We’re told that patience is a virtue… but also that a bad decision is better than no decision. The former argument definitely held sway as Lando and Daniel were the final drivers to relinquish the rain tyres in Singapore, where we recorded the team’s best race result of the season.

In association with FxPro and with exclusive insight from McLaren F1 Director of Strategy and Sporting Randy Singh, we'll explain the key decisions, why they were made, and their impact on the race... 

A decision to sit tight and see what happens rarely garners praise – but often it’s this quality of restraint that is eventually rewarded. Such was the case in Singapore where, on a track drying in minuscule increments, and with overtaking a luxury afforded to very few, Lando and Daniel played the long game.

From the outside, it may have appeared to be one of the more sedentary events in a season where audiences have become reacquainted with a more dynamic form of racing – inside the team, however, it was one of the most intense races of the year. The drivers ran deep, but they certainly did not run silent.

The race in a nutshell

• Excellent starts on the Inter tyre: Lando up to P5 from P6. Daniel up to P13 from P16
• Attrition and errors move Daniel up to P10 and Lando to P4 before the pit-stops.
• Both drivers decline several opportunities for a VSC pit-stop. They both pit on lap 36 under a full Safety Car. Lando emerges P4, Daniel is P6. Lando on Medium tyres, Daniel on Soft tyres.
• Daniel moves up when Verstappen goes off, to finish P5.

The race in numbers

The tyres

The strategy… in theory

Despite the threat of rain every year at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, we’ve never really had rain during a Singapore Grand Prix … and we still haven’t.

The decision to start the race 65 minutes late allowed the storm cell to pass away to the South, leaving the teams to deal with the most ticklish of strategy problems: a slowly drying track, drying at different rates in different parts of the circuit. Had the race been dry, Pirelli’s prediction was for a one-stop race of either Soft>Hard or Medium>Hard (much as it was before F1’s aerodynamic reboot).

With no more rain expected, and with track position having primacy over race pace, plus the reconnaissance laps convincing everyone to start on Intermediate tyres rather than full Wet, that would still be the preferred strategy… with the decision being when best to make the jump. The question would be whether the Inter tyre would last long enough to get to a point where the track was dry enough for a stop onto a slick tyre that would go to the end, or if drivers would have to pit for a second Inter on a still-damp track.

The strategy explained...

All 20 cars had Inters fitted when the lights went out. After good starts, both drivers settled into a rhythm. It became apparent that the Inters were relatively stable, the track was drying very, very slowly, and that overtaking on track was impractical (DRS was disabled for the majority of the race). The target of the first stint was to keep the tyres in good condition, with the drivers instructed to search-out the damp patches to cool the compounds, and save tyres through the corners where practical.

The race engineers, prompted by the strategy team were requesting tyre and track updates from the drivers virtually every lap, with longer conversations than usual during the frequent VSC and SC periods. Russell was the canary in the cage, stopping on lap 21 for slicks and providing a reference point. ‘What’s George doing this lap?’ was a frequent question from both drivers. While he was still going slower than the Inter, they wouldn’t pit in green conditions.

“Russell’s early stop gave us good information,” notes Randy Singh, Director of Strategy and Sporting. “It’s not usual that you have someone go onto dry tyres arguably too early but still be able to keep it on track for such a long time. So, that was a good read on how the track was drying and getting ready for the slick tyres – though George’s job was perhaps made a bit harder by the VSCs dropping his tyre temperatures every few laps.”

Timing from Russell suggested several things. The first was that the newer track surface in Sector Three (around the Esplanade) was taking longer to dry than the older surface in Sectors One and Two. Russell was able to set decent lap times at the start of the lap, while falling away in the sequence of 90-degree corners at the end.

The second thing was that the slick tyres were taking a long time to get up to temperature, and the potential for an undercut was greatly reduced. The first lap(s) on the slick before it got warm was slower than the times being done on the Inter, so the instruction to the drivers was to make their tyres last longer than the tyres of their rivals.

As is often the case when the Inter is run for an extended period on a track with dry patches, it starts to wear down to something resembling a slick. It becomes quicker on the dry line, more difficult to control in the slippery sections. A number of drivers were struggling as the race approached the mid-point.

As always, there’s going to be a time gain from pitting under a VSC or a Safety Car – but the gain is reduced in the wet when green-flag lap-times are slower. The team ignored the first SC and three VSCs but pitted when the second full Safety Car came out on lap 36. They were the final cars to make the transition onto the slick tyres. Lando came very close to jumping Carlos Sainz Jr., while Daniel was able to get ahead of Pierre Gasly, Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll, all of whom had stopped just before being slowed to Safety Car pace.

“We were, of course, planning those stops independent of the Safety Cars,” explains Randy. “On Lando’s side, we were monitoring Verstappen, and on Daniel’s side, there were a few cars ahead and behind that were potential gains or losses.

"So, we were looking at those cars, monitoring how the out-laps were going, seeing if we could drop into position with less warm-up a lap or so later. Then the Safety Car was deployed – there was always a reasonable chance that would happen in Singapore – and boxing both cars became a no-brainer because of the large pit-loss reduction and the track position gains that we’d make.”

Despite pitting on the same lap, the drivers took different tyres. Daniel’s choice of the Soft was aggressive – though three laps after Valtteri Bottas had made the same choice. It would give him an advantage at the restart but completing 20+ laps on it would be challenging.

Lando took the conservative approach because his race was about securing fourth position ahead of the rapid Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton. They had already switched to a Medium tyre, and giving Lando the same compound for a slightly shorter stint was seen as the best way to defend his position.

“It wasn't an easy choice of which tyres to pick for either driver, which is part of the reason we split them,” says Randy. “On Lando’s side we favoured guaranteeing our position by locking in with the same compounds as the other cars.

"On Daniel’s side, we were a bit concerned about the warm-up phase that would come after the Safety Car, and so elected to send him out on the Soft tyres which have a better warm-up.”

So far this season, the team’s two best points hauls have come at Imola and in Marina Bay – both wet/dry days with a tricky crossover, ratcheting-up the workload for the strategists: complications from assessing the weather, far fewer data points on which to gauge likely tyre performance and a correspondingly greater reliance on reading the conditions and making real-time decisions.

"There’s another wet weekend in store at Suzuka, and every chance it will demand an entirely different approach – and potentially another sequence of tough decisions for the team. Or, as Randy concludes: “Working out the right thing to do can be very difficult in the dry… but it’s always a little more complicated in the wet.”

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