Saudi Arabian GP (Tyre strategy)

 

One day after the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, and it's time to see and comment on each team's tyre strategy for each driver. 12 of the 20 drivers followed the same tyre strategy, but let's start from the beginning. Red Bull followed exactly the same strategy for both drivers. Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez started the race on medium tyres switching to hards during the safety car on lap 7. Williams and RB used the same strategy, switching onto hards during the safety car. Unfortunately for RB, Daniel Ricciardo suffered a pitstop of nearly a minute with a jack failure and nearly having the wrong tyres put on the car. 

For Ferrari, Leclerc started the race on the medium tyres as opposed to Bearman who started on the softs. They also took the opportunity to pit under the safety car on lap 7 with both choosing the hard compound tyres. For Bearman, the Saudi Arabian GP was his debut in Formula 1, as he replaced Carlos Sainz, and it is very likely that with this strategy Ferrari wanted to give him the boost to enter the top ten. We'd say the team's strategy paid off as the driver managed to not only move up from 11th to 7 th place but also keep Norris and Hamilton behind him on the soft tyres.

 Aston Martin and Alpine finished the race with one of their two cars. Stroll and Gasly failed to finish with the former crashing into the wall, setting up the safety car on lap 7 which most of the drivers used it as a pit stop opportunity, and the latter retiring the car on the first lap. As for the other two drivers, Alonso and Ocon, they also changed from medium to hard tyres during the 7th lap. McLaren and Mercedes followed half the same strategy as the previous teams. Piastri and Russell made their own pit stop following the remaining ten drivers on lap 7 changing once again from the medium tyres to hard. The difference was made to the other two drivers of the teams, Norris and Hamilton, who not only changed the mediums tyres on the 36th and 37th lap, respectively, but they also installed the soft ones. A choice which we could discuss a lot! 

The time has come to talk about Haas and words are unnecessary. It may be that only one point came to the team, but the teamwork between the two drivers and the strategy given to them deserve congratulations. Kevin Magnussen may have changed his tyres on the 7th lap from medium to hard, may have received two 10 seconds time penalties but despite these he managed to defend the position of Nico Hülkenberg, who made a pit stop on lap 33 changing from medium to hard. 

Next we look at the strategy followed by Kick Sauber. A lot of thoughts and a lot of question marks... Zhou Guanyu changes the medium tyres to soft ones on the 41st lap and Valtteri Bottas is the only driver who instead of one pit stop makes two. The first happened on the seventh lap, changing from soft to hard tyres. However, this was not enough for Sauber, who decided to change Bottas' tyres on the 35th lap, wearing the soft ones again. 

Some choices surprised us and others seemed logical to us, the only sure thing is that the time has come for some teams to pay more attention to the duration and quality of their pit stops. See you in Melbourne!