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Third and fourth in Australia was a very good result, with Lando’s third place being our first podium of the season and our first Down Under for a decade. Perhaps more encouragingly - with the caveat of it being a track that played to our strengths - the cars were closer to Ferrari and further ahead of Mercedes than had been expected.

Inevitably though, after a very tight race with Ferrari at the head of the field, there’s a degree of introspection. The Ferrari was faster – but outright pace wasn’t necessarily the only metric that mattered. Could we have done things differently? Was a better result available?

Irrespective of result, the days and weeks after a Grand Prix are busy ones for the strategists, who analyse their decisions, comb through the data and attempt to glean every last piece of information from the race weekend.

While not necessarily central to the task, inevitably, part of the process involves asking if the team delivered the best strategy it could. This is true whether the result of the race is a double DNF or a 1-2 finish. While Carlos Sainz always looked like having the victory in his control, the team will inevitably ask if there was a way to jump ahead of Charles Leclerc.

Fragile by design

As is the case at most circuits, tyres are central to the strategy in Albert Park. Recent races in Australia have been incident-packed, but that’s served to disguise strategic choices that are really quite vanilla. Strip out the Red Flags, Safety Cars, VSCs and general hullabaloo, and what you have is a straight up-and-down one-stopper: start on the Medium, switch to the Hard, go to the flag.

In an effort to spice things up for 2024, Pirelli decided to move downrange, bringing their three softest compounds – C3-C4-C5 to Albert Park. All of these tyres had been in Australia before – but never at the same time, and there wasn’t a serious one-stop option on the table. “And honestly, even the two-stop wasn’t particularly easy,” says Racing Director Randy Singh.

This generation of Pirelli compounds are well understood – but that knowledge comes with reservations in Melbourne. Running on the C3 compound was limited last year by inclement weather, and this year, no-one was inclined to burn through a set in practice when both sets were required for the race. Thus, the teams were a little less sure of their competitive position than would usually be the case.

“A combination of factors”

Both Lando and Oscar ran the preferred Medium>Hard>Hard strategy. Oscar made his first stop on Lap 9 and a second on Lap 39. Lando stopped on Laps 14 and 40. Oscar’s earlier stop allowed him to undercut Lando, but Lando’s tyre delta had them swap the positions back during the middle stint to allow Lando to chase Leclerc, who had also undercut him.

While in the latter stages of the race, the team were focused on Leclerc, in the initial stint, threats behind were a consuming interest, specifically George Russell, stopping on Lap 8 from P5. With the undercut expected to be powerful, Oscar needed to stop to protect the position… but there were other reasons to go at that point.

“There’s a combination of factors at play,” says Randy. “Oscar stops on Lap 9 to protect the position from Russell and we were also looking to undercut Leclerc – though he ultimately pitted at the same time. We didn’t want to go earlier,  because we didn’t think the longer C3 stints would be easy to do. That proved correct. We – and many others – were struggling towards the end of the Hard stints.”

With the cars running close together, it wasn’t possible to pit both on the same lap, and Oscar, facing both threats and opportunities, got first call. On other weekends, Lando may have followed him a lap later – but the team instead chose to extend his opening stint.

“We could have stayed ahead of Leclerc at that stop by boxing Lando before Oscar – and it is something we considered – but there’s traffic behind and it’s early to be stopping, so we thought we’d split the cars,” says Randy.

“With Lando boxing the next lap, we’d have come out ahead of Oscar but behind Leclerc, so we elected to stay out. It meant Lando got undercut by Leclerc and also Oscar. Being undercut by our own car wasn’t an issue for us, because that’s something we can control, and we don’t mind the drivers swapping positions – but the plan was to build a tyre delta to Leclerc.” 

Having effectively already lost P2 to Leclerc, but with Russell surprisingly not making gains, Lando was able to stay out and build a five-lap tyre advantage over Leclerc, pitting on Lap 14. He emerged three seconds behind Oscar, six behind Leclerc. The expectation was that a Hard tyre bought in carefully would pay dividends at the end of a stint, and thus Lando closed the gap slowly.

He and Oscar swapped positions on Lap 28, and Lando set about taking tenths out of Leclerc in every sector. As soon as he got within range, he received the ‘box to overtake’ message (i.e. box if Leclerc doesn’t) on Lap 34, but Leclerc pitted, so the goal once again was to build a delta and have fresher tyres for the final stint.

The strategies for both drivers came together at this point. Oscar, by virtue of having the older rubber, ran out of grip first, and boxed on Lap 39 after a lock-up. Lando pitted the following lap. He was four seconds behind Leclerc with 18 laps to run and a five-lap tyre advantage. Game on.

The final chase

The last stint didn’t produce the fireworks the team had hoped to see. Unlike the first round of stops, Leclerc had pitted into clear air, and been able to bring his tyres in carefully. While Lando was able to narrow the gap, the sense in the garage was always that Leclerc had the situation under control. Passing backmarkers made the gap fluctuate from lap to lap, but it hovered between two and three seconds until the race was neutralised by a late Virtual Safety Car. The chase was entertaining but ultimately fruitless.

“I’m not convinced we could have made the pass, but we had been optimistic in the middle of the race about catching the Ferrari,” says Randy. “Leclerc didn’t have the same drop-off in pace on his final set of tyres that he had in the middle stint – potentially because he was more gentle at the start of it.”

Hindsight, of course, is a wonderful thing, and with 804 laps completed on the Hard compound during the race, the teams all have a much better appreciation now for what the tyre is capable of delivering – but would that inform different choices if the race were run again tomorrow?

“If we ran the race again in the same conditions… I think everybody would have done the same thing!” says Randy. The Medium>Hard>Hard strategy is the one that worked best. The Soft starters didn’t get the early safety car they wanted, and the VSC came perhaps a little too early for the Hard starters, so with absolute perfect hindsight, it’d probably be the choice for even more cars.”

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