Pirelli F1 chief Mario Isola speaks to the press at the Qatar Grand Prix. (Hasan Bratic/picture alliance via Getty Images)
With the mandated 18-lap stints in today’s Qatar Grand Prix, all of the strategists are currently running the numbers and racking their brains over the best ways to run their races.
Teams use sophisticated computer models that can simulate 100,000 different variations of a race, offering valuable information on the best way to approach the race and any situations.
The mandated stints has reduced the options, naturally, yet there are now a number of other considerations to take into account.
Most teams have got three sets of mediums and one set of hards available for the race, and will look to avoid using the soft tire unless they absolutely have to, given the high levels of degradation we saw in the sprint yesterday. But some of these mediums have already been used for a handful of laps, eating into the 18-lap maximum they are allowed to run to.
You’d anticipate everyone pitting around laps 16 to 18 in order to make it home on three stops. But Tom McCullough, Aston Martin’s performance director, thought the first stint would likely be the shortest to get rid of the tires that have already completed a few laps.
“I think most people, their shortest stint will be at the beginning,” McCullough explained. “You’ll be stopping to undercut, and then you’ll be lengthening the stints out as it goes in the race.
“That is the fastest strategy from the tire data, but if you want to offset to other people, or if you want to give yourself more margin for safety cars in the last stint, whatever, you can build up margin later.”
There is also the possibility teams might work to give themselves more strategic flexibility by taking a four-stop strategy. With safety cars or car damage still to consider, then it might be better for them to take the hit of more time in the pit lane.
“It could be four stops, especially if you break a front wing on the first lap and you have to come in and pit, and you use one of your sets that had sufficient margin,” he said. “Then it starts to get a bit more complicated.”
The other really interesting part of this is that every single team will know exactly what tires their rivals have left and which ones they’ll be fitting to the cars.
“We have all that information,” McCullough said. “We get the information, the ID information from Pirelli of every set that’s fitted to every person. Sat here now, we know every lap, every set that every person has got, and our software will tell us when we get running which set they’ve got on and which options are left.
“It is a complicated day, but it’s a day for getting the basics right too.”
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