2013 Bahrain Grand Prix tyre strategies and pit stops

2013 Bahrain Grand Prix

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Red Bull were the fastest team in the pits for the third race in a row.

Their lap 37 pit stop for Mark Webber was the quickest of the race, seven-tenths of a second faster than last year’s best.

Unusually the spread of strategies for drivers whose races were not disrupted by incidents included two, three and four stops.

This was after Pirelli revised the original tyre allocation, replacing the soft tyre with the medium, without which the pit lane would likely have been even busier.

Bahrain Grand Prix tyre strategies

The tyre strategies for each driver:

Stint 1Stint 2Stint 3Stint 4Stint 5Stint 6
Sebastian VettelMedium (10)Hard (15)Hard (17)Hard (15)
Kimi RaikkonenMedium (16)Hard (18)Hard (23)
Romain GrosjeanHard (8)Hard (19)Medium (15)Medium (15)
Paul di RestaMedium (14)Hard (22)Hard (21)
Lewis HamiltonMedium (10)Medium (12)Hard (16)Hard (19)
Sergio PerezMedium (10)Hard (10)Hard (19)Hard (18)
Mark WebberMedium (8)Hard (13)Hard (16)Hard (20)
Fernando AlonsoMedium (7)Hard (1)Hard (16)Hard (15)Hard (18)
Nico RosbergMedium (9)Hard (11)Hard (13)Medium (11)Medium (13)
Jenson ButtonMedium (9)Hard (12)Hard (13)Hard (12)Medium (11)
Pastor MaldonadoMedium (10)Hard (13)Hard (16)Hard (18)
Nico HulkenbergHard (12)Hard (14)Medium (15)Medium (16)
Adrian SutilMedium (1)Hard (17)Hard (24)Medium (15)
Valtteri BottasHard (13)Hard (16)Hard (18)Medium (10)
Felipe MassaHard (10)Hard (7)Medium (11)Hard (8)Medium (21)
Daniel RicciardoMedium (9)Hard (16)Hard (16)Hard (15)
Charles PicMedium (11)Hard (12)Hard (12)Hard (21)
Esteban GutierrezHard (1)Hard (15)Hard (17)Medium (10)Medium (13)
Jules BianchiMedium (9)Hard (13)Hard (14)Hard (12)Medium (8)
Max ChiltonMedium (10)Hard (13)Hard (14)Hard (9)Medium (10)
Giedo van der GardeMedium (2)Hard (12)Medium (10)Hard (15)Medium (8)Hard (8)
Jean-Eric VergneHard (2)Hard (14)

Bahrain Grand Prix pit stop times

How long each driver’s pit stops took:

DriverTeamPit stop timeGapOn lap
1Mark WebberRed Bull21.03137
2Fernando AlonsoFerrari21.1230.09224
3Sergio PerezMcLaren21.1610.13020
4Nico RosbergMercedes21.1830.15233
5Fernando AlonsoFerrari21.1890.15839
6Mark WebberRed Bull21.2210.19021
7Jenson ButtonMcLaren21.2300.19946
8Nico RosbergMercedes21.2670.23644
9Sebastian VettelRed Bull21.2900.25925
10Sergio PerezMcLaren21.3190.28839
11Nico RosbergMercedes21.3310.30020
12Fernando AlonsoFerrari21.4360.4058
13Lewis HamiltonMercedes21.4440.41322
14Sergio PerezMcLaren21.4710.44010
15Romain GrosjeanLotus21.5560.52542
16Felipe MassaFerrari21.5690.53828
17Lewis HamiltonMercedes21.6000.56938
18Romain GrosjeanLotus21.6080.57727
19Nico HulkenbergSauber21.6560.62512
20Sebastian VettelRed Bull21.6600.62910
21Felipe MassaFerrari21.6650.63410
22Jenson ButtonMcLaren21.6960.66534
23Felipe MassaFerrari21.7220.69117
24Kimi RaikkonenLotus21.7230.69234
25Mark WebberRed Bull21.7980.7678
26Jenson ButtonMcLaren21.8940.86321
27Sebastian VettelRed Bull21.9060.87542
28Esteban GutierrezSauber21.9970.96616
29Paul di RestaForce India22.0090.97814
30Daniel RicciardoToro Rosso22.0280.99725
31Pastor MaldonadoWilliams22.0661.03539
32Lewis HamiltonMercedes22.0721.04110
33Adrian SutilForce India22.1991.16818
34Pastor MaldonadoWilliams22.2201.18923
35Nico RosbergMercedes22.2371.2069
36Esteban GutierrezSauber22.2461.21543
37Giedo van der GardeCaterham22.2521.22124
38Adrian SutilForce India22.3461.31542
39Giedo van der GardeCaterham22.3801.34939
40Nico HulkenbergSauber22.4001.36926
41Esteban GutierrezSauber22.4381.40733
42Paul di RestaForce India22.4751.44436
43Daniel RicciardoToro Rosso22.5291.4989
44Max ChiltonMarussia22.5521.52146
45Charles PicCaterham22.5761.54523
46Daniel RicciardoToro Rosso22.6231.59241
47Kimi RaikkonenLotus22.7151.68416
48Valtteri BottasWilliams22.7291.69813
49Max ChiltonMarussia22.7451.71410
50Nico HulkenbergSauber22.8141.78341
51Jules BianchiMarussia22.8171.78636
52Charles PicCaterham22.9121.88111
53Giedo van der GardeCaterham22.9501.91914
54Fernando AlonsoFerrari23.0552.0247
55Jenson ButtonMcLaren23.0932.0629
56Pastor MaldonadoWilliams23.1732.14210
57Charles PicCaterham23.2632.23235
58Giedo van der GardeCaterham23.3752.34447
59Jules BianchiMarussia23.4552.42422
60Jules BianchiMarussia23.8032.77248
61Valtteri BottasWilliams23.8372.80647
62Max ChiltonMarussia24.1413.11023
63Jules BianchiMarussia24.3253.2949
64Romain GrosjeanLotus24.6053.5748
65Max ChiltonMarussia26.0044.97337
66Adrian SutilForce India26.4955.4641
67Felipe MassaFerrari27.7576.72636
68Esteban GutierrezSauber28.1027.0711
69Giedo van der GardeCaterham28.3447.3132
70Valtteri BottasWilliams28.4087.37729
71Jean-Eric VergneToro Rosso41.48520.4542

NB. Alonso’s lap eight pit stop did not involve changing tyres.

2013 Bahrain Grand Prix

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Image © Red Bull/Getty

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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19 comments on “2013 Bahrain Grand Prix tyre strategies and pit stops”

  1. Lotus’ pit stop were plain miserable among the front runners.

    1. Yep. Goes to show how awesome the rest of the team are.

    2. @Candice Yes, Lotus just keeps being bad at pitstops, if I don’t remember too wrong they’ve been average of the bottom 4 teams in terms of pitstop speeds all this year. Lets say they lose an average of 1 second per pitstop to fastest teams and lets say they make 3 stops, it’s 3 seconds given to the competitions just with pitstops. Now *if* you can catch your competition at the pace of, lets say 0.2sec per lap, it takes 15 laps to just get that lost time from pitstop back. Are the Lotus pitcrew even lifting?

  2. Chris (@tophercheese21)
    22nd April 2013, 15:47

    I like that there’s a wide variety in strategy calls (I.e. 2, 3, & 4 stops), but I still feel that 4 stops is just too much.

    If they make the soft and/or super-soft compounds more durable, then I think we’d see 1,2 & 3 stoppers, which is better, and slightly easier to follow as a viewer.

  3. VDG used all his tyres in the race probably…

    1. of course. 3 sets of each. Nobody told him to not splurge on tyres. It was like buffet for a starving homeless, he really helped himself there.

  4. Alonso didnt change his tyres at his 2nd stop, to anyone wondering why it looks like he used 4 sets of hards.

  5. Surely the Bahrain tyre strategy for all the teams was to cross their fingers, and hope to god that these papier-mache tyres don’t disintegrate, blow-up and send the drivers careering into the spectators!

    1. What spectators?

      1. Traverse (@)
        23rd April 2013, 0:07

        LOL

  6. 3 stops is too much on the hardest tyres in the range – that needs to get sorted! Also, am I right in saying on those 3 occasions it was Webber’s stop that was fastest @keithcollantine? As in Webber had the fastest stop of the race in the last three races?

    1. Red Bull is pretty unfair, continuously favouring one driver over the other.

      1. @mike-dee – precisely, there’s a definite no.2 here :P

      2. Drop Valencia!
        24th April 2013, 7:52

        to be fair Vettel was in a very comfortable position all race, so the pitstop crew maybe erred on the side of caution, but I have to agree that it is fantastic that Webber is finally getting all the quickstops!.

  7. We can be pretty happy that we did not have the soft tyres here. The medium lasted only mostly 9 to 15 laps (MAS managed 21 though), compared to China where they lasted mostly 13-20 laps – so around 25% less.

    In China, the soft lasted mostly 4 to 7 laps – imagine how fast it would have disintegrated in Bahrain!

    1. Drivers : Soft Tires are shot by Pit Exit

  8. Why did Mercedes run their second stints on the option ?
    No other team did this, and it surely cost them lap time.

    1. (Edit)
      Hamilton’s second stint.
      (Though Rosberg also used only two sets of the hard tyre).

  9. Webbers last stint showed that 20 laps was at least 1 to many.

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