Did Mercedes or Red Bull err strategically at the end? — British Grand Prix Strategy Report
Up until the last three laps, the British Grand Prix was a mostly soporific affair, definitely the least interesting race of the season thus far. It wasn’t only due to the lack of on-track action, but also any strategic intrigue was neutralized with nearly all the drivers pitting for their change of tyres during the second safety car triggered on lap 14 when Kvyat crashed at the Maggots-Becketts complex. However there were still three areas of strategic intrigue to discuss, not least the dramatic close to the race…
Could Verstappen have won the race?
The multiple sudden tyre failures the closing laps served up some excitement as Lewis Hamilton limped home on three inflated tyres to secure his 3rd win in a row, and a key talking point after the race was whether Red Bull had squandered their chance of a win by pitting Verstappen 2 laps from the end, forsaking 7 points in the pursuit of the 1 point for fastest lap.
On the surface, this argument appears true — Verstappen was 14.7 seconds behind the race-leading Hamilton on lap 50 when he pitted, and he closed the gap by 28.4 seconds to Hamilton on the last lap when Hamilton’s tyre blew. Had he stayed out, he would definitely have been able to overtake Hamilton’s ailing car to take the win. Given the Red Bull has proven inferior to Mercedes on straight-out pace, they should have rolled the dice and stayed out to put pressure on Hamilton on the last lap, especially with the knowledge of Bottas’ tyre failure on lap 49.
The common rebuttal to this optimistic argument is that there was no way Red Bull would have known that Hamilton’s tyre would blow in the middle of the last lap. Hindsight is 20/20, but at that point in time the prospect of banking an extra point would have prevailed in the minds of the Red Bull engineers. Additionally, Hamilton was lucky that his tyre blew halfway through the last lap, and that he lost between 15 and 34 seconds due to the puncture. If he had punctured his tyre later that it cost him less than 14 seconds, Verstappen would not have caught up even if he had not pitted. Alternatively, if Hamilton had lost more time due to the puncture, such as if his tyre blew earlier in the lap, just like his teammate Bottas who experienced the failure right after crossing the pit entry, Verstappen would have won the race even after pitting. Lastly, Verstappen’s tyre was close to puncturing as well, as team principal Christian Horner revealed after the race.
Delving deeper into how events played out, I see one clear strategic error — Mercedes not opting to pit Hamilton on the penultimate lap. They had a comfortable 35 second gap to Verstappen who had pitted the lap before, and Bottas had just suffered the puncture 2 laps ago. Surely Mercedes should have played it safe and called Hamilton in for an emergency tyre change in case a tyre puncture on the last lap denied him of a win (which did happen, by the way, but it was pure fortune that Hamilton was still able hold on to win despite the puncture). Bottas lost 35 seconds on lap 49 due to his puncture, so the math clearly showed the detriment of the puncture.
In fact, Mercedes cannot give the excuse that they did not know Verstappen would pit on lap 50 — lap 50 is the last possible lap that a fastest-lap chasing driver could pit, because he needed an outlap on the penultimate lap before setting the fastest-lap attempt on the last lap. Hence, having seen Verstappen pit on lap 50, they would have known that pitting on lap 51 would be safe, and if Verstappen did not stop on lap 50, then Mercedes would know that they would not stop on the penultimate lap either and would be forced to stay out.
In summary, both sides have some merit to the debate of whether Verstappen should have pitted on lap 50, but it is clear that Mercedes nearly threw away a race win by keeping Hamilton out on lap 51.
Did the strategy outliers pay off?
There were only two outliers to the predominant one-stop-during-the-2nd-SC strategy this race — Albon and Grosjean.
Albon was already out of position early on — clashing with Magnussen and having to pit on lap 6 for new tyres, and running last before the second safety car. He could have chosen to change to a new set of hard tyres, given that he was last anyway, but chose to stay out. As a result, he rose to 14th, behind Gasly, who was the same driver he was behind in the opening stages of the race. But he had older tyres than the surrounding cars, making an already difficult task of overtaking on the fast Silverstone track even harder — sure enough, he was stuck for 12 laps behind Gasly, and could not utilize his Red Bull’s pace. So he was stopped again on lap 36 to put on a used set of softs, in the hope that the tyre pace differential would be an extra push that would propel him past cars in front. As it turns out, he ended the race just behind Gasly as well, but managed to overtake Stroll and Vettel as well at the end — who he presumably wouldn’t have been able to overtake on his older hard tyres if he had not pitted. So on balance, I would say that this counter strategy didn’t harm him and seemed to have slightly helped him recover some positions at the end.
Grosjean, on the other hand, stayed out during the 2nd pit stop and rose to 5th place while everyone else pitted. The hope was that his main rivals — the Alfa Romeos and Williams, would lose time more at the back of the pack that he would be able to pit later, and using his much fresher tyres, have a shot at passing them at the end of the race. Although he was able to fight in the upper midfield (and cause some annoyance to the cars who had to pass him), the strategy ultimately backfired, for he finished the race behind the two Williams who he was ahead of in the first 15 laps.
Upper midfield battle — could Ricciardo have landed a podium?
The difficulty of overtaking, coupled with strategic homogeneity, meant that the midfield battle, though close, was not as spicy as the previous races. The Renaults showed great race pace, with Ricciardo able to exploit it to finish an impressive 4th place, barely 2 seconds behind the podium. His end to the race was strong, closing the gap to Leclerc from more than 9 seconds on lap 36 to 2s at the flag. However, his inability to overtake Grosjean arguably cost him a chance at a podium. Ricciardo was just behind Norris after the second safety car, having been jumped by him in the pitstop, but while Norris passed Grosjean on lap 24, Ricciardo was stuck behind the Haas driver for 11 more laps, by which time Norris was 2s ahead of him. Had Grosjean not figured in the front battle, opting for a conventional strategy instead, it’s likely that Ricciardo would have been able to pass Norris earlier than he did on lap 48, and be able to chase after Leclerc earlier with his stonking end-of-race pace. In any case, Renault need to qualify better, ahead of McLaren, to have a better chance at consistently overhauling them in the race and eating into their formidable early points advantage.
Comparing the pace of the upper midfield cars, Leclerc had an extremely strong race, mostly comfortable in 4th place and keeping more than 4 seconds from the other midfield cars. In contrast, his teammate Vettel had a forgettable weekend, struggling so much that he was passed on track by Gasly and Albon and would have finished out of the points if not for the late-race tyre blowouts sidelining Bottas and Sainz. It was surprising to see Racing Point struggle at the hands of Stroll, fading to 9th in the race especially after raising expectations by topping 2nd practice. One wonders if the more consistent racer Perez could have made a difference if he were racing, and I’d definitely think he would have finished ahead of both Renaults. Racing Point need to capitalize on their early-season pace, which they have arguably failed to do so, while McLaren have been consistently bringing home big points, mostly through Norris.
Next week, Formula One returns to Silverstone for the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix, in a race that will (barring any safety-related changes) see tyres one step softer than this race, and hotter weather forecast for race day. This should mix up the order as teams cope differently to high tyre wear, and we should see 2, or even 3 stops being the norm, hopefully offering much more strategic variation. See you next week!
