2012 British GP tyre strategies and pit stops

14 comments on “2012 British GP tyre strategies and pit stops”

1. 

   Calum (@calum)
   9th July 2012, 0:11

   The pitstop speed data shows practice makes perfect! Well done Sam Michael (I beleive it’s him in charge of pit lane operations) and the rest of the Mclaren pit crew. Now if the aero guys can deliver these Germany updates…
2. 

   Wooolfy
   9th July 2012, 5:17

   Good job in the pits McLaren. I estimate that the cars are about 0.8-1.2 secs off the pace. They need massive upgrades to challenge for the remainder of this season. After all they are McLaren, it is possible.
3. 

   Gill (@gill)
   9th July 2012, 7:04

   The length of the Alonso’s first stint was the reason he did not win. He could have done atleast 3-4 more laps on those tyres and he would have got 3-4 laps less to do on the softs. Ferrari needs to be proactive and not reactive for this is what caused Fernando the title in 2010 and the driver was the same ( Webber) who Fernando followed into the pits.
   1. 

      Kabir
      9th July 2012, 7:29

      2010 was a major blunder.

      But in this case, he had to as Webber was way faster than him after the his first pit stop.
   2. 

      AdrianMorse (@adrianmorse)
      9th July 2012, 9:12

      @gill, it’s true he might have extended his first stint with a few laps, but I think Ferrari’s strategy was pretty good. No-one could have predicted that Alonso would struggle so badly on the soft tyres, especially as Massa managed 14 laps on the softs with a heavy car.
   3. 

      andae23 (@andae23)
      9th July 2012, 10:05

      I think it would have made little difference if they stopped a few laps later. The Red Bull was simply the faster car yesterday, which was a bit obscured by Alonso’s deviating strategy that resulted in his early lead.
4. 

   Gill (@gill)
   9th July 2012, 10:01

   I think behaviour of the car changes not only with the “type of tyre” but also with the “set of tyre of particular type”. We saw Hamilton who was faster in the first stint on a heavy fuel load than he was on the second set of hard when the car was light. These tyres are utterly sensitive to the tyre temperature, the weight of the car in terms of fuel load, the track temperature and the suspension settings. Hence the pace of the car is defined.
   1. 

      BasCB (@bascb)
      9th July 2012, 12:25

      I understand that the tyres themselves are really remarkably even in quality (with Bridgestones there were far bigger differences between sets, apparently it was noticeable if packed dry or in the rain!). Even to the extend, that Pirelli is able to produce them to the same specs in a different factory.
      1. 

         AndrewTanner (@andrewtanner)
         9th July 2012, 19:16

         @bascb Yeah, Sky were saying at the weekend the tyres are produced in Turkey but that particular region is susceptible to earthquakes so they do have back-up production if required.

         Only in F1!
5. 

   Overwatch (@overwatch)
   9th July 2012, 10:43

   Well, looks like Mclaren fixed their pitstops too late… Had they brought up 2.8 pitstops in first few races they could have much easier job to bring themselves back pointwise…
   1. 

      OOliver
      9th July 2012, 12:09

      Precisely. They would still be in contention for the constructors. Now its a tough climb back up.
      At least they have found this solution.
   2. 

      OmarR-Pepper (@)
      9th July 2012, 15:45

      Also the head of this article seems to set apart the fact that in Valencia they also had one of the longest pitstops with Lewis, and that put Lewis in the path of MAD-donado. The rest is history
6. 

   sato113 (@sato113)
   9th July 2012, 13:08

   does anyone reckon we’d have had a better race if the compounds used were soft/medium?

   it seems 2 stopper races are a bit less excting. perhaps mediums would have meant 3 stoppers were possible too.
7. 

   John H (@john-h)
   9th July 2012, 14:00

   Now for the aero.

   To be honest, I can’t quite believe the car that won at Montreal was the one we saw this weekend at Silverstone.

   It maka no sense!

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