Some grands prix require the team to stick to a plan; others require it to choose one of many plans. With exclusive insight from McLaren F1 Director, Strategy and Sporting Randy Singh, we dissect the Spanish Grand Prix.

One of the charms of an unfolding Formula 1 season lies in the way it presents a different challenge each week. The back-to-back races on the Iberian Peninsula featured the same tyres, same ambient conditions and (more-or-less) the same cars – but demanded very different strategies and a very different style of driving from McLaren F1 drivers Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo.

The intent with a race strategy isn’t to get to the chequered flag as swiftly as possible – it’s to get to the chequered flag ahead of as many other cars as possible: how long that takes is largely irrelevant, though many weeks the way to achieve the latter is to do the former. These are the ‘deterministic’ races: the ones where the car is untroubled by traffic and can be driven at its best pace consistent with arriving at the finish line in the shortest time possible. Not every weekend is like that – and the Spanish Grand Prix almost never. In this regard, the 2021 Spanish Grand Prix followed a similar pattern to that of previous years: a tactical race where track position is key, with a strong likelihood of multiple stops, and a guarantee of strategists being kept very busy.

The race in a nutshell

• No firm pre-race plan on making one pit-stop or two
• A good start from Daniel followed by a long defensive drive
• A very difficult circuit on which to overtake
• A flexible race that did not commit to either strategy until deep into the race
• An aggressive late-race charge from Lando to capture a position six laps from home

The race in numbers

	Lando Norris	Daniel Ricciardo
Starting position	P9	P7
End of first lap	P9	P5
Finishing position	P8	P6
Speed trap	334.7 km/h (14th fastest)	337.7 km/h (8th fastest)
First pit-stop	21.864s	22.406s
Second pit-stop	22.467s	21.762s
Fastest lap	1:21.279 (7th)	1:21.853 (10th)

The tyres

The strategy… in theory

In 2020, the Spanish Grand Prix was predominantly a two-stop race with only a few cars taking the one-stop alternative. This year, lower temperatures – with an early May date rather than mid-August – made the one-stop a more attractive proposition than it had been nine months earlier. Although this wasn’t necessarily the fastest way to the flag, the great difficulty in overtaking at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya gives primacy to track position – unless a situation can be manoeuvred to provide a significant tyre advantage.

As with any grand prix, the team went to the grid with Plan A, Plan B, Plan C etc committed to memory. Lando and Daniel had spent much of their morning getting familiar with the target laps for each, and the driving styles required to hit them. In Barcelona there really wasn’t a preferred option: ‘Plan A’ wasn’t any more likely than ‘Plan B’. With both drivers starting the race on their Q2 Used Soft tyre, and the Hard tyre not expected to be a factor unless a car was really struggling or pitting very early, the likely plans were a one-stop Soft>Medium race, or a two-stop Soft>Medium>Soft race – with the team not required to commit either way until part-way through the Medium tyre stint.

“We weren’t overly keen to just commit to the one-stop,” says Randy Singh, director of strategy and sporting. “Committing to the one-stop may have meant going a bit further [in the first stint] or managing the second set of tyres a little bit more. We just tried to stay flexible and made sure we stayed in a reasonable position through the first round of pit-stops.”

The strategy... explained

The key to the race was to keep both options on the table, which required both Lando and Daniel to run careful first stints, looking after their tyres and being prepared to react to cars around them – rather than having a defined target lap in mind for a pit-stop. They both made their stops – Lando on lap 23, Daniel on lap 25 – in the middle of the ‘cascade’ – ie the point at which one car pitting triggers others to follow suit to mitigate against the risk of an undercut.

“Pierre Gasly was the first to stop, because he had a five-second penalty, and that triggered Fernando Alonso’s stop and started the cascade,” explains Randy. “It made sense to try to protect track position at that point because it was clear everyone was going to pit. At that stage of the race it was still between a one- and a two-stop.”

Both drivers fitted the Medium tyre at the first stop – as did the other 16 running cars that had started on a Soft tyre: there were not many other options on the table. “It was predominantly a case of staying really flexible,” says Randy. “The Hard compound didn’t look like a good race tyre, and fitting another Soft would commit us to the two-stop strategy because you have to run two compounds in the race. That’s a key lever to fit the Medium.”

While the decisions to make the first stops were largely driven by external factors, the team had difficult choices to make regarding the second stops, with the decision to stop again taken relatively late in the stint. “It wasn’t a straightforward decision for either car,” says Randy. “For Daniel, the second stop was driven by his position on track but also by how we expected the tyres to behave for the rest of the race. The decision with Lando took those same factors into account – but was also difficult in terms of when to stop. He came in on lap 51 to give him a relatively short stint on the Soft tyre at the end of the race, with the best pace advantage to get through George Russell and Fernando quickly, and have enough tyre life left to attack Esteban Ocon. Doing that successfully made it a good two-stop, but it wasn’t an easy decision to make.”

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