Quick pit stops help Schumacher rise to fifth

2011 Belgian Grand Prix analysis

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Michael Schumacher, Mercedes, Spa-Francorchamps, 2011

All the tyre strategies, pit stop times, lap charts and more from the Belgian Grand Prix.

Pit stops

Quick pit work by Mercedes helped Michael Schumacher as he climbed from 24th to fifth in the Belgian Grand Prix.

He enjoyed the two fastest pit stops of the race, getting in and out of the pits over half a second quicker than anyone else.

See all the drivers’ tyres strategies and pit stop times here:

Lap one position change

Most unusually, the drivers in the top three positions at the start all lost places on the first lap.

This was mainly down to Nico Rosberg’s excellent getaway.

Further back his team mate made a similarly good start, dodging the first corner mayhem to move up from 24th to 14th.

Race progress

The gaps between the drivers on every lap of the race:

Lap chart

The lap chart shows Button’s progress through the field – he even led a lap late on in the race:

All lap times

Mark Webber set the fastest lap for the fifth time this year – he has more fastest laps in 2011 than anyone else.

2011 Belgian Grand Prix

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    Image © Mercedes

    Author information

    Keith Collantine
    Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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    24 comments on “Quick pit stops help Schumacher rise to fifth”

    1. Excuse me, Keith, but I liked the old-style ‘all in one place’ more. It was more convenient for the reader, I think.

      1. Agreed. I preferred the “consolidated” style of the old analysis pieces

      2. +1. it’s more like a contents page now. :(

      3. People were complaining that they found it hard to differentiate between drivers on the graphs.

        Not really hard to click a few more links, is it?

        1. Yes it is, relatively speaking. It’s a fundamental of modern website design to try and reduce the number of clicks between any given page, and the one the user might want. If this isn’t done a site loses traffic.

          1. Of course it’s equally important to have short clean pages so people don’t get put of by clutter.

            I like it now, it’s easier to go back and forth and analyze the larger graphs.

      4. Quick pit stop is not the only reason for Schumi’s 5th place but his drive. At 42? wow he is still quick and brilliant!

    2. Mercedes really did a good job with the pitstops and strategy. But their car has trouble getting the tyres lasting the whole race. Ferrari seems to have trouble with the tyres when the car is lighter.

    3. Were Massa’s two closely-timed stops due to a puncture? It wasn’t shown, pity for him as he looked on form at the start but since he was passed by Alonso he lost it.

      1. Yep. I think Ted Kravitz from the BBC said so during the UK’s coverage. He did seem very punchy today at first but then he just sort of fell away which was a shame.

        1. That’s a harsh assessment of Ted Kravitz performance.

          1. She was talking about Felipe Massa’s performance.

            1. It was a joke that I was able to make that I’m sure all the grammarians reading appreciated.

        2. Very much a shame, he soundly out qualified Alonso and had a start nearly as blistering as Rosberg. Getting passed by Alonso and Hamilton in rapid succession seemed to take the wind out of his sails and that late race puncture was the nail in the coffin. He finished a strong third at Monza last year, so hopefully he can bounce back.

    4. mclaren need to work on their pitstops. v. poor by their standards.

    5. Keith, this is Mark Webber’s 5th fastest lap, not 4th. the previous were at Malaysia, China, Turkey and Monaco

      1. Thanks for that – meant to write fifth.

        1. Looks like Webber is putting forth a strong fastest laps campaign like Kimi used to do.

    6. This goes to show that Mark can use these tyres but it just takes him a little longer to turn them on!

      Of course, having as dreadful a start as he did doesn’t help his cause much.

      1. His starts have always been terrible. Red Bull need to get him in the car for the allotted straight line testing they are allowed in season and just have him doing practice starts up and down a drag strip.

      2. Will Buxton brought up a good point, why did Redbull put Webber on mediums for his final stint? If he were on the softs he would have gone even faster and possibly challenged Vettel for the vic….Oh wait.

        1. It was very noticeable in the final stint that Button & Webber were the fastest pair, and keeping pace with one another. Yet Webber was on medium and Button on soft.

          On the previous stint (same tyres), Button was markedly faster than Webber – though the reason there was probably because of the age of Webber’s mediums then.

          The only conclusion is that Webber was doing brilliantly with those tyres.

          I guess the reason that Webber was on mediums for both of those stints is because his car’s setup caused the soft’s to blister and become unusable within 5 laps or so – no point in using them at all!!

          When you combine both facts, it seems that Webber’s car was setup in such an extreme way that it made the medium tyres work at the same pace as the softs, but with the longevity of the mediums.

          If you can manage to design a car like that, you’ve effectively made the soft tyres into qualifying tyres, and the harder ones into race tyres – and you’ve saved plenty of the latter for the race!

    7. Now, I know my comments are generally on a Schumi-biased form, but I’m not surprised that he’s done well here..
      It’s one of his favourite racetracks
      It’s the 2nd fastest on the calendar, and Mercedes (it has been known for long enough now) has the best straightline speed car..

      I won’t be surprised when Schumi has another high-caliber race in Monza, then goes back to lower finishes..

      And don’t expect me to stay quiet if people moan when he’s slow at Singapore!

    8. Any speed trap info Keith? I’m fascinated to know just how badly the Mclarens were doing.

    Comments are closed.