came on lap 39, when Red Bull Racing teammates Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen crashed at turn one, triggering the safety car Bottas needed.

But Vettel too took a new set of tyres — as did the rest of the field — and attempted to reclaim the lead at the first turn on the restart. He locked up and ran wide, dropping to fourth.

The win should’ve been Bottas’s, but debris on the front straight punctured his rear-left tyre one lap later, sending him out of the race.

A RACE OF MANAGEMENT (AND NOT CRASHING)

Kimi Raikkonen and Sergio Perez drove strong races to second and third and were testament to the Azerbaijan Grand Prix virtue of keeping your head down while the rest of the field crumbles.

Both drivers were hit with damage in first-lap melees but both recovered with long middle stints on the soft tyre, passing drivers as they stopped later in the race.

Charles Leclerc too drove a clean race to claim his debut F1 points, moving from 13th on the grid to sixth at the flag with Pirelli’s convention one-stop strategy, though he added an extra stop behind the second safety car.

DID RENAULT MISS ITS COMEBACK PODIUM?

Carlos Sainz finished fifth for Renault’s best result since its F1 return as a constructor, but Sergio Perez serves as an interesting case study for what could have been.

Sainz was ahead of Perez when the Mexican was forced to pit with damage behind the lap-one safety car, but Force India’s long middle stint on the soft through to the second safety car proved one of the fastest race strategies, allowing the driver to bypass the messy mid-race pit stops of the rest of the midfield.

Fernando Alonso, who finished seventh after dropping to second last with damage on lap two, used the same strategy to great effect in a heavily damaged car, as did Romain Grosjean — see below — who harried Perez for much of the race.

Renault couldn’t have known it at the time, but a podium chance could’ve been on the cards.

VANDOORNE ACES SAFETY CAR STRATEGY, GROSJEAN DOES NOT

Romain Grosjean could also have made himself a 2018 podium-getter, having trailed Perez by only a few seconds in the middle part of the race on the same strategy, but the Frenchman’s grand prix ended with an embarrassing crash behind the safety car, capping off a difficult weekend for the Haas driver.

It left Haas with no points after Kevin Magnussen tangled with Pierre Gasly at the second safety car restart despite having a contender for fourth-fastest car.

Grosjean’s crash is attributable to the difficulty drivers had warming up their tyres on the particular circuit layout and in the cool conditions, and the task was made doubly difficult at the reduced speed behind the safety car.

Stoffel Vandoorne, however, found an ingenious solution around the problem — the Belgian made a pit stop on the lap before the restart, which meant the tyres he had on the first racing lap would have just come out of their blankets and have been at a reasonable working temperature.

It had the double benefit of dropping him behind the field and allowing him to complete that last caution lap at a higher speed while catching up, allowing him to keep the temperatures high. He made up five positions in four laps to end his race in the points.

Though he didn’t stop behind the safety car, he gained three positions from the Verstappen-Vettel crash: one each from the belligerents and another from Hamilton, who had to leave the track to avoid becoming collateral damage, all of which came about as a consequence of Red Bull Racing topping its drivers for fresh tyres.

Nathan Harper

Tyre data

Courtesy of Pirelli Motorsport

17 Apr 2018

Race 3 -56 Laps – 5.451km per lap – 305.066km race distance – medium tyre wear

Chinese GP F1 Strategy Report Podcast – our host Michael Lamonato is joined by Rodney Gordon from Superlicense F1 Podcast

RICCIARDO PUTS ON OVERTAKING MASTERCLASS AFTER RBR STRATEGIC MASTERSTROKE

Daniel Ricciardo took his sixth career victory in what became an action-packed Chinese Grand Prix for the Australian after a mid-race safety car gave him the opportunity to switch to new tyres.

It continued his trend of winning grands prix from only outside the top three on the grid, which was made possible in part by Mercedes dropping the strategy ball for the third week in succession.

THE BACKGROUND

Pirelli added a twist to its tyre selection for the Chinese Grand Prix, bringing the medium, soft an ultrasoft compounds, skipping the supersoft. The reasoning was that data at the end of last season suggested the soft and supersoft compounds would be too close in performance terms, whereas the ultrasoft would provide a more even spread across all three.

Friday practice data suggested the ultrasoft was degrading rapidly, with one quick lap the most it could provide and 18 race laps more or less the limit.

It gave teams hoping to qualify in the top 10 an interesting question to ponder: with the ultrasoft tyre almost guaranteeing a two-stop race, would the risk of missing out on Q3 by using the ultrasoft tyre in Q2 be worth it for the strategic advantage on Sunday?

QUALIFYING

Ferrari and Mercedes both successfully adopted the soft tyre in Q2, making it their first-stint race tyre, but Red Bull Racing opted against it, setting up an intriguing battle for the lead.

But with substantially warmer temperatures forecast for Sunday’s race, much of the pre-race data became irrelevant. Feeling, whether rightly or wrongly, was to count far more than numbers.

THE DECISIVE MOMENT

With the weather dramatically changing the tyre scenario, most teams opted to stick with a conservative one-stop race, relying on the old rule that track position is king.

What brought the race to life, however, was the lap-31 safety car triggered by an awkward Toro Rosso tangle at turn 14, put down to a miscommunication in the timing of a team order.

Red Bull Racing was the only frontrunning team that opted to pit its drivers for new soft tyres under the reduced speed, meaning Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo lost only one place each, falling to fourth and sixth behind Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen respectively.

Why did Mercedes and Ferrari opt against stopping? Valtteri Bottas and Sebastian Vettel, then first and second in the race, had already passed the pit entry, so never had the choice.

Hamilton could’ve stopped, however, but the team’s data suggested sticking with his 13-lap-old mediums would still be the quickest way to the finish. Raikkonen’s mediums were only four laps old at that point, so Ferrari left him out too.

The pace advantage of the new softs was overwhelming, however, and Daniel Ricciardo made short work of all five drivers ahead of him, including his teammate, who slid off the road and later crashed into Vettel in an impatient pursuit of victory, in just nine laps, assuming the lead from Bottas on lap 45.

THE MIDFIELD GETS A JUMP BEHIND THE SAFETY CAR

Nico Hulkenberg, Carlos Sainz, Esteban Ocon, Sergio Perez and Sergey Sirotkin also made stops for new tyres behind the safety car, but only Hulkenberg and Sirotkin gained from the strategy.

Hulkenberg gained one place by passing Magnussen and gained a second from Vettel’s damaged Ferrari, while Sirotkin gained places from Gasly’s damaged and by passing Charles Leclerc.

Force India’s Sergio Perez was no better off in 12th, while teammate Esteban Ocon and Renault’s Carlos Sainz each lost a place to Fernando Alonso

Force India’s Esteban Ocon lost 10th place by making his second stop, while Sergio Perez was no better off in 12th.

BOTTAS ACES THE UNDERCUT

Long before the safety car, the race victory appeared to hinge on an unexpectedly powerful undercut executed by Valtteri Bottas.

Trailing then leader Sebastian Vettel by 3.5 on lap 18, a combination of a hot in-lap, a faster pit stop and a particularly quick out-lap, especially in the middle sector, where he gained an entire second, earnt him enough time to leapfrog the German when he stopped on the next lap.

Ferrari had assumed the pre-stop gap was too large to bridge, but the Mercedes car has always been strong on the medium compound and Bottas had been in fine form all weekend. Warmer temperatures also brought more performance to the medium compound, a higher working range tyre, aiding Bottas’s strategic gamble.

FERRARI HANGS KIMI OUT TO DRY

Kimi Raikkonen’s podium finish was a deserved reward for having his race almost fatally compromised to benefit his teammate. After Bottas’s undercut, Ferrari chose to leave Raikkonen out to act as slow traffic and hinder the Mercedes enough to give Vettel an opportunity to resume the race lead.

Bottas’s pace advantage was too great, however, and once both he and Vettel had passed Raikkonen, Ferrari stopped its number two driver, at which point he languished a distant sixth behind his main rivals.

Though he didn’t stop behind the safety car, he gained three positions from the Verstappen-Vettel crash: one each from the belligerents and another from Hamilton, who had to leave the track to avoid becoming collateral damage, all of which came about as a consequence of Red Bull Racing topping its drivers for fresh tyres.

Tyre data

Courtesy of Pirelli Motorsport

10 Apr 2018

Race 2 -57 Laps – 5.412km per lap – 308.238km race distance – medium tyre wear

Bahrain GP F1 Strategy Report Podcast – our host Michael Lamonato is joined by Jack Nicholls from the BBC F1.

DUEL IN THE DESERT: VETTEL BEATS MERCEDES IN THRILLING BAHRAIN GP

Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel openly admitted that luck played a significant part in delivering victory at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, but in Bahrain only grit and driving nous got the Scuderia over the line against championship rival Mercedes.

THE BACKGROUND

Pirelli has been using new race simulation software to better predict the performance of its tyres at any given race track with the stated aim of creating races delicately balanced between one and two stops to create strategic intrigue.

In Bahrain, naturally aided in part by the ease of overtaking around the Sakhir circuit, Pirelli aced it, with the selection of medium, soft and supersoft tyres delivering a rich combination of different strategies.

Interesting was that free practice suggested Mercedes held none of the advantages it enjoyed in Australia, with the fight at the front closely matched between the German marque, Ferrari and Red Bull Racing.

However, as has been the case in the past few seasons, the hard-compound tyres, particularly the mediums and softs, have been favourites of the silver cars, meaning these compounds were likely to form the spine of Mercedes’s strategy.

This meant a one-stop race was the natural Mercedes preference, especially given Lewis Hamilton was demoted to ninth on the grid with a gearbox change penalty.

Would Ferrari be fast enough to two-stop around the one-stopping Mercedes cars? Well, yes and no.

THE DECISIVE MOMENTS

By lap eight Hamilton had climbed from ninth and fourth, putting himself in podium contention. Both Red Bull Racing cars had also retired by this early stage, creating a straight Ferrari-Mercedes duel.

The decisive moment came on lap 18, when Vettel was the first to pit, Ferrari noting that Bottas had closed to within a tenth of a second of being within undercut range — than distance from which Bottas would’ve been able to and use his fresh tyres advantage to keep ahead of Vettel when the German responded on the following lap.

Indeed Mercedes seemed to deploy its mechanics into the pit lane, only to withdraw them when Vettel arrived for his stop — whether this was a genuine undercut attempt or a ploy to force Ferrari to pit Sebastian is up for debate.

Either way, this committed Vettel and, later, Raikkonen to two-stop races, and Mercedes opted to counter with a one-stop strategy.

It became clear by mid-distance that Hamilton had strong pace on the medium compound, which the team spent a lot of time with during the preseason, and the Briton could keep within Vettel’s pit window, meaning Sebastian would’ve had to pass both Bottas and Hamilton to regain the lead after his second stop.

When Raikkonen retired on lap 35 after a botched pit stop to push one of the two Mercedes to follow, Vettel had little choice but to gamble his race lead on maintaining his worn-out soft-compound tyres.

His 39-lap stint was easily the longest for the yellow-stiped tyre and longer even than Bottas’s ambitiously long 37-stint on the far more durable mediums, making his masterful win even more impressive.

GASLY AND ERICSSON DRIVERS OF THE DAY

Pierre Gasly cheekily shouted over team radio, “Now we can fight!”, mimicking the words used by McLaren’s Fernando Alonso in Australia, which were then a tacit reference to his team ditching Honda for Renault.

In Bahrain Toro Rosso-Honda made good on its preseason form after an embarrassing power unit failure in Melbourne by having both cars outqualify both McLarens and having Pierre Gasly easily outpace the British constructor in the race, finishing fourth to McLaren’s seventh and eighth.

Gasly battled Haas’s Kevin Magnussen for the race, with the fight largely being decided in the middle stint, when the Frenchman was quicker on the softs than the Dane was on the supersofts, notwithstanding Kevin having to deal with some traffic. They reversed their compounds for their final stints, but Gasly maintained his 12-seconds advantage to the flag.

Marcus Ericsson, on the other hand, largely drove his own race to ninth place, with the Swede being the only driver outside the top three to use the one-stop strategy.

Ericsson’s lap-23 stop from softs to mediums came after all bar Hamilton had made their first tyre changes, and he tactically allowed some of the obviously faster cars past him, notably Nico Hulkenberg, Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne, to ensure he had the tyre life to make it to the finish.

ALONSO GETS LOST IN TRAFFIC

Fernando Alonso spent his race bottled behind Nico Hulkenberg’s Renault in seventh and sixth places despite McLaren pulling the undercut trigger with what should have been a serviceable margin.

Alonso came into the pits to change from softs to medium on lap 14 while trailing the German by just 1.756 seconds. Hulkenberg pitted one lap later to cover him and, despite setting a slower out-lap, he managed maintain position.

The McLaren-Renault wasn’t able to power its way past the works car, and when both stopped for supersoft tyres on lap 39, the duel ended in a stalemate.

Tyre data

Courtesy of Pirelli Motorsport

27 Mar 2018

Race 1 – 58 Laps – 5.303km per lap – 307.574km race distance – low tyre wear

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

THIRD TIME’S NOT A CHARM: HOW MERCEDES LOST HAMILTON THE AUSTRALIAN GP

For the third time in a row Lewis Hamilton failed to convert an Australian Grand Prix pole position into victory, and for the second time in succession it was a tactical error that left the Mercedes driver in the lurch.

THE BACKGROUND

While Pirelli’s 2017 tyres were necessarily conservative, for 2018 the Italian tyre company has made every compound one step softer — last year’s soft became this year’s medium et cetera — and will introduce a new ‘hypersoft’ tyre compound to better cater for all 21 circuits on the calendar.

The aim is to offer a combination of compounds at each race that can generate equally fast one-stop and two-stop races, thereby promoting more strategic variation.

Unfortunately the Australian Grand Prix proved a staid one-stop race regardless. Despite bringing the ultrasoft, supersoft and soft compounds, degradation around the street circuit was low, and the difficulty cars have following and overtaking on the Albert Park track meant teams were always going to prioritise track position.

THE DECISIVE MOMENT

In many respects the key moment of the race came in qualifying when Valtteri Bottas binned his car in the opening moments of Q3. He started 15th after serving a five-place gearbox penalty, the result being his teammate, Lewis Hamilton, was left to defend his pole position from Ferrari teammates Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen all on his own.

Ferrari was always going to use its numerical advantage against Hamilton, and it did so by stopping Raikkonen, who started second, early on lap 18 with the intention of allowing Vettel, then third, to run towards the ideal lap-28 one-stop window. Mercedes had little choice but to cover Raikkonen, pitting Hamilton on lap 19 and maintaining the lead.

Hamilton still had the race in hand. Raikkonen wasn’t a threat and Vettel was comfortably within reach, certainly enough for Hamilton to keep within his virtual safety car window — or so Mercedes thought.

The virtual safety car window is the gap required by a driver to make a pit stop under VSC conditions and still maintain track position. Mercedes had calculated this gap in Melbourne to be around 15 seconds, and Hamilton was trailing Vettel by 11.306 seconds before the VSC was triggered and the German made his stop.

When Vettel left pit lane with the lead, however, Mercedes was forced to admit that it had somehow made a miscalculation, with Toto Wolff conceding that his team didn’t understand how its strategy software returned incorrect information.

With Vettel on newer tyres and with the all-important track position, recovering the lead was always going to be a tall order, and Hamilton had to settle for second place.

THE VSC RETURNED SOME BIG WINNERS — AND LOSERS

When a safety car — virtual or otherwise — arrives at around a pit stop window, the chance of a big win or big loss increases significantly.

Sebastian Vettel was obviously one such winner, as was Daniel Ricciardo, who made his stop without falling behind Fernando Alonso. Alonso also gained advantage by keeping ahead of Max Verstappen, and Valtteri Bottas’s charge from 15th on the grid was helped by not having to pit back into traffic.

On the other hand, Renault was a major loser, with Nico Hulkenberg and Carlos Sainz losing a net five places after they pitted on laps 24 and 22 respectively. Force India was also unable to capitalise on the virtual safety car, having already stopped Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon on laps 24 and 23.

BOTTAS MAKES A BIG RECOVERY…

Valtteri Bottas recovered from P15 to eighth, scoring four points, but it was slow going for the Finn. He made three overtaking manoeuvres, made up two places from Haas’s retirements and jumped two cars in the pit stops. His own lap 25 stop, made just as the VSC was triggered, meant he didn’t fall back into traffic while making his tyre change.

…BUT OVERTAKING REMAINS A PROBLEM

Albert Park is statistically the second most difficult track for overtaking, and it showed on Sunday, with only five on-track passes logged. Race organisers together with Formula One Management have considered circuit layout tweaks to improve overtaking, but they decided against it as the only possible changes to the public roads would have made little difference for the cost.

The FIA implemented a third DRS zone for the first time this weekend, but it had little effect, and Ross Brawn, F1’s motorsport managing director, admitted that the current high-downforce cars are the sport’s biggest problem when it comes to side-by-side racing.

Brawn has set up a panel with the FIA to design a new generation of regulations that will allow drivers to follow and pass more easily, especially on older or narrow circuits that are no longer conducive to overtaking, but this work won’t come to fruition until 2021.

Tyre data

Courtesy of Pirelli Motorsport