Strategy Of Undercutting In a Formula One Race

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Formula One Forever

8 min readDec 6, 2020

Bold decisions and immaculate strategy execution can lead to winning races.

Over the last few decades, conventional overtaking in Formula 1 cars by banging wheels (or knocking the other driver out by sliding into him) has become increasingly difficult, and regulations also have become quite stringent to disallow such moves.

Also, the manner in which some of the modern Formula 1 tracks are designed, makes it more difficult for drivers to overtake their competitors. Some tracks offer very few opportunities to overtake in slow corners, while some tracks offer practically zero opportunities to overtake, case in point being Monaco.

To top it all, teams who spend an equal amount of budgets (Ferrari, Mercedes, Redbull) usually end up having similar track positions from one race to another and also make it almost impossible for drivers to overtake with conventional strategies of fuel-loads and tyre strategies. Teams with lower budgets won’t have any great chances to overtake the Tier 1 teams who have higher budgets. Is it unfair? Yes, totally. (Hey, life is unfair, what do you want me to say?)

This is where the under-cut comes in. Executed well, you can win the race and get to soak in the champagne on the podium. If not, it could be a huge embarrassment for the team for throwing away a better track position, and possibly the chance to climb on the podium. (High risks, come with high rewards and even higher losses.)

And hence, the concept of undercutting is one of the best strategies that Formula 1 teams are known to deploy to get their drivers to win races. It tries to compensate for the strict regulations of banging wheels or the poor design of the race track, etc

Teams Love Undercutting

If you have watched any Formula 1 races especially after refuelling was banned by regulations, you have most probably heard commentators speaking about undercutting. They very often speculate about which team will do the undercut to get their driver to improve track position. But what does undercutting actually mean?

Undercutting is a well thought through and stimulated strategic move aimed at overtaking a car during pit stops. This can be a massively beneficial move because as I mentioned earlier, overtaking at many circuits is very difficult, if not impossible.

Firstly, the aerodynamics of Formula cars don’t work optimally when following closely behind another car. The flow of air coming off from the car in the front destabilizes the aerodynamics of the car that is behind. Secondly, the driver running in front usually defends his position and strives to take his driving lines to make an overtaking move by an opponent as hard as possible.

The idea of undercutting is to make a pit stop just a few laps earlier than the car you are trying to pass. Immediately after your pit stop you have new tyres on, and because of this, you can expect to be able to set faster lap times than your opponent with worn tyres.

Consequently, if the difference in pace between you and the opponent car is large enough, the opponent will return to track behind you, after he makes his pit stop.

Risks of Undercutting

However, there is a cost of going for an undercut move. Imagine you are running in the 3rd position on the track. You decide to go for an undercut 3 laps before your opponent (who is in 2nd position). After you exit the pits, if your lap times are much faster on fresher tyres (assuming your team had already warmed up the tyres beforehand to reach optimal performance) than your opponent’s lap times, you will come out ahead of your opponent when he exits the pitlane from his pitstop. So for the time being, you have taken the 2nd spot.

But now the downside is that towards the end of the race, you, by virtue of you making an earlier pitstop (an undercut) compared to your opponent, you will be driving on more worn tyres. For this reason, you may run into trouble when your tyres begin to lose their grip. This gives your opponent who was trailing you, a real possibility to pass you back with fresher tyres.

Also, in a worst-case scenario, when you went for the undercut, you may realize that your pace isn’t fast enough right after his pit stop (slower lap times), in which case your opponent will come back still in front of you. In this case, now you will end up behind your opponent and that too on relatively older tyres than him. Definitely, not a great situation to be.

Surprise Elements

There are other issues the teams may encounter when performing the undercut. On some circuits, if the weather is cold the new tyres may actually be pretty slow on the first lap or two before they reach their optimal temperature. As you can imagine, this effectively prevents you from improving your track position by undercutting.

Another issue that can ruin the team’s undercutting tactic is a Safety car or Virtual Safety car appearing after you have pitted, but your opponent has yet to pit. In this scenario, your opponent can make his pit stop while you are driving like a bullock cart under the speed limit. (Yeah, as I said earlier — Life is unfair).

Naturally, you can’t make it in front of your opponent if this is the case. Even worse, some other cars may also make their pit stops while the speed limit is on and you may actually lose some more track position by virtue of your undercut. The situation now has now gone from bad to worse.

Generally speaking, pitting earlier than others always brings about the risk of losing positions if safety car emerges. Monaco is a classic case, where the possibility of a Safety Car is very much a reality. Practically, all the teams factor in the possibility of at least one safety car period in their race strategies. There has hardly been a race at Monaco when the safety car has not been deployed.

Defending Against Undercuts

So how does one defend against undercutting? There are some ways to defend if you are the one driving in front of your opponent and the opponent is trying to overtake you by an undercut.

Firstly, the best defence to undercutting is to stop on the same lap as your opponent. If your pitstop goes smoothly, you will still have a better track position and your tyres will be as fresh as your opponent’s. However, in order to perform this tactic, you must guess correctly the lap when your opponent is coming in. And pray that your mechanics do not mess up the pitstop. Remember Daniel Riccardo’s botched up pitstop at Monaco that lost him the race that was in his pocket?

Besides this, since you were ahead of your opponent, the opponent will have a last-second opportunity NOT to come in, and change his strategy when he realizes you are turning into the pit lane.

Secondly, if you anticipate that your opponent may undercut you, you can do your own pit stop first. Pitting first you are actually undercutting your opponent. Because of this, you can expect to be faster with the new tyres keeping your position.

Moreover, you may even be able to have a little gap after your opponent stops. The downside of this move is that your opponent can now leave his stop a few laps later, forcing you to defend your position with older tyres later in the race. An overtake on track from your opponent may be a real threat now.

Both of these two defences against the undercut involves you to stop earlier than you would otherwise. These are called “Early stop” defence strategies. As you cannot know certainly when your opponent is going to make his pit stop, you really don’t know whether you are pitting before, simultaneously or after your opponent.

In fact, you are just deciding how many laps earlier than planned you are going to stop. This means that both of the above-mentioned defences can actually be two realisations of the same early stop defence strategy.

Another strategy for defending against the undercut is pitting later than planned. This way you almost certainly lose your track position to your opponent, but you will have the benefit of fresher tyres to chase him down later in the race.

Using this strategy gives you a real chance of taking back your track position by overtaking. You only hope and pray that your opponent is not very good at managing his tyres. If he is someone like Lewis Hamilton, who is a master at managing his tyres, then you will not have a chance to overtake him at all.

Traffic Can Spoil Your Undercut

Very often the pivotal factor when considering undercutting is the traffic situation. Undercutting requires one or more very fast-paced laps between you and your opponent's pit stops. Due to this, undercutting may go wrong if you are stuck in traffic right after your pit stop. Whether it’s lapped cars or cars on the same lap they will still slow you down, and these might be the crucial tenths of the second you would need to get ahead when your opponent pits.

In order to avoid this pitfall, the strategists of teams are always closely monitoring traffic situation on the track.

To summarize, undercutting is one of the most frequently seen strategic moves during contemporary F1 races and it certainly is often a brilliant move. However, the strategists and the drivers need to be very careful to decide when to use it and when not to use it.

Executed well, you can take the podium and the winner's trophy. Botch it up and you will retreat to your motorhome sooner than planned.

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