The French Grand Prix revealed race-defining strategy calls that ultimately - along with
it’s drivers speeds - won Red Bull the race and secured a double podium.
We can explore some of the various strategies at play during the race, including stint choices,
pit stop calls and tyre characteristics that allowed some drivers more success than others.
Ad break And now this spoken word hip hop from our
sponsor Yo yo yo
Nord VPN if you wanna stay PROTECTED Your wellbe-ing when your browsing and CONNECTED
Thousands of their servers sitting all around the GLOBE
So your network is in Chile while you’re lazing in your BATH ROBE
Their connection is FAST so you needn’t have to WORRY
You can stream from German Netflix from your two bed flat in SURREY
Got lots of devices running at the same TIME? You can use six all at once but I can’t
make this line rhyme Use it from the office; use it from the cafe
Use it from the ocean while you study hydrography On a two year plan Nord give you a special
deal A great big whopping discount - you would
think it was a steal! Go to Nord VPN dot com slash chainBEAR
I just thought you should know; and now you are aware
Thank you Nord VPN. And now we return to our Chain Bear programme, already in progress.
It would be helpful if we once again simplify the lap of a track into a clock face like
this, with 12 o’clock being the start/finish lap that demarcates one lap from the next.
At Paul Ricard, the lap times were roughly around the 100 second mark, so let’s just
take that as our model lap for this diagram. So a car goes around one lap of the circuit
in 100 seconds. We can also say the pit stop delta time is
around 24 seconds, which means if a driver stops to take a pitstop, they will lose 24
seconds to the cars around them. So if Driver A is ten seconds ahead of Driver
B behind, if A stops, A loses 24 seconds to B, so will end up 14 seconds behind by the
time they rejoin the track properly. You can visualise the pit stop delta as a
ribbon of time behind the driver representing the 24 seconds of the lap.
If Driver B is within this margin when Driver A stops in the pits, B will end up ahead of
A once A has made their stop. Of course if B also has to make a stop, they
will emerge behind A again if everything else remains consistent.
So if both drivers have to stop, how does a one use the pitstop phase to gain an advantage
and possibly steal a place? Let’s start with the most common tactic:
the undercut. With significant tyre degradation expected
over their life, tyres tend to be slower at the end of their stint than they are at the
beginning. Here we imagine a graph showing that, with
each progressive lap put onto the tyres, the lap times are getting longer and longer. The
car is faster earlier on than it is later. Therefore when you pit and put on fresh tyres,
you can expect your lap times to drop as the new, unworn rubber gives you lots of lovely
speed and grip. This can be true even if your new set of tyres is a compound or two harder
than the ones you were just using. So if you are behind a rival, you could pit
before them. Of course, you are immediately out of their
pit delta because your gap is now a whole pitstop PLUS the gap they already had on you.
But if you can use the significant speed advantage on your fresh rubber to close the gap between
you, such that you bring yourself into this pit delta window by the time they stop…
then you will emerge ahead of them by the time they are out of the pits.
This is undercutting. Pitting first to utilise the fresh tyre advantage.
Less common in the Pirelli era, but sometimes seen in F2 is the Overcut.
If tyres take time to warm up they might actually be much slowed in their first few laps while
the driver is still bringing them up to temperature. Using the graph as before we can see slower
lap times early on and then the normal lap time curve once the tyres are heated and degrade
in the usual way. Knowing this, you might want to try and pit
AFTER your rival. So imagine you are just behind your rival,
who makes their pitstop first. They’ll emerge inside your pitstop delta
obviously so at this point they are still in the net lead - meaning if you pit now,
they’ll still be ahead of you. But if you can use the speed advantage of
your warmed-in tyres against the slowness of their cold tyres you could open this gap
between you so they move out of your pit stop delta margin and you can now take your pit
stop and emerge ahead. Of course now they have a significant tyre
advantage over you, so you’ll need to defend against them on cold tyres, so this isn’t
without risk. But on many circuits, track position is KEY.
It is often more difficult to pass on track than it is to put in a series of fast laps
when you are separated from your rival through the pitstop phase and thus have a bit of free
air. In F1, the undercut can be very powerful.
So powerful, in fact that it will over-ride your optimum strategy in many cases.
If your nearest rival pits and fresh tyres carry a significant advantage, you must respond,
rather than try and stick to the ideal tyre strategy inherent to the Pirelli Compounds.
If one driver tries to undercut you, they could well be much faster for every lap that
you don’t pit and make you lose track position. So you need to swap out your tyres even if
you know you’ve probably got to nurse the next set for longer than you wanted.
In the French Grand Prix, Bottas pitted earlier than was ideal and earlier than anyone really
expected due to vibrations he was experiencing in the tyres. He came in on lap 17 when the
state of play had Hamilton out in front, Verstappen 3 second behind and Bottas 2.5 seconds further
back. This triggered a response from Verstappen
on the very next lap and while he didn’t lose a position, Bottas had already closed
about 1.4 seconds on him, proving the power of the undercut.
Hamilton instead of pitting straight after Bottas, went one lap longer than Verstappen
and over the course of one lap a 24.5 second advantage turned into a 0.3 second disadvantage.
Verstappen had taken the net lead of the race from him.
It was so obviously advantageous through these first stops that Hamilton actually tells his
engineer, ‘Let’s make sure we get the undercut on them at the next stops’.
Of course, Red Bull then caught Merc out by pitting way earlier than expected for their
second stop. Verstappen ran the hards for just 14 laps
before switching back to mediums again for the long final stint.
Hamilton was now between a rock and a hard place.
If he pitted now, he would still be behind Verstappen and would then have to overtake
on track - something that would be particularly hard to do on this circuit with similar machinery.
Alternatively he could stay out and try and make his existing set of tyres work for the
duration of the grand prix. The hards were projected to degrade over their
lifespace to the extent that taking a 24 second hit for an extra pitstop and swapping to mediums
was the faster option Here we can see the two competing options
- Hamilton staying out on hards with the slower, longer laps and Verstappen switching to mediums.
Every single lap, Verstappen was making up this much time over Hamilton.
But crucially Hamilton wouldn’t have to give up track position if he stayed out.
And if by some good fortune and skill he could keep some fighting life in his hards, then
maybe he could hold off Verstappen by the time the Red Bull closed the gap.
Ultimately, this wasn’t the case and Verstappen passed him easily in the closing laps. But
it was the only option left to Mercedes once Red Bull got the jump on them.
Meanwhile, there was Perez. At the point Bottas made his first stop, way
back on lap 17, Perez was 10 seconds back from Hamilton and nearly five seconds back
from Bottas. So not really involved in the fight for position at this point, and didn’t
have to respond to the undercuts being triggered. Instead Perez was able to run the more ideal
tyre strategy I mentioned earlier. He took the Pirelli mediums he started on to lap 24
before switching to the hards. This means he was running hard tyres that
were a full 7 laps younger than Bottas and so was able to close a 5 second gap into a
pass for third by the close of the race, with Bottas ruing that the team didn’t put him
on a two stop. Perez was an ideal rear gunner, a great number
2, a fine wingman. A Goose. A Falco. Red Bull were able to split their strategy
between Perez and Verstappen and be ready for all possibilities. Bottas had to worry
about Verstappen ahead and Perez behind, flanked by both Red Bulls and unable to really come
into play to help Hamilton’s situation. If one team has two drivers fighting against
a team with just one driver in contention, they are able to use both their drivers to
outflank their rival strategically. It generally reduces the strategic options
of the team with one car as the two car team can always cover their rival with their second
car, leaving their leader free to race the race they want.
This is why the talk of Red Bull’s second driver has been so heated for years. The team
have felt that their second car isn’t able to get amongst the Mercedes and give them
a hard time, that Verstappen has been having to fight both of them without a rear gunner
to cover one of the Mercedes. And, after a couple of races to get himself
together, Perez has now been able to both pick up a victory where Max was out of contention
and steal a podium from Mercedes by outflanking them on strategy and pace.
This might be the one of THE decisive factors in Red Bull taking the 2021 title. We shall
see.