To stop or not to stop?

The paddock was alive with speculation about ‘tactical errors’, bluff and counter-bluff, and fuel loads after yesterday’s race. Did Renault throw away a race win with a tactical mistake? Or did they do everything they could to try and steal the win from Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari? Clearly, we believe the latter – and we asked Pat Symonds to explain exactly why…

"To be honest, the first stint unfolded pretty much as we expected. We saw Michael pulling away from everybody, as we had predicted – although perhaps not as fast as we had thought. It also became clear during that stint, that the tyre degradation was very low. That meant we knew the longer first stint we had planned, would allow us to pull back some time on Michael – as, indeed, proved to be the case [NB: ALO was 13.563s behind when MSC stopped, and 11.272s behind after ALO had stopped]."

"That was when things became very surprising. Michael’s tyre degradation was suddenly dreadful – and it very soon became clear that we were significantly quicker than him, and running much faster. It took Fernando less than ten laps to close the gap and start pressuring him."

"Yes, that would – but by the middle of the second stint, we are already locked into our strategy. We make the decision about our second stop during the first stint, and at that point, we had no idea that Michael would have the problems he did. So we followed our optimum pattern, which was to do a shorter second stint in order to improve our track position relative to Michael. Unlike the television predictions, which had us stopping on lap 47 I believe, our measurements said we would stop only a lap later than Michael in all likelihood, or possibly even on the same lap."

"Yes, exactly. Fernando pitted two laps earlier than we had planned. Had we been certain of going significantly further than Michael in the second stint then obviously, the option would have been to stay out – and it would have probably worked. But we didn’t have that extra fuel, and we would probably have run only a lap longer than Michael. During that lap, he would have been on new tyres and we saw in qualifying that they were particularly strong on those opening ‘golden’ laps. So we didn’t think it would work for us and obviously, simply following Michael in and out of the pits was not an option. So we got creative, and took the only other option available to try and get the win – to bring Fernando in early…"

"We had to judge it so that we didn’t stop too early, and drop into Massa’s clutches. So as soon as we saw we were clear, we discussed it with Fernando and gave him a choice: if he was able to overtake Michael, he should stay out; and if not, then he should pit. He pitted, we went for it, and we missed out by just 0.7s when the stops cycled through."

"The really significant thing was that on the free lap after Fernando pitted, Michael showed he had some performance in reserve. On the lap we pitted, he did a lap of 1:25.7 – where his average speed in the ten previous laps, was 1:27.4. The lap-times during the second stint had not suggested he had that performance in reserve."

"I think that’s what motor racing is all about to be honest. Hats off to Michael and Ferrari, because they pulled a blinder! From our point of view, we could have run our planned strategy and still finished second. But it would have been an unsatisfying second place, because there would have been a ‘what if’ factor because we hadn’t explored every option available to us. As it was, we tried everything we could – and it didn’t come off because we saw two cars with very equal levels of performance, battling for the win.* As I said yesterday, “nothing ventured, nothing gained.” But in this case, nothing lost either."

[NB: the ‘ideal’ laps for each driver – produced by adding together their best three sectors, and which indicates the ‘ultimate’ potential performance of the cars – were 1:24.524 for Fernando and 1:24.502 for Michael].