Ferrari gives a lesson in strategy

The title of this article might make you smile because we have often pointed out the errors on the Scuderia pit wall in recent years. However, we must salute the initiative put in place by the house of Maranello ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix to lift a fascinating corner of the veil on what race strategy entails in Formula 1. 

Ferrari thus invited its mentor Iñaki Rueda for accelerated training provided to journalists. The Reds' strategy manager took the victory of Sebastian Vettel at the 2017 Monaco Grand Prix, acquired thanks to a delayed pit stop – theovercut in English – allowing him to beat his teammate Kimi Räikkönen, who started on pole. 

Teams generally tend to favor the opposite tactic, namelyundercut, to send their drivers back onto the track wearing new, more efficient tires while the competition evolves with worn rubber that loses efficiency. 

A quick reminder of the facts of this 2017 edition: on the 35th lap, Räikkönen leads in front of Vettel and stops to swap his Softs for Mediums. The German stayed on the track for four more laps, followed by fast laps, made the same tire change, and came out in the lead before racing towards victory. For what ?

For his mini-lecture, Rueda relied on a GPS map of the track where the drivers and their progress on the track are represented by points. In addition to the positioning of the cars, the document allows you to visualize the place where the rider will exit after his pit stop. How ? Via a dotted line which starts from the point which materializes the pilot and ends in a colored segment downstream on the route (see illustration above). Depending on the duration of the pit-stop, the car is supposed to resume the track in this area.

With Räikkönen in control, he was offered priority in the pits. Vettel then inherited the leadership but instead of stopping him the following lap, Ferrari chose to leave him on the track because he could have found himself under threat of Daniel Ricciardo in the event of a Safety Car at this point in the race. 

Instructions were then given to wait for the pilot to stop Red Bull, which came a few laps later. In the meantime, Räikkönen's Medium tires were not giving their full performance because they were not yet up to temperature. Despite his worn casings, Vettel was able to extract enough performance to "jump" Iceman to the pits. QED.

The German was surprised to have managed to make it work theovercut but Monaco is one of the rare circuits where this strategy is paying off due to the difficulties the teams have in getting the Medium tires up to temperature quickly when leaving the pits.