After the first-lap security automobile at System 1’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, three automobiles selected to take a strategic gamble and make their tyre switches there after which: Esteban Ocon, Gabriel Bortoleto, and Jack Doohan.
The three all began on the medium tyre, however made the swap to make sure they may theoretically go with out making an additional cease – as long as they may maintain maintain of the laborious tyre by way of the rest of the race. Ocon and Bortoleto selected to go down that highway; Doohan made an additional cease on lap 32.
It did not have a lot of a pay-off for the three; though they made up locations throughout the pitstop crossover, they may do little or no to cease sinking again down the order with the tyre offset accrued by those that had made their stops later. Ocon completed 14th, whereas Doohan used his brisker tyres to go Bortoleto for 18th in the direction of the top.
There is a parallel world the place Yuki Tsunoda, having obtained going once more after his opening-lap conflict with Pierre Gasly at Flip 4, had no injury and adopted the three onto the identical technique. The thought experiment right here is that this: may the Japanese driver have gotten into the factors by doing so?
To map the hard-tyre degradation on a perfect race technique, we’ll take a perform of Ocon and Bortoleto’s laps to current the very best case situation. The three who stopped caught as much as the again of the pack earlier than the restart, so we’ll place Tsunoda on the tail finish of that and begin our rely from the fourth lap.
Then we’ll work out a best-guess anticipated delta between Tsunoda and the mash-up of the Ocon/Bortoleto theoretical driver based mostly on the earlier races’ supertimes – Tsunoda at 100.838%, “Bortocon” at 101.932% – certain, this has Tsunoda’s Racing Bulls outcomes included, however let’s take the freedom of together with lowered tempo operating by way of the pack. In concept, this has the time loss to visitors bedded into it, so we cannot modify that an excessive amount of.
Yuki Tsunoda, Crimson Bull Racing
Photograph by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Pictures
In Bortoleto’s traces, there’s two factors of notice; between lap 21 and 27, he dropped time as he was being overtaken by the automobiles who had stopped; Ocon additionally misplaced time on this section of the race, though not fairly as a lot as Bortoleto did. We’ll not easy these curves out an excessive amount of, since this additionally accounts for areas the place Tsunoda could begin to come beneath assault from drivers on higher tyres. It is a conservative estimate, in any case.
To put Tsunoda in the back of the sector, we’ll add within the time beneath the security automobile to make sure he is in the back of the pack, and assume he makes up the stoppage time whereas halted at Flip 4 to take action. Bortoleto was half a second off Ocon on the restart, so let’s make his hole over Tsunoda the identical. As per the opposite laborious runners, Tsunoda thus takes a few laps to deliver the tyres in, clocking a 1m37.128s and a 1m35.791s on his opening two laps.
He then will get into the 1m34s, lapping fairly persistently throughout the bracket (apart from just a few 1m35s having contended with visitors) earlier than entering into the excessive 1m33s by lap 33. This nonetheless places him over a second a lap behind Verstappen, sporting new laborious tyres, though he tails off again into the 1m34s within the last couple of laps because the degradation units in.
Including his race lap information to the time spent beneath the security automobile, per our maths, brings Tsunoda to an eighth-place end, having crossed the road at 1h21m50.586s, within the pocket forward of Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon – and about 5 seconds behind Lewis Hamilton.
In all probability, it is a very optimistic forecast, even when the degradation that Ocon and Bortoleto confronted by way of the race is of course included throughout the calculations of Tsunoda’s race laps.
But it surely does present that, had Tsunoda not sustained terminal injury, there was an opportunity for him to make up the locations and wring a factors end out of the laborious tyres if he did not get fully swamped amid the visitors. Aiming for the 25-second hole between Hamilton and Sainz on the finish, even with some higher variance in lap instances, would doubtless have been achievable.
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It isn’t a method that will have, for a automobile on the prime, upgraded a factors end into a greater one. But it surely definitely would have helped one among them out of a jam had they arrive to blows on the opening lap and wanted a hail Mary to get one thing out of the race.
On this article
Jake Boxall-Legge
System 1
Yuki Tsunoda
Crimson Bull Racing
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