How do you make Formula 1 instantly more dramatic? Just add water. Sunday’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix ended with the McLaren garage crew clinging to the pit wall catch fence, cheering Lando Norris over the line as he recorded a podium finish at Imola. One that we’ll optimistically call our first of 2021. 27 seconds later, Daniel Ricciardo swept over the line to finish P6 and cap a very good day in Italy for the team. Some of the crew trotted down to parc fermé, ready to receive the cars, the rest made their way back to the barriers to welcome home the drivers.

On the comms channels, while the race engineers talked the drivers through their in-lap and shutdown procedures, the various groups, split between the pit stand, the garage and the MTC, shared a virtual pat on the back after a tense but well-executed race. For the strategists, there is perhaps a touch more relief than would usually be the case. Some weekends the strategy calls are straightforward. At Imola, the path to a podium finish rested on two – perhaps three – big decisions. Each was vindicated – but they’re not always guaranteed to turn out well.

The race in a nutshell

• A wet-dry race with a tough call on starting compounds
• A decision to swap the positions of the drivers on track
• A rapid pit-stop gaining a position
• A red flag necessitating a difficult decision on restart tyres
• Tense rear-guard battles for both cars in the final few laps

The race in numbers

	Lando Norris	Daniel Ricciardo
Starting position	P7	P6
End of first lap	P9	P5
Finishing position	P3	P6
Speed trap	288.4 km/h (16th quickest)	289.5 km/h (15th quickest)
First pit-stop	30.654s	34.340s
Fastest lap	1:18.259 (3rd)	1:19.341 (12th)

The tyres

The strategy… in theory

There are two ways of looking at this. In the parallel universe where the team turned up at an Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari on Sunday morning to be greeted by blue skies and sunshine, the preferred strategy would likely have been a one-stop race, not dissimilar to those intended last year. In our case, that would have been starting on a used Soft tyre and switching to either a New Medium or a New Hard, depending on how early or late the stop would be – with that decision based around various strategic and tactical factors.

The real-world version of that, with the race starting on a wet track in the rain, with the rain diminishing and the second half of the grand prix likely to take place on a drying circuit, involved starting on whichever rain tyre was best suited to conditions, then – if the rain halted – extending the opening stint to a time when the track has dried sufficiently for a slick tyre, with enough of the race elapsed to reach the finish with reasonable pace after that single stop.

The strategy... explained

Part 1: The start

The first big decision of the day was the choice of starting tyre. That 16 of the cars all made the same decision in favour of the Intermediate over the full Wet disguises how knife-edge that decision was.

Both cars did their reconnaissance laps on the Inter and arrived at the grid with mixed feelings about the tyre. While the start-finish straight was merely damp, on the other side of the circuit, between Turns 5-8 (ie, around Tosa), the track was soaked. The cars were aquaplaning on the Inter and needed the Wet.

“It was a really difficult decision – made more difficult by a lack of information,’ says Randy Singh, director, strategy and sporting. “After the laps-to-grid we don’t really see how the track changes in the next half-hour. You rarely get any track images and, of course, the drivers aren’t going around, so they can’t tell you what the conditions are like. All we have left is the radar and the weather stations.”

A difficult decision became even more confusing as the five-minute hooter – at which point the starting tyres must be fitted – approached. The rain increased in intensity on the start-finish straight but the trackside weather stations reported that, while it was also raining at Tosa, the rain was less intense, than it had been.

“We had to base our choice on the conditions we thought existed around the track without seeing those conditions ourselves,” says Randy. “If it’s a 50/50 choice, there’s several considerations that push you to the tyre that’s closer to dry conditions. If it’s not raining hard, you know that the track will start drying as the cars go around. You know there’s often a Safety Car and that you may get three or four laps of free running behind it, allowing the circuit to dry even more. That said, I think all of us were fairly nervous when the race was about to start and we were about to get the tyre information. We were happy to go with the Intermediates – but I’m not sure what we expected from others. Given it was a difficult decision, we expected maybe a handful of cars around us to be on the full Wet.”

Part 2: The switch

Lando was in an odd position at Imola. He’d had good pace all weekend but started several places down from where he should have been, after having a Q3 lap deleted for running fractionally wide. That got worse after a midfield mêlée on the opening lap when minor contact punted him down to P9 – but on a wet track with pace in the car, he was able to recover, pass opponents and was soon line astern with Daniel with the pair running in P5-P6. The team decided to have the drivers swap positions to see what Lando could do in clear air.

This is a team sport and, in the last couple of years, we've frequently used our drivers tactically to secure maximum points in the Constructors’ Championship, including having them swap position. The potential to do this will always be one of the items covered in pre-race briefings.

“We discussed it in the morning and my personal opinion was that it was a situation that may arise,” says Randy. “So, we were prepared for it and had discussed the kind of situations where we would do it. Daniel and Lando were part of the discussion and came up with the plan for where and how it would happen, if required.

“We could tell Lando was quicker and responsibility for making the decision fell primarily to myself and Andrea [Stella, executive director, racing]. It happened within a minute of us making the decision, and the drivers and race engineers did an excellent job of executing the switch. Daniel helped us get a better result than we would have otherwise got – and some of the credit for Lando’s podium is shared with him.”

Part 3: The pit-stops

Imola is a venue where overtaking is very difficult, the pit-loss time is high, and tyre degradation is low. These combine to suggest a one-stop race where track position takes precedence over the sort of deterministic race geared to making the best time to the chequered flag. The basic tenets remain true for the type of wet/dry race we saw at Imola: we wanted to complete the race with a single pit-stop if conditions made that remotely possible.

On lap 20, Sebastian Vettel was the first driver to make the switch onto a Medium tyre but the McLaren drivers were not under pressure to immediately follow suit. Having been passed by Carlos Sainz, Daniel pitted on lap 27, coincidentally behind Sainz, and Lando followed a lap later.

“We had no pressure to be one of the first cars onto the dry tyres, so it was a deliberate choice for us, to not take any excessive risks – because that’s how you throw a good result away,” says Randy. “Under those circumstances it’s not simply a case of knowing when the dry tyre will be quicker, there’s also a decision to make about the level of risk. The drivers are still going to be using a slick tyre on a damp track, so delaying the pit-stop, even though it gives up some lap-time, provides more surety.”

The decision to box was taken when the risk was considered to have diminished sufficiently, and Daniel was brought in first because his position was under greater threat than Lando’s. Lando, however, received the bonus of passing Sergio Pérez in the pitlane. Lando started his in-lap 13.149s behind the Mexican driver, who had a 10-second penalty to serve, and also changed his steering wheel in the box. That, combined with a very strong in-lap from Lando and a rapid stop from the crew, was enough to get him out ahead.

“We knew potentially it would be close because we were 12-13s behind prior to the stop, he had the 10-second penalty, and in the wet those extra seconds can easily disappear,” says Randy. “The steering wheel change moved it from a minor possibility to a strong possibility – but it still relied on very good work from Lando and the pit-stop crew.”

Part 4: The red flag and the aftermath

On lap 32, the collision between Valtteri Bottas and George Russell necessitated a Safety Car, and then, with debris strewn all over the track and barriers at Tamburello to inspect, a red flag. With 29 laps of the race remaining, the team had another knife-edge strategy decision to make.

“Once we knew everyone was safe, the worst part of the red flag was that it left us with another really difficult decision,” says Randy. “The Medium tyres would get us to the end fairly safely – but we only had the sets that came off the cars available, and there are always issues getting those back up to the optimum temperature in the time available. The Soft tyres, in contrast, were already in the blankets and get up to temperature much more quickly

“Added to that, you don’t know how the race is going to restart until after the tyres are fitted. The Soft tyres will have a better launch but, even with a rolling start, will perform better over the first few laps. So, really, the question was: do we want to take the benefit at the start and try to gain a position, but accept we may struggle at the end of the race – or do we want to stick with the Medium compound?”

The team decided to go with the Used Soft tyre – the brave decision, with Pérez the only other car in a points position to make the same choice. Lando’s pass on Charles Leclerc at the restart vindicated the decision – but both drivers came under intense pressure at the end of the race as their tyres went away. Lando was passed by a recovering Lewis Hamilton in the closing stages but held off Leclerc to record his second F1 podium finish – but the first to actually involve standing on a podium.

“I think Lewis Hamilton would have got past Lando irrespective of his tyre choice but taking the Soft tyre is what delivered a podium to us – alongside Lando’s excellent stint managing the tyre but also managing the situation with cars behind,” concludes Randy. “We should not underestimate how good a job he’s done. When you get passed by a car in that kind of stint, it’s incredibly difficult to not let it cascade into letting the other cars get past. I think he drove with an enormous amount of maturity and skill to keep that third place.”

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