Formula 1 doesn’t deal in certainties – but it doesn’t like guesswork either, which is why probability is the branch of mathematics to which race strategy most closely cleaves. Strategy depends on data. All kinds of data. It gathers historic data for the specific track; recent performance for the cars and compound choices in the active season. It looks at meteorological data, at offline and driver-in-the-loop simulation data. It studies performance in practice sessions. From these sources, it builds a picture.

But what happens when the data doesn’t exist? F1 last raced at Istanbul Park in 2011 with an entirely different generation of cars, on completely different Pirelli tyres. To compound that, the track was freshly resurfaced for this race, resulting in a grip level that bore no comparison with any other circuit on the calendar. The rain that fell over the weekend wasn’t really necessary to spice things up but, like everything else at the 2020 Turkish Grand Prix, the wet track didn’t respond in the way a wet track usually would, drying without really delivering an attendant increase in adhesion.

Against this backdrop, race strategy had to plot the fastest way to the chequered flag, almost wholly dependent on the live data coming from the track and the feedback of the drivers. It wasn’t a guessing game – but there was an element of playing it by ear.

The race in numbers

The tyres

The strategy… in theory

As with any wet race, the Turkish Grand Prix was always going to be determined by weather conditions rather than any predetermined plan. Even without the rain, the ultra-slippery track surface made it a difficult race to call. Pre-weekend assumptions suggested a two-stop race because the surface was expected to be similar to that seen in Portimão, with a layout more suitable for overtaking. Even in the dry on Friday, that was revised because the lack of traction made following very difficult, suggesting overtaking would be challenging and track position more significant.

What actually happened

The right-hand side grid slots had the better of the grip at the start and Carlos moved up from P15 to P9 on the first lap. He passed Kimi Räikkönen on lap five to move up to P8 and moved up to P6 on lap eight when Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton pitted. He made the switch from Wet to Intermediate on lap 10 and dropped back to P8. That became P7 when Verstappen pitted on lap 18 and P6 when he passed Daniel Ricciardo on lap 32. Carlos pitted from P6 at the end of lap 33 and emerged in P8. He passed Lance Stroll on lap 41 for P7 and Alex Albon for P6 on lap 43, which turned into P5 immediately as Verstappen pitted ahead.

Lando spun his wheels on the grid and dropped to the back of the pack. He finished the first lap P15 ahead of Romain Grosjean, pitlane starters George Russell and Nicholas Latifi, first corner spinners Esteban Ocon and Valtteri Bottas. He moved up to P14 on lap six when Charles Leclerc made the first elective stop for Inters, and then passed Dany Kvyat for P13 on lap eight. He moved up to P10 on lap nine with a cascade of pit-stops for Räikkönen, Kevin Magnussen and Antonio Giovinazzi. He pitted for Inters on the next lap and dropped back to P15, ahead of Giovinazzi, and made the undercut work on Pierre Gasly to move back up to P14. That became P13 on lap 15 following a spin for Bottas, and P12 a lap later, passing Räikkönen on track. Another on-track pass saw Lando up to P11 on lap 24, passing Russell and then into the points on lap 27, passing Magnussen. He pitted from P10 on lap 36 but had enough margin over Ocon to retain the position. He chased down first Daniel Ricciardo, taking P9 on lap 48, and then Lance Stroll for P8 three laps from home.

The strategy… explained

Despite the rain stopping before the race start, one of the easier decisions of a difficult weekend was to begin the race on the full Wet tyre. All 18 cars on the grid took the same decision, with only the two Williams cars, starting in the pitlane, and thus having a little more time in the blankets, opting for the Inter. The question after the start was how long would it take for the field to disperse enough water to make the Inter the quicker tyre to be on? Carlos had made a better start than expected and Lando worse – but with the usual crossover lap-time guidelines not really applying, for both the timing of the stop was more geared to the position of the cars around them.

For Carlos, the team was relatively relaxed about making the call. “He wasn’t under threat from behind and had the possibility of attacking cars in front, so for Carlos we weren’t under pressure to pick an optimum lap to go onto the Inter – in fact in cases like this, it’s sometimes better to wait a few laps beyond the optimum because you might catch a Safety Car,” says Head of Strategy and Sporting, Randy Singh. In the early laps, Carlos was following the Renault of Daniel Ricciardo. They pitted on the same lap, which was not what the team would have chosen under ideal circumstances – but there were other considerations.

“While we would ideally have done something different to Daniel, we had Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton behind us, who had already stopped,” explains Randy. “We might have stayed out and tried to pass Daniel that way – but we didn’t really want to get into a battle with two cars on Inters that were much quicker than us because we would have lost a fair amount of time and tyre temperature. We just didn’t want to take the loss – which is why we boxed.”

Across the second stint, Carlos chased down and eventually passed Ricciardo on track, and the Renault driver immediately dived into the pits. Carlos pitted a lap later to prevent the undercut. “Stopping again was the sensible decision and it was just a question of when to make that stop,” says Randy. “Because Daniel wasn’t super-quick, we thought we’d lock the position in, rather than having to pass him again.”

Lando’s race was rather different. Wheelspin at the start had dumped him to the back of a pack of cars, and while he potentially had a lot more pace than the train in front, the grip and the spray made overtaking a horrendous proposition. His first stop was going to have more of a strategic impact that that of his team-mate.

“Lando was stuck, and we were looking for the best way to get him unstuck,” says Randy. “In those conditions, it isn’t always a case of pitting early to remove yourself from the train, and what we were trying to work out – with Lando’s feedback being an important part of the decision – was how best to use that stop onto the Inter. We’d been tracking George Russell’s lap-times from the start and knew the Inter would perform OK but it wasn’t a question of whether the Inter was the right tyre to go onto, more a case of how it would perform on the very first lap out of the pitlane – because we were in a really tight battle with several other cars. Looking at Leclerc’s out-lap was helpful.”

The timing of Lando’s stop achieved the rare feat of making up two places by overcutting one car and undercutting another – after that he had to make ground the old-fashioned way, albeit with the MCL35 displaying better performance than its qualifying position suggested. He was able to make a pace advantage count and once Magnussen had pitted from behind, he had the luxury of a full pit gap over his nearest pursuer.

“Lando’s second stop was a bit like Carlos’ first,” says Randy. “We had no real pressure behind and no one immediately ahead, so it was just a case of timing the stop to get the quickest race. We knew Ricciardo would be a target later and added Stroll to that when he began to struggle later in the race.”

Whenever the cars both make gains and finish in the points it’s a satisfied post-race garage – doubly so when they survive and prosper in a race as fraught as the 2020 Turkish Grand Prix. The post-race strategy analysis and debriefs, however, tend to begin from the point of view of ‘what could we have done better?’ When the winner and the second-placed car both run a different strategy, that’s always a starting point for discussion.

Was there a better result out there somewhere? “On Lando’s side, I think this was all we were going to get out of it once he’d lost positions at the start. He did a really excellent drive to get eighth and fastest lap,” concludes Randy. “For Carlos, with perfect hindsight, we perhaps could have boxed for Inter on the same lap as Leclerc and come out ahead of him. As he was the last car in that train it was an easier decision for him than for us. Of course, it doesn’t necessarily mean we’d have stayed ahead at the end of the race and an earlier stop may have driven different decisions from other teams. All in all, Turkey was a very difficult race to predict.”

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