Since Pirelli took over from Bridgestone, F1 has had a lot of exciting races. During the era of Bridgestone, qualifying was the most important part of the weekend, as the driver on Pole would (Unless something crazy happened) go on to win the race after a one stop strategy.
It was predictable, and the drivers were able to go full pace for the majority of a Grand Prix. This would mean that the leaders could overlap the entire field, sometimes even overlapping the back markers two to four times. This was normal, it showed who had the most superior machinery, paired with an excellent driver. Michael Schumacher took advantage of this formula and won more World titles then any driver could dream of.
Now it is completely different. What we have now are new concepts like turbo boost KERS, and super speed DRS. Passing moves seem a bit too easy, and there is usually no reason to fight for position in these instances. The fastest drivers still make their way to the front, but have it easy. This results in less full on wheel-to-wheel combat, spectacular crashing, and drama.
We end up having more drivers in the hunt for points. Drivers are less likely to get into trouble, so they can focus on their lap times and go after points. Tire management and consistent lap times have become the ultimate key to success in the Pirelli era. Ironically, the races that saw durable Pirelli tires (India comes to mind) would be the most boring races. The front runners stormed out in front, did a pit stop, then took their positions again when the others came in.
In China, we saw the most extreme option tire, arguably in the whole history of F1. They wore out so badly, no one wanted to have them on for any long period of time, however, when used correctly, could provide some excellent speed. Vettel did this in the latter stages of the Grand Prix, almost gaining a podium for it, He was pumping in qualifying laps over and over to reduce the deficit, but ran out of laps.
I found a great lap chart on
this website:
After some playing around with the chart, I got to see just how tire strategy worked for some, and how it was disastrous for others. Without a doubt, the best race strategy was to get the soft tires out of the way from the beginning. Most of those who qualified on soft tires in Q3 ended in good positions, while others ended up going backwards. Let's have a look at these drivers.
Notice the trend? Despite the front runners falling back into the field, the ongoing trend for most, is that they consistently move forward. Alonso managed his tires perfectly, he was able to get past the likes of Button who was on the other strategy, and this worked amazingly for him. However two drivers did not make this strategy work, and they are Grosjean and Massa.
Massa had a really bad second stint, that only say him complete 12 laps. He was unable to follow the surge of Alonso, and found himself out of the top five before getting rid of his first set of mediums. Grosjean had a similar situation, but in his third stint, where he completed 14 laps, and as you can see, he was going backwards and forwards throughout the stint, possibly struggling to get them to work, and fighting in traffic.
This proves that there is a correct tire strategy, but it is more important to get them switched on, and make your way through traffic as quickly as possible. Hanging behind traffic for too long causes the drivers to have to pit in earlier, meaning a major compromise. It is just as important not to fight against those drivers that are on a totally different strategy, because fighting them means extra wear on the tires, which again hinders strategy.
True racing only seems to occur when 1) It is for the podium positions or 2) The driver ahead/behind is on the same strategy. We saw this between Vettel and Webber, in Malaysia despite being on different strategies, and the team order. With less actual "racing", as in, two drivers doing absolutely everything to get past, it means those instances are immediately highlighted and have more of an "epic" feel.
Let's have a look at the other strategy. Those who started on the harder tire, the medium compound.
As you may have noticed, this strategy did not work as well as drivers hoped. These drivers felt they did not have the pace of the front runners, which included Vettel. He had no confidence in starting on the soft tire strategy, but he was able to maximize the alternative strategy. Jenson Button and Paul Di Resta also made the strategy work, with Jenson only pitting twice, and Di Resta doing only three laps on the soft tire. Button did the longest stint on the medium tire then anyone else in the race, 26 laps in his second stint.
Vettel could have gained a podium on the day, but got stuck in traffic earlier in the race. If he had been able to pass them, he may have grown wings and flew past Hamiltion in the latter stages on soft tires.
The biggest losers of this strategy were Perez and Hulkenberg. Perez could not duplicate what Button did, he was unable to make it work and had incidents with other drivers. Hulkenberg was very unlucky, as he had lead the race for a number of laps, however he tried a completely different strategy by using softs in the middle of the race. He did seven laps on them and fell back even more, and was unable to make up ground on his final stint. He went backwards in the second half.
At the back of the field, the biggest winner was Bottas, who managed to outperform his team mate and came home in front of him, despite starting behind. He made his medium tire strategy work better then Pastor's soft strategy. Pastor did seven laps on the soft in the beginning, and Bottas did five laps of softs at the end. If Bottas had qualified a few positions higher, he was guaranteed a points position.
Is it right for F1 to be this complicated on its strategy? It could be confusing to new fans, as they would not understand why one driver simply allows another to fly through when they could have defended more. On the other hand, is this what F1 really needs? For the fans to have no idea who will actually win?
Back in the day, you could guess who would win between one or two drivers, but now, you could have half a dozen possible challengers for the top step. It is a bit more of a lottery, depending on certain factors, but the best teams, and the true champions are still going to rise to the top, and achieve glory.
